The Fairy-Tale Of A Mermaid's Kiss Poem by Robert Rorabeck

The final common man crossed me with his sword,
Said there will be a night beside the sea when the lord
Will rise,
Arms outstretching, a denouement epiphany,
And there the tourists will graze like lawnmowers
Morbidly obese, paying for the time, while the hookers jaywalk
The street in migratory herds, following the cocaine
And little children farting in their reddish shorts; the freedom
Of the open hands sign-giggling swath the mausoleum,
Butterflies injunction into the trees, the belly-dancers that
Move in place, jiggle for the Japanese businessmen,
Making time in a glass house served by topless stewardesses,
While the clouds are mimes yet coming awake, misconceived,
And the professors, they are nothing more than water
Under the cleft of outer space, shelved in a bluer abyss,
And untouchable by his cousins, loneliness a single ant
Crawls across a body of incest, tangled in the sweaty sheets:
A chorus of eunuchs honors the symbol of Christ,
And a guillotine greedily eats the rich,
But it is mostly beautiful when nothing moves, or if seeming
So cannot be proven empirically, for this is only this,
A rejection which did not consider the consequence, nor
Was he the recipient of the prized kiss, but out on the yard
The day must go, panting like a season, not a tortoise,
And the waves are surely unclothed, a chorus line who have
Long forgotten the fairy-tale of a mermaid’s kiss.