The Beautiful Swings Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Metamorphosis
Smoke and burn: from the goldfish bowl,
From the echinopsis while these
Less than brilliant houses sit here chanting and calling out
Time:
I thought I would be married by now, echoing up
The boulevards,
Ululating down through the basins that this isn’t even real-
This isn’t even the echo of a daydream,
Or another word pulled out of a hat by a hapless lover
Traveling the turnpike up to Disney World to
See a girl who doesn’t even remember him:
But it doesn’t stop-
Like death in a vending machine alongside the road
Next to the ants all over the bloated possum,
The alligator grinning as it lurks like a statue:
These few words I know blowing
Witchcraft from the campfires of my wrists: another night
Lost to the shadowy paganisms
In the snow banks outside of the beautiful swings of
An eerily blinded church.