Ganymede Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Long lost passageways come down
sometimes from the sun they help
you remember how the holy ghost
burned when you were young
and still going to church you
thought John Wayne was a real
cowboy and wondered how he could
die to be reborn the next showing
The Cowboys The Searchers
there were so many movies that
taught you to watch in your grandparents’
trailer even if parts of the floor
were missing don’t you remember
the night you slept with them in that
bedroom overflowing with the backlog
of dirty laundry and new born kittens,
do you remember smelling your grandfather’s
armpits- strong basic stuff, like the earth
but it’s been so long since your
father’s parents were together-
their love gone, Clarence cheated on
Jackie- He found another mother
the same age as his first daughter
Laura, a messianic Jew, you hugged her
once and how come? You don’t like her,
you politician; it doesn’t matter what
everyone thinks- spit on her, that’s what
it takes to be faithful to grandma Jackie-
you’ve got to hold your own in this world,
even with your face coming off, you
have a certain power- isn’t it true
to get out on the street to get arrested
like Johnny Cash for picking daisies-
or starting forest fires with you axle
sparking flames on the road, while you’re
hopping on pills, getting drunk and
crawling down the throat of the Nick-a-
Jack caves to meet your maker- the stoned
loneliness of life comes at us all, and we
all got to play ball until we drip into the
grave- not everyone can be Shakespeare-
not everyone can change down the drain
into Lewis Carroll’s wonderland, but you
still might stop the red queen from painting
the white rose bushes- bet your cowboy
boots Alice was a real girl and the places that
she went were no more real than what
Lewis Carroll wrote about her I want to fall
down the hall in love I want to get my own
place in the ocean to meet and maybe you
know who will love me far away when I write
this it’s okay, the sky’s coming down- there
are plans in the village, places for you and me
to come down to the chapel to swap
spit and rings I love you or the memory of you
like the ghosts high in the skylights of
the city; I still have a jaw though it was
broken and wired shut at age four when I
fell out the back of my father’s truck/ let’s
have a round to that and my defunct grandparents
alone- Grandpa’s in West Virginia
with his messianic wife Laura whose first
son died from an overdose and Grandma’s
homesteading in Oregon with her mother’s
ghost- And I’m riding on here in Arizona
listening to Johnny Cash’s rendition of
Ghost Riders in the Sky trying to
communicate the true love across country
and tell you all this so I can be like Johnny
Barleycorn, somehow something important
in this country alone at this table.