Sad Blue Planet Poem by Robert Rorabeck

What better days can say to this, I don’t know;
But quiet, for here there are Satanists:
Things die every day here, up in the snow,
And not just butterflies:
I shouldn’t write at all, because I can barely spell,
And I meant to ride out to her but she doesn’t give a damn.
Oh hell, the night, the night, especially on Friday it is a
Good time if you are a cat: the night;
And what is she doing right now, if she isn’t turning her ass
Tail end up to every olfactory in the hick town far beneath me:
If I turned this way to her, or this:
Which way is my better side? They are both quite ruined,
Perhaps I should run and hide, but isn’t that what I’m doing-
I love science fiction when it is written well,
When there are green slave girls dancing in the till. Then
It is money well spent, but will I ever write a book like that,
Will it ever sell? She lives in a ghost town not but halfway to Mars:
In the asteroids and heroic cosmonauts, she laughs and shows
Her lips: she cleans and wipes and serves and flaunts her
Floating chits; Now the day is running on, now the day is gone,
And I can barely breathe. I’ve done and gone played paddy whack
On every virgin’s knees, and this is but a thing I’ve made and folded
Like an airplane, like a rocket ship to take off above the rafters;
But what will the consensus pay for it: a nickel, a dime, or
Just recorded laughter. I can see her where she sits rocking on his
Knee; she rocks so hard I hate to think of all the men aboard her,
If she were a ship, but she’s not; nor is this a novel,
But just a thing I’ve written down like a reminder like a list
We are meant to do before take-off: but she is already gone, already
Past the moon and not looking back on this sad blue planet;
And so I sit alone in the empty garden, wondering
What the next line will be, if god the father will give me pardon;
For I am a pacifist and an auteur, and maybe I will buy a house finely
Priced and spend such days of this reminiscing of her; for even
Though she is gone, her legs linger after: she was quite a leggy thing,
And this why I still think so much of her.