The Greater Show Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Ah! Let this night crumble into science,
The magnesium of her experiments put her
Hair in a spell:
In the empty pool she is chasing the rock stars
Of skateboarding,
The dirty boys with long hair who
Don’t have birthmarks, who are not Gauls,
And whose greatest virtue is the ineptitude
Of the cut:
Those stallions who rile in great strutting
Clicks and laugh like snide kings in the food court-
Those who fly their jolly roger from atop their cars,
And smile like debased angels pulling their ollies
Off in the shade while someone else gets compensated
To mow the yard about the teak;

She doesn’t see me then, sleeping in the bin
Of alligators, narcoleptics of her cerulean element,
Alas! She doesn’t know my name, nor would I give
It to her hitting off bottle rockets from up on the shingles
Of a successful roof, when I am supposed to be multiplying,
Or some such better seasons of hell;
A dove of tinfoil adorns my cheek, and the boys laugh
In the low amphitheatre of the living room,
Eat apple pie and cigarette ash- Soon they forget about me
As they return to school, eventually successful for
A fair portion;

There is a lawn chair of loneliness on the windowed
Cliff above where the yellow buses chain,
And the ants are stratified unto their cognomens and snapdragons;
Soon they will ride home and hibernate in the bastions
Of empty homes and popcorns, loving the little wounds;
I see them now all going away as if in a long experiment,
The canal the teal trellis which separates the vermilion junctions,
And the loud boys in a long haired crew rolling and jeering
About the parking lot, harassing and delighting the
Young-titted mothers hemmed with browned groceries,
But also even they too disperse like the whispering liniment
For a poultice of dusk;

And she is left there fawning atop her cherry car with her
Best friend, both of them juniors eating burgers,
Mayonnaise on their lips’ seams, flies as well- too far away, they are gossiping
About what they have seen,
And perhaps choosing in the games which ones
They will marry when the sun turns around,
but neither do they see my consternation
Above the roof, flicking my lighter to send of the
Last pop-rocket in a quick hurrah! Soon they will have
Driven away to be dormed in a swell college,
And will have well forgot the name of even their truest of loves,
As the stars are beginning to dive into the vinegary waters,
The wind bathing my bare head,
Inviting me to stay for the greater show.