Robert Rorabeck Poems

Pugnacious wit of the settlers’ blood
Eventually paved America:
Discovered Wal-M*art, invented presidents,
And cold turkey with mint jelly;
...

There is no sea here,
I see no sea;
This is the body of the desert,
The rich made faint blue,
...

Quartz sloops sail the depressive mountain,
Brushing the coned lips of steaming pines,
Where the slumbering half-light tips towards
The forgetful holidays, where the mulberries
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Old books in my hands,
Are rectangular planets of the psocids who live in them;
Each page a whispering continent prone to wispy quakes,
The spine an avenue which halves this earth,
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This night salvos into nothing;
Narvaez and de Vaca are full of virgin arrows;
The festive quills bloom like pompadours from their cracked elbows.
The waves break like a nurse’s knuckles
...

In the middle of the mechanic’s summer,
Defeated by the upper presumptions,
I wait for snow;
No longer liberal, I get drunk at air shows,
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Hat tricks burn the air over the erstwhile celebration;
Where the little boys are sleeping with blotchy coats,
The bouquets of fluidic clitorises of red hibiscus,
Reveal the deep quieted organs beneath the ripped denim;
...

Against the borderline,
I try for her pulse, warmth to my jaundiced cheek;
She is still alive,
But it is so dark from where they are fleeing,
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The scoundrel should pay that off for you.
He gave you that perfect teethed smile,
His alibi,
And then left you in the dreary parking lot
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Reindeer are stepping deeper in the bitter moss,
Mindless of the little fingers of blue hypnosis;
Clutching the smooth stones of the swaying west,
Not even the natives remember, as they hunt,
...