Robert Rorabeck - Matadors and Steve McQueen

A macho thing, to want to drive-
I drove to Omaha for one day;
They were selling the truth at a yard sale
In a yard of red clay, like a baseball diamond,
Like a diamond mine; it was in the carving
Of an asymmetrical cross, and more so in her eyes,
The apathetic religions she lets pass in her gaze,
But I did not follow her into the church as she
Crossed herself, but remained out in the frozen
Shadows like torpid beasts and faceless pillars
Beneath the haunted overpass,
And tomorrow and the next day I’ll be driving again
With four macho men, as we go to set up the white
Lungs of elephants, this summer’s lucrative patriotism,
And the sky will be filled with ephemeral pacaderms,
As along the highways the semis will roar like overloaded predators,
And for awhile we will sit and have lunch and tell lies,
And then we will send our patriotism to plume verdantly
In the effluvious sky, and whisper enraptures that war
Is kind, for a holiday from her religion,
In the scars of an enlightening night, we did away with
Our superheroes in the fire when we were five, but
Her eyes, her eyes are cities of sleepless ghosts, because
I love you and I live under your stormy overpass,
Though I could wish to drive away, but all around me is
The sea of your eyes; I would wish to drive away,
For it is macho to drive away in the eerie green broadside sky of
A disaster movie, but I am a little more than fay,
And from the sideways I am grim, a silhouette nice and
Tan and gray- A macho thing to want to drive,
But you have me hypnotized in your righteous eyes,
And I would rather sit with you and have lunch and tell lies.

Robert Rorabeck

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