Without The Ice-Cream's Romance Poem by Robert Rorabeck

In days of artificial lights the girls play
In- I was always afraid of interrupting;
And today I felt an electric charge start up
From the ground,
And I bolted and hid in the truck and didn’t
Die;
But tried to think that there was something
Mystical in the trees we’re cutting down-
So the earth is redder, going around,
The truer epicenter of the old neighborhood,
Centaurs migrating around us, leaping
From their ice beds; and this evening they were
Beautiful falling tannebaums reminding me
Of girls I’ll never see again,
Making me get out my mind and float with
The eerie mysticisms around some half-sunken
Lunchroom where the alligators are always
Grinning; and my father is laughing at me,
Because I’ve forgotten the passage and I’m out
Of time; Exhausted, succulent darkness around
The university’s eyes,
I stumble into the beer hall dying of thirst,
And from her lacquers burst all the meaningful things
Of a young and self conscious religion;
And I go to her, and I tip her well; and I propose to
Her, but she will not think to even kiss a man
So short as I; leaving me in rouge orbit tattoos of
Anchors and sighing breath, I return wounded to
The barren mountains, the coyotes and crosses, wooden
Askance; I float like root beer without the ice cream’s
Romance.