Robbie Coburn
Robbie Coburn Poems
Been here too long, have to get out
the fear that beats into you
living in the country remains with you long after you've gone
becoming a second skin dislodged when away from the grasses
...
I often ask for the ending.
blood-soaked white sheets you wake to each night
beneath their betrayed minds abandoned to your care.
I am sorry the body does not decide when.
...
And now the day clearer
in the unthinkable, nameless air
where I may have died in the night
and you are not alerted and not questioning.
...
I will be the ghost who dreams of you
until our eyes collide.
there is no map in my flesh, no doorways or windows.
no spurred heart or bruised throat when we touch.
...
I cannot love you here.
fragments of cinder begin to fall.
it is winter and the night is coming faster.
I could not see the air escaping, saying
...
I prepared my flesh for its new life yesterday
steadied the crudely fashioned handles and pulled
quickly.
the rip left sheets of scar tissue emptying
...
But the past forms so naturally.
an overrun of trees, thick spirals of branches
assembled in the centre of the paddock
...
The mirror is foreign
learning this language of the body, the ways it alters
in the throes of a deliberate brutality,
...
I've always wanted to ask you
why you had to bleed for them.
why you could never cover your eyes.
why you loved the ruin of their mouths
...
Robbie Coburn Biography
Robbie Coburn is an Australian poet and author.)
The Best Poem Of Robbie Coburn
Suicide Country
Been here too long, have to get out
the fear that beats into you
living in the country remains with you long after you've gone
becoming a second skin dislodged when away from the grasses
a part of the body embedded in endless paddocks
from the beginning, the greater years convene
at the point of youth
threads of a silence beckoning you nearer-
the farmland has it's own language, the voice of dirt you numb with drink,
with marks along your flesh that never heal, only press deeper
you learn too late, never escaping the clean wind
inside the fence-lines, the property's border
fleeing from all you know to be consuming
to get out, take a rifle from the shed and do away
with the isolation for good, is all you can dream of
where the air stands in place of buildings,
with no-one new to see
freedom becomes intolerable
that's why more people die by their own hand
in the country than in the cold city
everyone is somehow absent of themselves
when isolation is your company,
the quiet land without immersion
the road out of town that rises beneath cars
leaving the country for the city
your feet never miss the paddocks,
though still a tension between the outside
and the openness.
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3/10/2026 6:07:19 AM # 1.0.0
