Robert Rorabeck Poems

There they go- up there making love-
Wish of the wind has blown their paper carnivals-
Swimming birds of grown up mobiles- Now what will
They do,
...

Ashes of a forest fire sparked by paper airplanes
Down through the secret mills and
Cotton gins,
Clouding the eyes of unicorns and tornados.
...

Going down, space shuttle of her thigh,
See what they have
Recorded of her things: Barrett in her
Hair,
...

Sturdiness in the grove of fingers
Where the fruit that no one should touch is
Perched-
Wayward sand dollar underneath the sun
...

Parched symbols of a paper sea
In a rebellion of totems who wait for you
In the darkness long after you have
Gotten into your car and driven away
...

I like to play tricks with words,
Because they feel so much better than

The tricks I played with you.
...

I cannot go through this anymore- run away
To Michigan- see where the rivers come
From the things that do not exist anymore: you should
Have gone away by now- the airplanes should
...

Valleys of families and little girls
Running through them, picking rosaries
While submarines hide out in fjords- or
The skeleton dances in the
...

Departing into the Amazon,
Women fly over my shoulders- disconnected
From their captains,
Their authoritative fathers- and they go up
...

Back home again in the shallows of your brown yard
After you have stepped back in and only left the stones
Upon the cinder blocks,
And it rains for three miles down the street drowning all
...