The Pumping Jungle Through Which The Red Hearts Love Poem by Robert Rorabeck

The fidelity of the day
Runs along the chrome gills
Of her highway,

The glitter of a stream
Disappears in the shade,
When she tells you, you
Do not know her.

When she slips off
For other men, your
Dear brothers,

Going around the bend,
She does not look back
But cascades

In the tangled memories
Of skin and bone laced
With skin and bone

The defeated sun
Kneels beneath the
Horizon’s teeth to
Shatter, and fall
Steaming into the sea,

The gift of the craftsman
Wasted before honed

When the city becomes the
Jungle,
Private detectives working
Overtime
Gunned down without audience
On unseen intersections
Before all the ladies
Opening their doors,
Going out on the walk for the evening,
The skin of their legs flowing
Like running facets

Cooling the parched eyes
Of men, their bodies lighting up
The safety of nightlights
Next to the bedroom,
The doors left open,

Inviting

With All the husbands gone
On very long and expensive trips
With the objects they wish to posses,

Humid and beginning to swim,
Women become the sea-wolves,
The bones of their bodies learn to
Breath through the touch of skins,
Burning through the ancient fires
Of survival

The glass roof above where
The commercial airlines
Fly, comes down

The dryads uncoil their forms
Swim through the muted clouds

Sweating, rings slip from fingers

Fangs, like roots, moisten

In dark corners paid for by the hour,
Friends make love to old lovers
Again,

Back at home,
Locked,
Old lovers stand alone
Hand in hand with a
Gun

Kissing

Where the sun plummets
Through the caves,
Settling amidst the wrecks,
The hopeless hearts,
Forgotten and undisturbed,
Where the greatest man lies
Beneath green green grass,
Nameless,

Not even an allusion of movement
In the graveyard of the deepest
Bay,

Discarded by the pumping jungle
Through which the red hearts love.