Robert Rorabeck Poems

I keep on doing this, beating my drum in an
Out of season high school,
Misspelling, picking my teeth, farting into old
Shoes- If they could see me, I would
...

She is the song, so the old story goes,
The words are the things she doesn’t sing-
She doesn’t park too close to the ocean anymore-
Where the turtles make love,
...

Lines in unsteady distillations ripple
Fornications halfway out to sea. I can only cry
For help with the few words I know,
And pretty soon no one believes me-
...

Metallurgy of camel dung,
I hold court in unmowed fields-
I soliloquy the broken glass of
The thunderbirds of winos.
...

Forgetting to relax and entertain,
I shoot right for the glass- On the wall,
The girl from that movie has turned away.
Yes, she is looking across to Spain.
...

Banished from the court of her cherished liquor,
I forget to look for anything beautiful,
I see the backside of my mother going into the
Other room reflected on the door overlooking
...

She’s moved on, and the trees are bigger.
I live inside a shell at a restaurant where it always snows;
I am afraid I am sounding cliché,
But there is always a little grain of sand in her
...

A little bit of rum with my grape juice and
I’m feeling fine: I am a child actor with
So many girlfriends,
And paper snowflakes falling on my death scene.
...

You give me numbers until I’m read in the face,
But I am still an old opponent-
Look at the scars of my failed suicide,
The places they’ve surprised me from the cake.
...

The male and female skeletons are not identical-
They both smile, but they have little difference:
They don’t listen to answering machines,
Their natural abundance is with earthworms swimmingly
...