Robert Rorabeck Poems

The boys really brag that they have the candles well
In hand,
Softy as gossiping butterflies, and tiny drinking fountains
Purring over her fingers;
...

Long days of love making coming outside of the houses
That are not ours,
And running our scarred bodies into the first breaths of the sea,
Trying how to find out how the waves come
...

Doing all of this while the girls are making love
In churches,
In cars, along the stairwells of their science museums, their
Apartment buildings:
...

Bountifully I enroll in the space that my body enfolds;
I know this through my senses and through my parents senses,
And I remember the suburban neighborhoods I used to
Skip out of school in, in your town,
...

I can take out another one straight for you, Sharon;
My purse is bottom less, and filled with meals for you to smell and
Taste over the valleys and highways;
And each time I either fail or succeed, but always in the quiet little ways;
...

Yellowing house of cowardice, I will move into you
The Thursday after next:
And I will masturbate and call beautiful whores from Spain into
You:
...

Birds make love next to the canals I jog:
Birds fly over me and terrapins disappear into that inkjets
Of ribbon,
And the highway roars with housewives busy from shopping;
...

Words pinioned to the ciphering holes of eyes
Into each all of our bodies swim and we can perceive,
Even while the night is dying,
As day’s mother grieves; and it is all false, but to this
...

Bushels full of fireworks in the dirty keys of
Love:
I am no longer beautiful, but I still send out my doves;
And you are perfect in your rain or in your shadows,
...

Passions of school yard plays: Sharon,
You took creative writing on the very first day and leapt across
The classroom
When we were suppose to gather and queue: How I feared that you
...