Robert Rorabeck Poems

Alone, like the juvenile plum tree
Crowned by hungry wings,
And the sun crawling through
My limbs like a drunk woman
...

How can I show you beauty,
If you will not first give it to me with your
Tongue,
And allow this fieldtrip of baby fat
...

I started drinking before the plane left
The rainy tarmac,
And after I lost count we were in Spain,
And the hills were busy
...

Put away that sun:
What is she doing now,
Crawling through the cupboards?
Painting her lips after some midnight hour,
...

Another day like this one, like the next.
I read canto IX of the third fitt of Alighieri’s
Paradiso, and it makes little sense,
Little sense like the way I used to sit alone between
...

Ah! Let this night crumble into science,
The magnesium of her experiments put her
Hair in a spell:
In the empty pool she is chasing the rock stars
...

I try my best, girl,
And perhaps have succeeded in the lesser elements,
All those materials known to man
The things we walk on and inhale:
...

Liquor runs these plebian amplitudes:
These trucks bugle going into a pass of snow:
Fireworks mouth off for only
A second and then are silenced and the crowd is wanting more:
...

Without air-conditioning, they can still make enigmas;
And I am growing fat because
I ate at the Chinese buffet again tonight; and then I jogged
In the wet grass where the crocodiles fart
...

So the world heaps up the joy for its grotesque
Figurines,
The cowboys and Indians fighting again in the sand,
As another day proceeds;
...