Robert Rorabeck Poems

Doing my new part for the hunger
That already finds me alone, even though I
Remember hotels that remain always halfway vacant
One or two days from here across the country
...

These trees are hooks for your belongings,
And right about now my breath smells like a fire
Engine:
Somewhere close to coffins, that ants proceed;
...

You come off like a firework manhandling
A toothache:
Your mother was a dragon I could never slay:
You lay in green meadows openly praying and fiddling
...

Trailer in the underbrush where the little children play,
River just as rusting filled with the old cars of dreams:
And this isn’t the city,
This is every emollition underneath the thunderbird’s
...

Words played on a ship going down,
Like beautiful women forced to undress themselves,
Sticky fetishes dripping with anticipation forced to wait
On the shelves;
...

I drink rum, I am so amazed that the plastic
Remains of cowboys and Indians still populate the shelves
Of toy stores;
Or that you still are my candy store: Maybe this weekend
...

Silence has its own echoes too:
Each of your eyes are its sisters walking the tresses
Of a railway I cannot remember,
But sometimes it goes leaping over great unanswered quarries:
...

I want to be down in the mines of your
Body,
Smelling your back and your front,
Gripping you;
...

Sisters in the same room,
But one at a time; and I’ve been doing nothing
Beautiful except for you,
Maybe once a month, or not at all, but one at a time:
...

It’s almost midnight and
Nothing has changed;
I was held up at gunpoint
And pleaded for my
...