Nothing At All To Do With You Poem by Robert Rorabeck

This compares to that, but nothing compares to you;
That second person pronoun, for me definitely feminine:
You said goodbye to me in college,
You kissed my neck out on the walks of the red brick
University; And what are you doing now.
I am so ashamed, that I don’t even want to know; but your
Legs are so long, so long they deserve to be upper-middle
Class- if you start out walking they’ll get you
There somehow. I know they will; and you would suspect
Now for me to begin a detailed shopping list telling you about
Every part of your mythical body that I came to the store to
Buy, to fit you in a kart, as a bachelor to assemble you;
but come now, Pocahontas,
My mythical squaw camped by starlight who lactates pin-wheeling
Galaxies from her tits. Why would I do that when you
Don’t even read my poems anymore; you cannot smell me
On the wind. You smell like Dr. Pepper and shampoo.
You eat dead chicken on a bun with a pickle with
Lips so red and vulgar they are like numbed and tranquilized
Mollusks, they overspill like anti-Semitism, like deluged
Rose petals; Why should I give anything more to you after
I bought all of the bouquets; after I made you immortal in a novel
That will never sell, a quiet pulpy tomb human eyes will never
Rest upon like kine on a restive knoll; Not you, you who are
Already a champion with great assets, with him to lean upon
And an entire bullpen swinging their bats and spitting dew,
Ready to get upon the red diamonds and clays of the earth
When in early morning you undrape from the sea mists, and I walk
Out upon you, or at least I did when I was a virgin just got back
From running away to Michigan with two black eyes; how I fit nearer
To you, and slept dreaming of you in the hydrangeas by the student
Parking lot; and now it is not fit for you to say a thing,
The certain part of the Anglo-Saxon which is my Achilles Heel;
Turn around like a sprinkler on a lawn, catch his hand like a child
On a swing, and leap away now jumping, yipping, singing as you go
Off the stage, to the backrooms to undress and gossip, you deadly
Beauty a spear in the beating heart of the big city; all possibilities
Laid before you,
But do not turn back around, because this is my poem I keep:
I have run away from the common grounds with;
I will roll it up and smoke it on the swings, use to find buried
Treasure, or leap with it across the irrigation ditches until I find myself
In a cypress glade watching the leaping bellies of airplanes; it is mine;
It has nothing at all to do with you.