Wondering Why I Must Die Alone Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Alligators in the canals like long lines of
Quarterbacks,
Nights and nights of feverish unrelieved contagions,
Somehow smoldering in the gurgling
Brush;
And I have your phone number and your home town,
But the days go so far back into the nights,
So humid and so scarred:
So long since I’ve been beautiful,
And craven to your body’s rush; and watched you sit
In art class your what I supposed to be
Yet virgin thighs superimposed around the potter’s
Wheel,
In a creche of red clay you called up the meaning of
The afternoon;
And even as the buses churned and churned
Soft-serving us back into our all too many white,
White homes,
I thought of you: blue-eyed beauty,
Buzzard of great tits and little, fluted wrists- I went along
My way and got confronted by even worse bullies
With plywood and 2 by 4s underneath the Florida
Holly and flatulent jet planes;
And I took my punches, and I rolled with the licks:
I rolled snake eyes and read Baudelaire,
And the trains cut over the flooded anime all the way to
Japan,
Where I couldn’t stop to quit remembering you: S-,
And there you are still
Fooling your quarterbacks, making love in a splendidly
Unkempt rush;
And I guess I am really no more uglier than I was when
You thought about me
Like a red ant bight along your wrist;
While now I can hardly stand to feel what is ring must
Feel like faithfully banded around your humming bird
Of a finger,
As if a homeopathic soul,
Giving you just a hint of a farmer’s tan while I stand out in
The un resurrected row
Wondering why I must die alone.