The Ones Who Shouldn'T Have To Die Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Patience for movies escapes me.
Lightning in a traffic of blue sky and I’m
In a mobile home waiting for the
Caravans of my father and his Mexicans,
Regretting what I’ve done to myself,
What I’ve said to myself while looking away
From the mirror,
Frightened of hideous fairytales- The new years
Celebrations of candles and grapes,
Like empty vines scarred from fire without her
Bosom;
And the shallowly glorious lakes she has never drunken
From,
But they seem to come to her, my father and his
Mexicans,
The clichéd airplanes like heavy song birds touching down,
While I hold my careworn leonine face in a crèche of
Oily fingers-
The same teachers are here, the same buzzards in a gossiping
Cone of sky,
Their gods sitting back and relaxing, enjoying the moment,
Knowing that out of all of us
They are the ones who shouldn’t have to die.