Robert Rorabeck Poems

Long leafed lilies in the
Short bladed yard-
Scarred in the anthems of
Exhausted circus performers strayed
...

I have to work tomorrow while
The sun sounds
Vociferous,
And all the people who are
...

Elephants between pretty girls, gifts you gave me
To survive the world, until you burned my crops,
And return me to the loneliness of my bed:
You laid me down as silently as a child kissing a rattlesnake:
...

In the enfeebled armpits of kittens:
An Alamo, and roses- they are lying against the cinder
Blocks listening toads
Waiting for the rattlesnakes, as the housewives make
...

Tom, Dick, or Harry went up to
Kiss Mary
But her ball gown was much more
A balloon-
...

I am a good man until I am gone,
And then I am only a good man in song
...

Aplomb in the folds of this theatre that was
From a high school I imagine just because:
Lost in the early day gloom in the student parking
Lot sleeping through math or baseball games all afternoon:
...

Great and churlish ennui this is your vision:
To be overthrown like a bird nest from a Christmas tree
In a thunderstorm:
To make love one time with a dog who is
...

Easily destroyed beneath the cornfield of pieta:
Wrist left open like a mollusk in an unearthed changing room
For the viper to sniff- there you are at large,
Brown skinned- eyes as opened as clams: brown clams
...

When they go down to the bottom of the
Well, they blow their trumpets and the blind
Skeletons dance underneath the make-believe sky
Where the wolves and the bears are kind
...