Robert Rorabeck Poems

Everything is good but broken,
And when she calls out now there is no fear,
But challenge,
Naked in the firmament of graveyards
...

Like intelligent swine shimmering in the mangroves,
The conquistadors are following the head of the cow.
If you look out my window from where we’re going,
You can see them kneeling before the opulent cross
...

What little talent leaves us like a draw of blood,
And still the doctor is not sure what ails us, except obscurity,
And the nurses’ squeaking nouns they but in place
In red checkmarks on the clipboards;
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A peaceful color, grey.
Something to turn into as you exhume time,
The traditions of mothers and fathers
Becoming slowly immortal: grandmothers,
...

A god of higher pharmacies,
You live in a tree house to come down
At night and steal the ground.
Born into what you have become,
...

Outside the glass panels smeared by
The persistent dogs,
There is another early afternoon where the
Sunlight is bright and angling the shadows
...

The words go mumbling from their tomb,
And the labyrinth of spy holes where pride
Has led the thirsty man,
So now little girls laugh down and guess at his
...

How sadly the pictures hang from their quiet song,
And I keep looking at them out of the apartment
I don’t live in anymore;
I might be there holding her hand, but the graveyard
...

Its fun to speak of the gods
As if they were real,
And not something made up
For Halloween,
...

These valleys are all the same,
And the path through them linear,
But men still get lost even a mile from
The train-
...