Robert Rorabeck Poems

Adjacent to any animals of any kind - as long
As they can talk, gossiping beside the canal as
We did the water fountain;
Your spirit flies away over the sugar canes: back
...

Beauty is the pinholes through a forest
The trucks of families drive around, lost children
In them never figuring on the conflagrations
Of the heavens: they are going to the amusement
...

Birds lying low in the scars after fireworks
Waiting to make love to other birds
As the serpents approach through the doorway
Of flaming swords, as I was thrown out of
...

Bodies who lay laughing without wings
Ringed in the salt of insignificant stings- here
They say you lay almost faithful upon your
Wedding day,
...

Nooses of sky over green pepper fields-
A grandfather and a granddaughter attending,
The coral snakes under hooves of loose thoughts drifting
Away like stolen bicycles,
...

Ancient prisms of kaleidoscopes whose wealth is
Lost as it is made more beautiful,
As the sorority of hurricanes makes the grassy gems of
Suburbia suppliant, and all of the truants I knew
...

Busy visions of a childhood and her ghosts,
Words that linger in a poor man’s clutch, as she looks
Away perpetually, browns stems quivering over
Her children, but she is out of leaves and warmth-
...

Busy visions of a childhood and her ghosts,
Words that linger in a poor man’s clutch, as she looks
Away perpetually, browns stems quivering over
Her children, but she is out of leaves and warmth-
...

Sky of brooms and witches over empty
Baseball diamonds: trailer parks near the sea where
Turtles make hollow nests
Leap over by jackrabbits: and you are here in
...

You said all of this while cavorting in miss-behavior.
And the shells at your wrists where little things live
Wanting to be bought by so many tourists,
But I am remembering that I had other dreams too, in gardens
...