The Inside Poem by Robert Rorabeck

You put me down so far underground
Like a plush rabbit without his crown:
Sister, sister, you put me down:
My entire family put me down; I am the black sheep
Braying on his bleeding ground,
My enter family put me down:
Now it is past five, almost the hour of the mailman, almost
The hour to get up and go to work,
If you are a song bird, or if you are a jerk;
This is becoming the hour in which the city crowns;
The hour too that I should be sleeping in my crypt
So softly underground;
The hour that Kelly is sleeping- the hours that cats fornicate in,
Though they are always fornicating:
This is the hour that holy people have peace just before the hour
That their awful sun rises in the east.
And then that new offspring sings like little spirits multiplying
Like transom guppies, or other words I don’t know;
This is the hour I imagine you walking barefooted through the snow:
This is the hour that I awaken to perceive,
This is the hour that I would kiss your grieving lips to grieving;
To lay with you for an hour, and pay you for your troubles;
This is the hour that my love is awfully doubled,
And I come slipping like a gray man through the walls of your
Doublewide:
And this is the hour that I find the inside of your inside.