Robert Rorabeck - Pleasurable Excuse

I lick my lips for something liquor,
For coming on to midnight I’ve been reading
My poems;
And maybe after midnight, I’ll be masturbating:
Both with sweaty palms:
They’re really the same thing, both about a girl
I haven’t read about,
And she’s really the same thing as heaven who is
The twin sister of Hell:
And tomorrow, I’ve cleared my schedule to
Go hike the mountain with my mother:
My mother who cannot move, whose womb has
Become the whole d%mn thing:
The roof, the stars, the chicken wire, the valley or
The sea;
I will see wildflowers, but I will not pick them;
And airplanes like shooting vestibules with stewardesses
And their legs; but I will not see them:
I can only imagine: Women who become water,
Drink; women who become trees and foliage and
Vegetation: eat and rest under,
And mow their yard and make their lips hum with the
New found pleasures of air-condition;
And go down to South Florida and dropp in, and make
Love to them; and I make myself these promises so until
Midnight; and I read my poems and masturbate,
Which are really the same thing: and I don’t ever tell
My mother about the art or the pleasure I cannot excuse.

Robert Rorabeck

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