Goyems' Goodtime Variety Show Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Oh, the days flip: they flips so well!
At lunch, on the swings, lets have chicken and noodle
From our thermoses and out our noses,
A midday sort of feverish eclipse,
Pausing for a second along our arc for a word from
Our sponsors.

Then we’ll go into the cool museum and look at the breasts
In oil and pastel- The inkle blots of bruised areola and
Roundish nipple, the mermaids are in the lapis lazuli tide,
And they are so young,
But they’ve been working at it for so long.
They are real professional, and can swim for any sort of poses.

Now why don’t we line up and sing
With this Finnish chorus line, and click our fingers
And bob our heads and pretend we’re only
Fifteen again, and British and snide. Alright?
All right- And we’ll stay up until morning and on and
On and watch nude anime and swing in the orange tree out
Back of our cerulean abode, and ride on the backside of
The torpid alligators, switching them with spikenard
Alamode.

While they’ll study math and what not, we’ll
Have nothing to do, but flick our boogers and color in
Books of Shakespeare and Marlowe. We’ll take out
Our knives and have impromptu get togethers and cut off
Little pieces of our flesh and feed it to them fishes, and then throw away
The evidence in the low tide, and watch the claret dye sashay
Very fine- Very fine- If that’s what we’ll do, then all
That’s what we are-

The midnight shift, the checkout boys,
The kids who missed the bus- We sing kind of cockney out in
Loxahatchee- Even if we do be part aborigine-
We’ll do just fine until the real guys get suited up for the main
Show, the big deal, and then we’ll slip out back and peel
Our rubber shoes until they smell like the aftertaste of a
Real insouciant sort of hell.

By the third act we’ll be so high,
We’ll be Icaria with paper wings held together by
Sealing wax. We’ll put our fingers to our lips as we fall into
The sea, or the backseat, a grinning cushioned death on her
Purring lap,
And her eyes will swing above her lips, so pursed likes roses,
Curious aboriginal roses
Wondering who might we be;

But that, as we know,
Is just who we are;
It was so easy getting here, and we’ll take what we
Get by the back seat.
Cause no one else wanted it,
Thats whats we got: Petals bending lower, guessing
Who we are.