I Won'T Stop Poem by Robert Rorabeck

My computer is about to crash,
But it is still too dangerous to touch you.
In a week I will be in the same state as you,
And I will sell pumpkins on Halloween,
But you will not see me;
No one will see me, but the same girl
Might stop by to get a discount on a Christmas
Tree, if only because she pretends
To want to have sex with me….
But I will think of you;
It is what I always do,
And I am sorry. When the planets move
Like silken virgins between the trees,
It’s what we sell: Frasier Furs, Scotch Pine,
Asphodel—What the hell is Asphodel?
All I know is that it rhyme and it’s
Either a plant, a tree, or an herb.
How do you pronounce herb?
I mean, yourself, when you were young
And you went into your backyard to play
With what you were. I wonder about those
Things, and the tiny spaces of green I see
You in. Way back in high school,
One night you called me out. My “friends”
Told me, you wanted to see me, but I didn’t come,
So even then I knew you would move so far away,
But then: always then and on through now
I knew I’d love you. I love you now,
Because it is all my soul does: It writes for you;
It centralizes its pain through this existence
On you, Erin. I love your name and my soul
Pines for you. I’m drunk and this damn
Computer is about to crash, but my thoughts
Are true to you, as you disappear into another
Woman, your forgetfulness eludes me,
Excludes me, is God Damn F—ing rude to me,
But I don’t blame you. This is life,
The nature of our existence, and we are not
Stars naked and getting love in a movie.
I love you and you know this and in a week
Or two I’ll be in the same state as you,
But you won’t see me, though I might swim
In the same sea as you, breathe the same air as you,
Look up at the moon with you from so far away.
You must not see me, because you know you
Love me too, but this life needs it’s pain,
So we’ll both do what we’ve got to do.
Marry another man, let him enter you.
Bare his children and take his name,
And all those things which f— away the pain,
But, Erin, here’s the thing:
I won’t stop loving you….