Robert Rorabeck Poems

Tinhorn cufflinks and pale alligator boots tapered to a point,
And Marteen is ready to return to his second wife in Mexico- Only
Yesterday, I stopped for him to get a fifth of southern comfort whiskey
At the Old Red Barn in Sanders, AZ, and he talked all the way home
...

Look at the way the verdant winnows the light,
And there in the sheaths of stems, in the throbbing photosynthesis,
I suppose, is the essence of the dreamer’s home:
...

This opening seems clandestine for another go around,
While the octogenarians are falling into their parasitical sleep,
Feeding with lime the roots of aborted orchards nodding like
Unused utensils against the steady roll and shutter of the interstate,
...

Liquor is bright,
And the world is silent in its go around,
And the least things have the most to say,
And it is unbelievable I am still here-
...

Rain lays jubilance upon these hills,
Lays down like sated fauns in indescribable clefts,
And the bellies of Amazons who have sunken single breasted
Into the panting grottos;
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I’ve called you by the last line of a poem,
As often as by the first,
And you answered insouciantly the way an obese
Detective decides to solve murders only when
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I do not want to lay down upon you again,
As if the resin of a petrified cornea, this disgusting
Sap of my aping ventriloquism,
Another apocryphal psalm barefoot and asthmatic
...

I get the feeling someone has stolen the water
From the bucket filled up hidden in the ruddy hibiscus
Where my childhood played in afternoon,
Where I saw her needled and meek saying nothing
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You’ve said this is the summer,
But you do not know, but are just attempting
To wax poetical,
Even though a better poet than I am,
...

Rains abate,
But the sky remains perturbed:
Fumbling through my bachelorism, I put my
Money in a new bank;
...