The Iceberg That Sunk The Titanic Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I drink gin and read forgotten
Or never read poems:
Soon I will be delivering trees well past the
Threshold of gated communities;
And I remember the little Jewish boy who told
Me my forehead was too big,
Like a glacial slab, like the wrecked Titanic full of
The cenotaph of forgotten racehorses,
And so I began to look surprised at everything,
And I wore a rubber band in my hair to straighten
The cursive furrows in my forehead which
Finally got there;
And S- laughed at me, and asked me what
Was so wrong,
And she laughed at me even today and asked me
What was wrong,
Even after I told her she was my muse,
Even after I told her she was my muse;
And I am drunk on gin,
And I really want my dogs;
And I really want my dogs, the only two things that
Have ever been good to me,
And it’s such a thing that they don’t live for very long;
And I’ve never met another genius,
Even though I’ve read them, and seen the naked
Women they’ve painted into bowls of jello in art museums,
And soon the waves will be coming,
And the green sea will be absolutely perfect beneath the blue
Sky,
Utterly beautiful: everything I cannot be,
But I will get up and go to work tomorrow until I kill
Myself,
Or until I decide it’s time to own my own house;
And I really want my own dogs,
And S- is up in Colorado just west of Interstate 25,
I think,
But I don’t think she’s climbed any of my grander mountains:
She just sells the wine I farm;
And her eyes are utterly beautiful, and she is beautiful anyways,
Just like my forehead before I scarred it
From the remarks of the little Jewish boy,
The iceberg
That sunk the Titanic.