Robert Rorabeck Poems

Sarah Teasdale is buried in Bellefontaine,
And I wish to go and see her and water her grave
By a single tear I stole from the sea
Where all my cousin bachelors were sashaying
...

I put down these last words
Like a street vendor selling sacks of
Oranges in Miami, out on the
Granite rivers where I have seen her hips sway,
...

Getting drunk,
And I don’t remember a lick of Latin:
Just her face perfect across the way,
Like a constant dream of a house I
...

Okay,
Now I am so beautiful, I can’t
Even see straight, and I shouldn’t be
Writing anymore for tonight,
...

Insociantly, she broke up with me,
And made love in her memory to him in a bedroom
Just beneath the stars:
I got drunk and tried to eat cue balls,
...

In the morning I make mistakes,
As the liquor rums off, forget to deliver for her,
Whoever she is: Safa tells me his dreams,
And I start fantasizing about tomboy scientists.
...

If I want to lay down and sleep like
A well published author, sated by my moribund
Of words, if not beautiful,
Will you place your bet on me and lie down
...

I could start out any way,
But not the way the traffic moves, like
A careful tide, a faithful ebb and flow,
Depositing the silts to and from so many
...

The night is warm and apoplectic and I am drunk.
I should be out searching for her: she is so close, and
In so many ways, and faces like Janus, like the moons
Or rings of Jupiter: The night spreads diademed by neighborhoods:
...

Drunk and humid and in South Florida
I drink banana rum: A tip from a house wife in
Park Land. I imagine she’s already decorated the tree
I stood for her, and made love to her husband under it;
...