Like Somniferous Tan Lines Poem by Robert Rorabeck

He turned the ducklings blue
And licked the rum from casks of my wrists:
The monkey’s paw opened,
And we all got our dreadful wish:
I wear blue angora when I am alone, I slip
Into the fashions of the housewives under the
Ceiling fans of mid afternoon feeding time;
And the sailors come and pirouette with their
Young dolls outside on my yard,
They lay out like survivors, and I genuinely have
Fine memories of them,
Even after the ants have covered them up like
Pagan slaves being led by mercurial conquistadors
To put a stopper in their king sipping with the
Heads of his queens under the parasol;
And then all the coast is golden and full of houses
And making us squint,
And the rest of the surviving housewives don’t
Care about the waves, if only because they
Are so much more splendiferous,
And they feature all together one curious coincidence,
And they are singing a song that will carry on until
The end of America, and it signifies each and every day
Of getting up and sending the kids off to school,
Of stroking themselves simultaneously in the backyards
Like little kids molesting Christmas presents before
Their propitious day;
And I don’t know all of them, but it is enough to know
Only one or two of them, and taking advantage of
That special feeling, loving them all and the same,
Like a colony or bouquets of inbred wildflowers
Kept in the petting patinas of their deep bay windows,
Bars striping them too like somniferous tan lines.