Robert Rorabeck Poems

Now you've ridden your horse victoriously from the battle
And shouted something in mestizo—
Made a tomb out of what once must have been my summer—
Blinding my eyes before I could see you wandering somewhere
...

The sun is crawling through the sky—drinking and singing songs:
I lay in my bed alone,
My lips pressed to a canal of rum—
And the sorrows of the flesh overspill and overspill—
...

Swearing by these mountains that they know their
Paths—as mothers and mothers
Come home tumbling upon mountain bikes—
And the sky is a necklace of pearls above the mine
...

They seem to be made of me—the clouds floating above
The theaters of coquina until there is nothing to
Complain about—
And your breasts no longer lactate for your children—
...

You are a good kid even
If your eyes don't match
And I drink too much rum from Brazil
Or Cuba or the middle of the sun—
...

Now into this song the birds sing
In the middle of transit—evaporating the frogs
The ethereal swords have picked clean into the sky
Until they become another task—
...

As long as the stars and the moon don't care
We can go out swimming in the sea. As long as nobody
Can see us, we can continue swimming away—
Our backs pressed like butterfly wings beneath the
...

While on their honeymoon they eat honeydew and buy
Fireworks—they stop for a while and eat lunch
On a hill: they are filled with the premonitions of nursery rhymes:
And they are coming forward to go back again—
...

A kindergarten steps to the clouds and accepts an applause
While baseball happens beneath her—
The usual boys kicking up the skirts of red diamonds—
As the traffic sounds around the old battlements,
...

And then I had you in a purple thought—
It was just like the one they kept around the cemetery
To show off to the old widows and their bystanders:
It was a beautiful cemetery in the middle
...