Robert Rorabeck Poems

How great to illusion myself in the demiurge of evening,
To drink the last of this amber substance
In the leaking air-conditioning, to sing that I am not alone:
Mind and body co-mingle,
...

A thief and then a liar pass over the two dueling overpasses
Who are fighting their ways into the jungle of heaven:
Words break down about them, and are disregarded and fed to
The toothless lions looking with uneager vanity into
...

I loved her by the restraint of memories which had
Already painted over the cenotaphs of all of these pilgrims,
As the pop rockets spent down over the horned rims
Of conquistadors,
...

Knocking one out as the
Saints go marching like ants,
Under the rings of cherubic lattices,
Just as chubby as rabbits, their whiskers ululating
...

Day by day this body awakens, flatulently
Renewed,
Like your body, an old friend, misplaced,
Remembered,
...

You feel so close to me; it is unreal,
Like a kite in my bed, like the sea on the shore,
As the airplanes full of steamy stewardesses reverberate;
It almost feels as if you could come knocking,
...

It snows in the coquina forts,
And the fox roots wither like tourists in their
Shorts:
But what about the glassblowers in their
...

Like a hypnotized chicken, you never had a chance;
Because you may have come from old Mexico, but I escaped with
My dogs from
Saint Louis, and I have read everything that
...

Tonight in the haze of glory, shooting off our mouths
To the nocturnals, and we’ll have new fun by those moons:
The entire forest will have a fire,
But the bears will sleep: they will find new crevices, and
...

Cheeks stained with the tears of baseball
That somehow Alma cannot see:
I told her I have all of these scars in her car:
She laughed at me,
...