The Way Otters Shed Tears In A Make Believe Zoo Poem by Robert Rorabeck

They broke up and I shot my sister:
It was the eighties and everyone was playing on the
Beach.
The waves wore neckties. Writers drank waiting for their
Wives in trailer parks;
And the girl was probably blond: She was probably
Elizabeth Shue and she didn’t bother adjusting her
Bathing suit as she walked away to bathe
With the harbingers of her song:
Her sisters were in the waves, and they laughed together
And turned their backs,
Because they didn’t care even while I was trying to
Show off:
I picked these roads for her like flowers like tunes
For sleeping grandmothers, legions and legions of entombed
Wombs
That once loved their granddaughters when they knew how to
Love;
And I have so many bruises while I give up and go to sleep
Under the greatest penumbras of the University:
You just know I do;
And even when I am done with my canto mime, I still wait
For you at the bus stop, wasting my time;
And when I get on the bus I dream all of the way to school:
I wait for your eyes to light upon me, for you to love me
Just the way I love you;
But I am such a fool, because school is gone and this is
Just a graveyard: You are dancing with your knights, or where
Have you gone;
And school is over and the lions saunter and fall asleep,
And you are well practiced: you weep like a young daughter in
Preschool, and the tears I cry for you shed from your wings
The way otters shed tears in a make believe zoo.