To Pitiful Cinders Poem by Robert Rorabeck

You’re so mean-
I guess because your beauty is so ancient
An aphrodisiac,
You get to select your men by slaughtering them
First,
Decorating your forest’s sorority with their
Pitiful guts
Along the extended pine needles which are always quivering,
Alive and thorned,
They never lay off the green:
And it is your church, and it does you good on Sundays,
And the work days in between,
And I can feel you now spilling my guts to feed the angelic
Pigs,
The cloven hoofed saints made practical by remote
Viewing,
And I get a little drunk as I fly like a torn but patriotic
Color over so many states to find you,
And to lay like a forgotten ornament on the side of your
Table:
I can almost feel you beginning to pick me up to study me,
But I am not beautiful,
And there you go taking me down again,
Making me worship you even after the fire has burned
To pitiful cinders.