The Heavens Of Their Make-Believe Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Glutinous tabernacle: these are my words
Erin,
Sung to a diseased muse eating popcorn in the bleachers
While underneath her the rattlesnakes
Make love,
And the cheerleaders are counting down their
Favorite mountain ranges until
The storm clouds hold up the sky and school is over:
Beautiful boys who don’t look beautiful now
Are thumbing for their rides home-
The truants of Socrates or one of his forbearing
Presocratics are already up on some roofs
Smelling the perfumes from the armpits of the housewives-
As the high school is emptied, as the high school is left
Vacant,
After the busses have turned around like butterflies,
And they all fly off to suburban migrations- and my notes
To my missing lovers all get mixed up with different
Seas- as the giants slumber like hibernating grizzlies
Dreaming of a fire the tourists keep from their
Windows,
As the paper snowflakes fall down from the heavens
Of their make-believe.