The Emptiness Of Sunlight Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Walk out into the emptiness of sunlight:
Yes, the sarcophagus is good enough for any man
Even in the open air the brightness of his
Greeting hall
With a glass in your hand and the girls,
And other people selling things:
Tourisms and seagulls and weddings.
Ghosts are in the fort you shouldn’t believe in,
And secret ways in the dogs go by star-lit night loping
Up to the walkways of coquina,
Lifting legs on the green copper canons; and
I would have made love to you here, but you were
A lesbian, or a Mexican cleaning lady only good for
Dousing rooms and candles with your tongue and
Such and such,
Just like I’m only good for two dimensions,
My lights attracting bugs, bologna sandwiches:
I’ve lost my keys in the sand and I haven’t a hunch,
And too demure to look all the way up the avenues where
You or your sister would have me look. I am only
A second degree, bruised and scarred but not enough for
The museums of Bukowski- I saw where they buried
The murdered woman but did not denote her grave with
Hydrangeas: I am not good enough for stealing little things,
Not even prayer candles,
But can sit and watch the waves coming in until morning,
And by the next day the sun has cleaned out my drinking room
With no body watching, but so many bodies going either way,
I can lie here; or, I can do the same.