Robert Rorabeck Poems

If I want to be fine,
And set up to be found out by you,
Half carousing the parking lot with a heron feather
In my beard, chewing on something sharp,
...

I want to live with the animals in
Sherwood Forest:
I want her to toss me her brazier during
The show so that I can take a mental note
...

Nothing sad tonight, nothing poisoned
By the maudlin treacle of a rummy rose.
Tonight I’ll be a sober gentleman far out and
Alone in the mowed field underneath the halogens
...

What scars are better than these,
The ones that you will not let heal,
That you tend to like those gardens of sharp
Iniquity,
...

In webs of disregard
She paints me the color blue:
You should see me.
I don’t even belong this way,
...

You don’t dance
Or read to me anymore;
And I am all grown up,
While upstairs there is a distant female
...

Have you discovered me out somewhere
In the middle of America?
Without song, but not having far to go.
Soon I might learn to sing of fireworks, and dream of
...

Wonderfully alone, without any sort of father,
And just looking at the trees, their slender throats
Basking under the hidden lights- They go up and
Up well trimmed, patient in their dances before
...

I sit beside this uncouth firelight;
It is not warm-
It is a fried chicken charade,
So I strum my legs; it is the best I
...

Pale though well-delineated fish
Drink to new hombres.
They don’t leap but mull the shoals:
Its easy in this weather.
...