The scars like tinsel; <br />Like bicycle spokes around the sun. <br />I am thirty, spider legs come out from <br />The corners of my eyes. Do you pity me now? <br />So asks briar rabbit down in the nettles <br />Of his insouciant job: such is me. <br />If I had a twin, he would be beautiful, if <br />Left unscarred, un-grayed. I am part hurricane, <br />Twirling, twirling counterclockwise, <br />The direction a caustic ballerina pirouettes. <br />Am I so different than you? Are you able <br />To cease thinking on command? I get my <br />Haircut with politicians; this is not an allusion, <br />If you could understand, then you could take <br />Walks with me; and we would sleep like babes <br />Under the humid overpass, and listen to the <br />Grazing of the strange angels running in <br />Galvanized herds across the land. <br />I would pass things to you we both found interesting, <br />And in the evenings we would kiss the twisted <br />Bottle, walk through the shore-lines of solicitors, <br />We would make helpless illusions above the waves: <br />Our sister, junoesque, tricks of our amnesia, <br />Riding straddled to the father-god; the redness of <br />His apoplexy cuts first to the east before the sun, <br />And we mumble two dribbling jesters, and our <br />Dog, the third shadow, lulling, lulling, <br />The best of us on four legs faithfully waiting with <br />The stick clutched in his vulpine jaw; the best of <br />Us, rambling to and fro from where we understand, <br />Vagabonds, broken-jesters, or leather-tramps, if you <br />Will, of this fair and verdant land.<br /><br />Robert Rorabeck<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-best-of-us/
