Robert Rorabeck Poems

I am unable to return the soils of these yards:
The houses sit as fat as pigs, and the sky usually tumbles;
And to the even numbers it is so much bliss,
When the cars pull in and the fingers fumble over
...

The bliss of these words is cheapened by the liquor
And made more anonymous and far a field:
And without even stanzas they don’t even know themselves,
But I have brushed them across the many lips of forests,
...

Starting outs of a thought like an unrecognizable sail,
Like a puff of cloud,
Or a heart in its cage: and I told you that this love for me
Was like being in the fairgrounds all of the time,
...

All of the brown ocelots on the beach and on the
Shore made eyes with the brown otters,
As they should- as it was what they were good for,
Even while I was failing math,
...

Panhandling myself out of doors, knowing such littleness of
Nothing is unkeen to survive,
And yet watching as the nubile virgins once again made such
Games in the little squares sectioned off in their yards
...

Words in a beautiful book fall naked
Like clothes around open shoulder blades,
Or the propellers of airplanes; and oh how mouths come
To take a look,
...

Marching on the proud disinheritance of time,
My darling your lips are purple and full of dust, even though
Your favorite color is green;
And now you are so tired every time you come into the fruit
...

Pleasance reposes on the push handle of the star channels.
And the little things that fail are just cut off in the rocks
Of unsure protuberances,
And they sleep forever without any dreams of princesses;
...

Apposing bodies know how to have children without having
To know how to do anything;
And when I gather myself and travel the streets, and the trees
Just become gaudy and full of uneven weathers,
...

My house is filled with poison that
The cats sleep around:
I have hit the bottle and gone off to some cow
Town,
...