The Expressions Of His Face Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Women are easily fooled
By the expressions of his face.

After 4 months I shave,
And even my own mother calls
Me a prince and begins snapping
Photographs to hang next to
Her favorite smiles and teeth.

4 years ago my girlfriend left me
After I came back from Colorado, bearish,
She cried how dare I show up at her house
Looking like that before her parents,
How dare I?

And she went to walk alongside a freshman,
Who still didn’t need to shave. Will he kowtow
To her flimsy ways, the recessive nature of
Her color blind eyes, when it comes time for
Him to become a man and grow a beard?

Or will she cycle down through younger men,
Until she is old, withered and alone? A spinster, eyesight
Still poor, Herself beginning to
Beard, I will think of her fondly and call her grey whiskers,
And drink alone to that.

For how can a man in good conscious bend
To such a fickle wind? How can a man with something
Raging in his head, be reduced to the insubstantial whim
Of the very thing built to be receptive to him?

Jesus died the lonely bachelor, preferring the long
Spear in his side, to the naggings of his mother and Mary
Magdalene. He grew his beard long and dark, rooted there,
As he to his faith, he would not take up the Roman traditions,
Clean-shaven homosexual wisps that delight in the surfaces
Of flesh.

Nor will I when what I have inside me is the wild, needing
Thing, I want to keep diving deeper into that chaotic abyss,
Into the monsters who always prevail at the end
Which know me and make love to me when the very last of
Women look away.