What I Mean To Say Poem by Robert Rorabeck

If you want to find me,
I’ll soon be selling fireworks under
The desert sun,
Even if I am dying, out of water,
The truest of conquistadors,
Coughing up a lung, or with the swine flue-
Unmasked, an immodest superhero-
I’ll soon have a little house,
Occupied by a little spouse,
And little children like fairy-tales in the garden-
A car that halfway runs,
A halfway job in the middle of nowhere:
It is a fine story book,
And yet so far away from the stewardesses,
The shopping malls, and the better truth of the
Amusement parks which carry the stamp of
Your beauty and youth;
But it is better to dream for a little while,
To go out and work and sell what things you
Have to sell,
To survive by not stealing horses or hanging
Yourself,
By masturbating extemporaneously in the restroom
Stalls of wayside markets
And anything at all- unkempt, with distemper,
Or without reason- an experiment towards a new class,
A space shuttle for tourists,
A diminutive font, a little prison, dancing on the head
Of an angelic pin or the fountain of her areola-ed
Nipple-
Just to be alive for this next line,
Naked and beautiful, leaping well-tongued:
This is what I’ll do to try out how to distill
My American liquor to pour full mouthed into the next
Way station or grotto, the cavernaserai of our youth
Yet unimpeded by the day laborer’s pluck from
Atop the ladder,
The steady, uncaring traffic of the interstate going by
Serenaded by the ululations of commercial reptiles:
Or it never ends, the epitaphs of comely conquistadors
In polished stone,
Cupid’s arrow through the pullulating hearts,
Their armor well polished like serenading crustaceans;
Or, if I’m drunk, at least you get what I mean.