Robert Rorabeck Poems

Wounded in glorious battle on the cheek
Like a star fruit in some anonymous class in the middle
Of a round robin high school-
Failing gym, and slipping from the trapeze of her eyes,
...

Wounded by my feather light sport,
Perfumed by arrows of bouquets, and skipping school
Across the canals:
Little otters there diademing the canoes’ prows-
...

Up in the apex of a Ferris Wheel,
Looking down at where you live: going nowhere, turning
Around,
Like a tear falling on your roof to sleep,
...

I want to be weeping right now: I want to
Be right here,
Staring down the road after all the comely young
Runways are kidnapped,
...

When school disperses the many brilliant promises
Recorded in her playgrounds that
Remain unknown- even in the middle of the day,
When truants pass across the canal,
...

Groomed as if to be a pilot, and then lying there
Reclining as if triaged in the half light of a living room-
An astronaut who never got even higher than the arboretum
Of apple trees:
...

In a cleft of voodoo I find my forgotten love,
Once thought to have been
Run over by a get a way car: now there she is,
Like a piece of silver once folded over
...

Retreating by a trail of lost words making
Their way across the
Vermillion apertures of the continent- as if,
Finally, Mexico had really one
...

Imperfections in a blissful sea of
Waves- waves that never any man shall sea-
So far away from any lighthouse, and yet
Imperfect-
...

All of the bodies bivouacked- in fact they are a family
So many reasons above the street:
Right under the stars, a husband and a wife who do not
Love anymore,
...