Robert Rorabeck Poems

I am your sadly resolute countryman
Erin,
Kept higher up on the taught purple hillside:
I have been tending the golden sheep
...

Pigment of another god,
Mexican beer and fireworks:
The sun slips through
The day,
...

I loved another girl: in a few months I will die,
Defeat by the ordinary monsters, the same as any hero,
With no friends to resurrect from the dragon’s
Fangs,
...

Proficiencies north and south of the
Mississippi,
All these lines I have drawn are the
Corrupt calligraphy
...

Silent cars like fat women walking
Torpidly,
Not even animalistic through the despotic
Night;
...

Impolite to recall what cadmium we cover
The graves with,
Pretending to pack fading names with fireworks,
Then how the clouds touched down and studied
...

Strange gifts here they are.
Some would say they don’t come easy
From the shadows of the aloe,
Beside the blue carport across the sleeping canal;
...

Nothing else is beautiful,
Because I didn’t stop by the liquor store
And I can’t count to high numbers;
And I’ve forgotten what I consequently learned
...

Speedy bicycles far beneath the motionless skies,
The saturnine gentlemen burning like candles
Skull-caps brushing the fertile crescent of commercial
Airplanes:
...