The Lines Of Clouds Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Grooms of sabotage and lanoline
Combing the manes of the mythical creatures,
Stepping up to be touched by her in a queue:
The Pegasus and unicorns
A griffin and centaurs- gossiping the wrong way through
Traffic,
Hoping to be touched by her:

A light at the top of the stairs,
Emitting the ethereal senses of elves and gods:
There she is appearing suddenly in the middle of the flea market:

Maybelline, coming to see me on a Monday:
Supine goddess, Mexican, with new braces:
She sits in the cab of my trouble and we gossip nervously
About the past lives of nerds:

Growing up amidst the privileges of the middle classes,
She is nervous amidst the dispossessed:
I tell them she is my wife and they believe me-
She is on a diet and makes fun of my weight. I tell her
I weight 270 pounds: she cannot believe-
She says that I look like her father,

And the fairgrounds carrousel. Nothing can be published here,
And it is too hot for her:
She is on a diet. She will not eat a quesadilla with me.
I give her gifts before she leaves-
The mythical creatures queue and beckon-

I sell two hundred dollars while she is near me and another
Two hundred dollars after she has left-
I tell her that this week I will make six times my teacher's salary,
And she asked me what I am going to do with myself-

Now it is morning, and you cannot find her anywhere-
She is back at home in Wellington with her unassuming boyfriend-
The flowers loom on her porch-
She still complains about having to buy privileges for herself,

But I can freshly remember the day she saw mythical creatures
At the fair- in the land that grew up far away from her-
And I wonder how she can be so dissatisfied with her beautiful race-
And about the sad trinkets she wears on her arms-
The sex bracelets: every time I have seen her,
It has been with another boyfriend-

Today I worked at trimming my yard- I cut down the overgrown
Bougainvillea, and with thoughts of revenge on my lips,
I cursed yet other things I could not spell-
But looking up from the dissatisfied hedge,
There was Maybelline grooming the boys in the sky-
And I wondered when she would be coming down, settling,
Kissing the lines of clouds along the way.