If you let me love your shadow, <br />I will follow you in and out of stores, my tongue <br />Never touching anything but your souls: <br />And I am failing, failing like a kite with not <br />Too much wind- Doing something that is Anti-social, <br />Not bothering hunting out the eggs for Easter, <br />Or Passover, <br />Not having any religion which isn’t pentagrammed- <br />I can smell my rum, <br />And you eyes all the way from the racecourses, <br />From the glacial glades where no one mows your yards <br />Because they cannot get that high; <br />And if you can hear my screaming, do not care, <br />Know that it is just a dusky dream- something a poor <br />Boy does because he doesn’t have tack for his horse, <br />But his flock is alright- <br />He’s just upset because he’s outgrown his mother <br />And her bed- That he’s lost all his money betting on a girl <br />That has no business loving him- who shows to her <br />Every night his two unshelled wrists, and gets no reply <br />Except when there is a fire under her skirts, <br />And that happens as much as the good guy wins; <br />And now let there be silence except for the sparse code of <br />Bare canopies on power lines over your house <br />Waiting until there comes the paper snowflakes, the thunder <br />Of rolled cannonballs and the other theatrics of this <br />Winter’s burlesque resort- Every so often the skiers slosh <br />Through the snow and you look up, <br />Hoping like me that they will enter, but unlike me, <br />Who looks for milky friendship, you the Madonna with the <br />Rich child already suckling, <br />Only needs them to buy the spirits they entered for <br />And then to leave by the same way they came in.<br /><br />Robert Rorabeck<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/failing-you-in-the-mortal-night/
