The Real Work Begins Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I enjoy the irony of not being taken out to dinner,
For writing bad poetry, and getting
Away with it: And when the leggy substitute drops
Like a bombshell into the room, to watch movies
For the rest of the period,
And notice the canopy of her interior skeleton
Heave like a buxomy pink tarp as she sits at
The head of the class, inhaling, flickering her temporary
Eyes over the rows of boys.
They lick their lips like suburban wolves as she
Crosses her legs and her long-distance calves
Flex: She exhales and it smells like rum, from
What the pirates have done to her:
I don’t care, I still want her, and contemplate
Asking her to prom, or abducting her on the way
Out to her car, and thank god this isn’t math, or
I wouldn’t know what to do; but now I have a plan,
And I doodle a map on the desk, which spills like
A silkworm’s womb onto my hand, a pubescent jig-saw
The Mexican lady will wipe clean over night,
Doing away with the graffiti of my memory, as I ride
The bus back into my carefully orchestrated habitat,
And the real work begins....