Robert Rorabeck Poems

Burning in the sapphires- I have plow shares to hold,
And the constancy in the infancy of this form
That burns the coal cinders for the muse,
While out there the trains ride high upon the levies,
...

Late again at night I go down into the bottle
To reminisce with the genie who never gave me anything
That I wanted,
And the words crumble away like a papier-mâché Ferris wheel
...

Unbounded reasonlessess looking for the broken
Bottles the same sheered color as the
Grass, where the light is smoking through, and where
It is curling for awhile:
...

Now the grounds have families which the dead are
Waking up around,
And caracoling like concessive aerials, or the watermarks
In a unicorn’s horn,
...

Lands are populated high and low,
And airplanes make love and prowl in the darkness
Between the trees
While their stewardesses are sleeping, and singing about
...

If she can live here, I suppose I can live here too,
Even though the breaths of her life are populated by another man:
And she shares his bed right now, while her daughter is singing
And the stars are right up there but so far away;
...

Spindling its cleverness, the weather of such joy uncoils,
And you can see it through the living room’s
House,
How the guts of the world spills like tin trumpets in the
...

I have been up mountains- Lost in the dark penumbra of my
Post adolescents, unwilling to leave my mother or
Her pretty mythologies, purple snouted,
Ivory horned: I have felt her up these ways, switch backing in
...

Trees can look after themselves- they do that very well,
Even when there is lighting,
And the grandmothers have all passed away;
And the carriages have wrecked down so far beneath the glaciers,
...

Dying, they wait for the breath of the living, which spreads
Over them like paper ships in a river that is all too fragile:
That means nothing to creatures who cannot have it,
Creatures who are even more lost than the blindest night;
...