Robert Rorabeck Poems

Maybe you figured that I didn’t understand how
To love;
Or maybe you just stepped outside your door and sucked
Air for a moment,
...

What word to begin with to cross the fjord
Of troublingly planted anthems:
There they are waving like a sea of grass, like
Girls in bells or
...

When the children finally go to sleep underneath the
Architectures of their shelter,
Aren’t they just like balsam wood in prayer:
Aren’t they the sweetest sort of things, like all of my mother
...

Helicopters float like religious visions
Over the orchards of Spain or my backyard:
That is what they are doing
As cyclones form,
...

All the lights leave the chorus,
And the hills and the bluffs glow:
Strange creature strut on cloven feet;
They are inedible.
...

Parasols that aren’t even real, carousals of chalk
Madams;
And I can’t even save my sister. My tongue is dry and
Stuck like a bat to the roof of my mouth;
...

The snake pulls back its hood
And spits disgustedly at the rope trick.
I gave Kelly opals
And hid in the bathroom:
...

Cooling children cooling on the sills of
Church:
The perfectly scraped pews where Satan is
Extinguished,
...

The rest of the campus is asleep, so who can I talk to:
Who can I raise up to walk with me through the poisonous
Show offs of the
Carnivals of smoke screens:
...

Apple of my eye,
Who knew that an ugly man would still be writing love poems:
How can I save myself for you when
I don’t even know the instrument that has sewn your soul to its
...