With Her Eyes Closed Or Her Eyes Opened Poem by Robert Rorabeck

What is it I want in the female body
My sad mind wonders on fermented sugar cane;
Maybe I am just listening to her song,
Just another of my unexplainable species, her legs
Scissors like crickets out under the stars-
All the wonderful happenstance of that strange science fiction
Keeps me young in fits;
And the night is terrible, terrible, with or without this:
Freshman year I was in love with a palindrome who has since
Changed her name and bared children;
And sometimes in the middle of the week my aunt comes wearing
The costumes of the post-office,
And I give her money- Then it’s always crepuscule, and the
Sprinklers chew, and the traffic comes back and forth
With or without policeman,
But I am never being so bold as to just come right out and say it;
And I wonder what I truly intend to mean,
Being that I’ve never been any good at playing sports,
Though I once sweated and fenced:
Maybe I am just trying to save myself by all of this,
Scribbling in the snow as if trying to reinvent electricity under the
Teary eyes of hidden glaciers and the virgins of their
Breathless grottos:
And don’t the days tremble, and I still don’t know all the names
For these flowers;
And I still only keep one or two regular muses, both either
Unavailable or disinterested;
But if I keep at it these will become swings for my children,
And I will be able to taste her mouth again
With her eyes closed or her eyes opened.