Robert Rorabeck Poems

Words on the cherry trees
bring out the eyes
of the mountain lions
who strut prehistorically
...

Every day I experience
A billion eucatastrophes
As tiny gods smaller
Than drops of honey,
...

The sunlight kisses the swing-sets, if that is what
It really does;
And the swans set out to some place really beautiful,
If only for because:
...

Pedals pulling in the spokes of another world,
Even while the rest of it is silent, past the store fronts
And the washing machine,
And the vibrant fabrications in monoliths of invented
...

You don’t seem to see my scars, even while we sit
In the wavering penumbras of your stationary cars; and the bulls
Have gone to the quick markets,
And the sun is as red and as wide and as hungry as an offering
...

If the words are perfect, or their delusion perfect,
Then they become a fire escape,
And the ways out from even the long arms of airplanes,
All the way down the strange tresses of the vineyards,
...

Soft and imperfect dreams starting this way
In the concentric circles of a solitary unison: I guess I miss
My dogs, and the
Secret dales of the mountains, the ways up them like the fire hydrants
...

I can lay here for awhile and survive
Like a goldfish describing, and having won into its bag
The airplanes of Monet:
And the world just turns and turns, losing more of its color,
...

Hiccupping into a world of blue nincompoops,
I watch the Mexicans walking the earth or at least
Lake Worth east of I-95,
While I ride my bicycle searching for that special oil
...

My body is as scarred and indecisive as a Manticore;
And when I mount you, I feel like a lucky mountain
Surmounting a unicorn;
And none of it feels entirely real, except that I know that
...