Lucy Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Hold her mouth so she doesn’t scream-
I’m in love,
And she’s moving away,
First she was a pagoda of sad light spinning
Under the sunken beams,
Then an extinct horse found with the
Shrapnel of the first war;
She learned how to stand on her back legs,
When we were young we moved up north
And killed off an entire species of our second cousins;
That was before history could see
The deep mote over our eyes,
And she laughed,
And she laughed once more,
Learned about fire,
Took a fancy for the dark turns,
The horrible truth her body bloomed for:
Found open bloused in the shadows with the landlord,
Men with many grinning teeth;
She learned how to swim naked in the plastic algae
Of failing amusement parks,
Held her breath until I was deceived,
Came up for air and climbed naked atop
The unexploded bomb,
Farted a wet nuisance with the sun’s earlier brilliances,
Dripped without fear, her nipples the fetish
For tyrants and cowboys,
Her womb a hostile atmosphere we are
Drawn to kiss- the moist trap;
This eventual death too,
I have seen her using a tool to fix her ride,
But I was not invited,
To the cheap hotel room of new destinies, echoing
The two headed leap of nocturnal shadows
Against the acid light of the dead tv,
My youth but a missing link abandoned in the grayed earth,
A fossil glistening after the rain but left unexcavated
In her pursuit of modern man.