The Victorious Loser Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Me, being the human animal,
Took that as a reproach: her going off and
F*cking some guy,
Even while after five years and some odd
Months, she’d only been f*cking me,
And me thinking about f*cking around but
Not doing anything contradictory,
Besides secret gifts and emails and less expensive
Tack:
Now, oh lordy, how she welted me,
Got my bravery undone, kowtowed me something
Fierce; and by such niggardly revulsion made
Me into the poet: huzzah. Made me eat fish and
Grow a brain. Shrunk and isolated me into the hills,
Into a pomegranate seed, into a seat shared on a
Train with my dogs, or a strange, misty renaissance
Festival smelling of cheep cologne, the rusty tips of
Javelins, and smoked turkey:
So now she is married and has tasted the new fleshy tip
Of her wedded monument, time and again
gone down and stuck on that;
I am celibate, and fine, and sometimes inebriate,
But I have more money and two dogs, and am looking
For a house and an agent, and am expecting both:
So I consider us about equal, for the worldly decapitation
Has sent me down the backwaters of more frightening
Townships, where Colonel Kurtz exclaims the horrors,
And ceiling fans whir like helicopters,
Where by prehistoric teeth of aspiring house-wives and
Landmines I’ve been rejected and made anew and all
The better: I am extemporaneous and sweltering in my corner.
When the bell rings I will go back to pugilists,
And die trying, for I am the victorious loser,
Who through such traditions of holiday slaughter has been
Crowned king.