The Greatest Mirage Poem by Robert Rorabeck

The butterflies get drunk in this cartoon,
While the cars go by yes they do whether it is raining or
Not;
And I tilt my head back and swallow fire, glad to be unbusied
From looking into the degrees of vision of
Cryless alligators and the women who have always come in
Double-breasted as they do:
And it really should have been such a sweet life, and maybe
There is still time for them,
But I am still bitter like a forest fire who has nothing green left
To lick:
And she has the perfect features: heart shaped, basking in
Valentines:
Look at all the stalwart youth lining up friskily at her kissing booth,
All day long while the trailer park moms slide down the water slides
In sweet surplices of coconut and bamboo,
Their yojimbo goslings entrained to them, the sky a whistle wetting
Itself over Timbuktu: the city the greatest mirage of sweet
Young things that I ever knew.