Robert Rorabeck Poems

Washed and even enough to go to
Church,
But not shaven nor thinking of my dogs;
And it is Monday and I get distracted by
...

The day has no attention, nor attributes anything to
It:
The housewives thought that I should begin the day each morning
Starting out filing in the crenellated shadows
...

Tonight feeling the tiny coral snake’s gargantuan breath
Seething like bobby pins underneath the unearthed titanic:
That thing called sky or like a witch’s spell
Unspecified; and it almost seemed real, the way she was
...

Sickness swimming in its caesuras; its beautiful
Absences where the living go beneath the swirling horizon,
Are very well forgotten:
This sea like the incrimination of stones;
...

It hurts to bum, and to disappoint them saints:
I’m out of better words, out in the graveyard of disenfranchised
Sports;
And this is early morning: my parents are gone,
...

It hurts to look myself in the eye
Of gray eyed mirrors;
Hurts to come again on valentines while
You’ve been playing baseball.
...

I’ve been doing it so wrong, needing more
Liquor to propagate my unwholesome song, going the
Long ways around my lake, around the river,
Feeding my liver to the fish and
...

How to begin something else anew without seeming
To be disillusioned:
I remember attending college many years ago
In the middle of central Florida, but a little ways up the road:
...

Now today maybe my face is almost pure like
A butterfly demured into the forests in the far underground
West,
Into Mexico:
...

Done again with your ablutions up against
The lakes that some rich man dug:
Up again and the dunes all around you, the cantankerous
Hyphens peppered by loons:
...