Those Previous Songbirds Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I go all day along struggling with this;
And lovers make love in parks, or at least young girls
Walk their strong young dogs with their mothers;
And I am certain I cannot belong,
Thinking of all the people I have loved who have gotten away
With not loving me,
And these superfluous words like the rain showers on holidays:
I suppose that they must mean very little, because my art is
Drunken and tends to keep to itself like the fingertip of a lighted
Candle,
Like a jogger caracoling a park even until sundown,
While you touch his face and he burns into you his spears, his thrust
Wishes, as if counting your years inside of you,
Tapping like a miner trapped in pink taffy until you have forgotten
All of your scars, and all of those previous songbirds who have
Gone down wholeheartedly into your catastrophe.