The Playground On The Otherside Of My World Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Houses with Chinese wives
Advertising at their feet
Running through a paper field
On a wall:
It is a calendar where I am those
Horse and my son is a snake:
It is the zodiac-
I don't have a phone here.
Tomorrow is my birthday-
I don't have a car-
But I found a bottle of
White wine left over
From our wedding-
And the television is on in
The next room-
My son may even be crawling to
See me-
My lips are chapped
My face is scarred-
There are rooms to live in
On the otherside of the moon
As I take a bus through
Downtown Shanghai
To malls as high as the clouds
And grottos thick with milkmaids
Of black hairs and slanted eyes-
The dark heard of women in
High heels spillin out of
Using the busses and subway to
Speed away
To tenements high and low
In this the playground
On the otherside of my world.