Robert Rorabeck Poems

All of the joy of the athenaeums cut from the field
And made to enjoy the holidays of dinner tables
And left for awhile as the forest fire burned and all of
The animals had to run away just to be safe:
...

If the rain comes in the afternoon again
I will write these words as I pretend to hold out for
You, as I gather these things from my body like
The leeching of poisons I exhume while the stewardesses
...

Bicycle- bicycle silent as the night
Going away after Christmas: going underneath
The house and down to the canal
To bring its roses to the lips of the patient alligator
...

They made love so many times underneath the silent
Passes.
The roses kept on growing right over the silently laying
Prostitutes just where they had planted them
...

Cenotaphs growing underneath the monuments of a
Mailbox:
You are her lying with the perennials, and waiting
For the housewives:
...

The son of another child
In my daydreams up in air: these are the helium balloons
Of your rectitude:
How I have forgotten you, how I have become unstrung
...

Each day in her echoing clay poets
And dogs:
And the princes in her carport ululating,
Looking up to her like a goddess as she strings
...

Wimples and areolas of a zoetrope in the kitchen:
There she goes doing her own
Thing again, turning, turning while the commercials
And the rains come on,
...

In the orchards off the highways near the burned
Out fires of your dirty honeymoon-
I do not care if you cannot look into my eyes, or
Read these things I have to say to you:
...

The clouds gather over the warm blood of
A bull fight that just happened to pass;
And I sit on my couch and hold myself before
The great transoms looking out
...