Robert Rorabeck Poems

The snake has tracked its lions all across the earth,
And maybe it hates the man, as in its religion this is its evil,
And all of its folklore is bent around the monsters
With legs,
...

The passions are in you in the words we cannot feel;
And it feels strange to be alive, and so lucky to be next to you,
Alma: but not to be yours,
As the city f*cks, and the ducks chirp:
...

I think it is possible that you should consider committed
Relationships,
With the sun going down over Portland, and every other
Color is primary and needing to
...

Problems with the nuisances of the favors
Of the swellest wives:
I remember them standing there like salt licking
Deer
...

All of the silence that Alma gives me today,
Finds me cultivating myself, a gray landscaping for
A flooding grave:
Even though as always the cars come, seething, spinning
...

The seesaws move up and down bracing themselves
For love or what for,
As the sky caracoles, counting the changeless numbers,
As there as so many of them,
...

The nights were spent alone,
Evaporating, and now this: not even a knighthood,
Estranged from my parents,
Vagabonding in one place, jump roping over graves,
...

I feel as if the temples lead to nowhere,
Even if the despondent kings are looking up those
Stone tits over the hills and estuaries of another bloodthirsty
Forest,
...

An explanation or a critical interpretation of a lost child
Who my wayward uncle called thick today,
While I unloaded the peaches and said my prayers,
And thought of my father and Alma,
...

Wounds don’t becalm: if anything, they are growing like
Calves:
The sea is in infancy of green, and Alma is smiling and laughing
In the exact middle of the fruiteria:
...