The Two Worlds Of Mermaids Poem by Robert Rorabeck

There I am beginning to weep the usual fire
Outside the working class home, after another father’s
Murder, and another baseball game:
Words that strike together like the back legs of cicadas in
The mouth of a purring cat that takes it
Home,
Like topless girls wondering in the backyard pools,
Above the eyes of the crocodiles who know that they cannot
Cry,
And make their beds in the stolen and crypt orchid
Bicycles-
Engorging over the holidays, and the castles laid down
And flattened on the train tracks the ivies of so many saddled
Princesses lays over like the alcoholic hands
Curtaining the forefront of senses for another perfect child:
Crumbling, the sugary breads of a cage
Before the vacant lot of a fabulous fairy ground of enamor us
Prizes has fled away;
And the only light bulbs now: the light, the moon- the
Stolen gifts around which all the hopeless sailors drown
In a maelstrom of a ruining canvas: in the shoals of the artist’s
Finger tips,
Drowning without clear muses- the good returns of butterflies,
In the two worlds of mermaids.