Robert Rorabeck Poems

The sun is a fine instrument, scalding the earth,
Making it leap and gesticulate, spitting the winds
From its orifices like young boys spitting across the abyss-
And the sun has seen us all awaking in our clays,
...

There is no iceberg under my lines: Their enjambment
Is a rush hour of pining men, lines of silver cadavers voyaging
Into the great red forests pressing the Pacific:
Totem poles tilting in the Oregon mud, with drunk Indians
...

The prom queens are in disguise,
Brushing in their raiment, slipping like anorexic
Manatees into the green goodbye,
And the world is overheating, panting like a tortoise
...

Getting up is getting easier now that I know
Who I am:
A poet of some possibility, as the sun shies through
The leafy arcade,
...

Each following word is like the freewill of a trance:
I can give roses, roses, roses,
And sun, and sea, and sun, and sea,
For I have spent most evenings laying on your floor
...

Gloomed ambition sequined in a dress,
Brought in sunset to the bank of the canal,
Where the crippled people have been drinking
And enjoying the insouciant feelings they don’t
...

Let me sprinkle salt on you,
And plagiarize you, to show you off
To the professors down on the farm:
To pass you off as my lover,
...

Beginning to stutter in a rain shower,
I take my face down from the portrait and
Vacuum the house in despair:
Ink stains and semen helix the carpet like
...

Too many scars to start drinking, and too many
To stop writing poetry, the wilting daisies which
Spring from the edge of my fingertips;
And this is the dry season of my celibacy,
...

They make love in the east, but they
Sh! t where they eat;
While I play baseball alone, a dusty boy
With a cap and scars; it is not easy to laugh,
...