Robert Rorabeck Poems

Fireworks which used to be everywhere in
My soul, sold out—
Burning into whatever color it was meant to be
Used to deceive the sky—
...

Beautiful playgrounds, aren't your memories
Here in the ambushed bushes,
And the latchkeyed children are yet beside the
Road—I cannot remember the rhymes
...

Soft and languishing on
Fire Island where you lost your life,
Frank O'Hara—
Falling in love with firemen,
...

The prettiest numbers are keeping pace with
Graveyards
And I do not know who you are,
And you will never know who I am—
...

Bullying faggots of werewolves:
Don't you see that I am still dancing,
Even after the premature ejaculations of
Midnights when the crickets
...

The strange festivities of their souls
Cannot trap the butterflies I don't
Know anything about—
As the sun come up over the shoulder-blades
...

Pigmentation of the shadows,
But there isn't any other way to start out
If you are any other tadpole on a journey—
And all of the dry fields cannot be counted,
...

If there was a kaleidoscope perched all
Alone above the sea,
And beneath it the otters were swimming
In the grottos of the disenchanted mermaids,
...

Blood recoiling from the nuisance of
The absences of the senses as, at first, the busses
Turned around,
Looking just as beautiful as those chartreuse
...

In the soft declivities of paper airplanes
As the rain storms above the abnormal classrooms,
And the prisms of our more beautiful
Daydreams are shelved—
...