Your Real Boy Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Would that you called- but you have never
Spoken to me:
Never seen my eyes. Senseless like the lying
Wind,
You roll up your windows and sing down your
Pretty highway which is lighted
So brightly that butterflies and f-ed up unicorns
Play by the concrete atolls even by
Midnight;
And how many dreams have you killed,
That you didn’t even care- It’s just that you like
Football,
And bouncers- and your ups with more up:
I have lock jaw from singing too loudly of this rust
I can’t molt,
Or confessing my infections to ghosts and cheerleaders
In junked railroad cars in the burned hills
Of California; and now I am guessing that you
Can’t read- You just blow your nails;
And you have nothing to crawl into- you’ve never
Wanted for shelter other than in the busty anchored arms,
That blue ink you lick with your tongue
A creature of pools and highfalutin causeways;
Infected with attractive ploys sewn together under your
Sinister trumpeted flag,
Reanimated with the kiss of an acetylene torch- you tick off
Like every phosphorous angel too heavy for the abodes
Of heaven,
Coming crashing down on horseback trips to drink with
Modern cowboys in rushing jungles of the Grand Canyon;
And I have no friends who are not typed out between
The pages of a deep winter chrysalis where we pray for
Your ice-crystal lips to open us into a fantastical pulp reality;
But I am yet in disbelief that you can make me
Your real boy,
Even though I already know how to fly.