Robert Rorabeck Poems

You were never supposed to sleep with me,
Erin: Where would the trick of impossibility be in that,
To come into my wigwam all cheery and
Rose colored
...

Desperadoes fighting the good fight:
I cannot go to sleep at night without kissing
My mother before hand,
And maybe you saw the light by our window
...

Unequalled in my parallels as to be a road
Going on through the sagebrush and bric-a-brac
As never to be untouched by
Attributing avenues, gaining only bad luck by flying too
...

Teach me the names of flowers, will you,
Because I am done;
And your children are running towards the bus;
And I wish I had more time to say nothing
...

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;
...