Robert Rorabeck Poems

A casual touch to be the end of me, like the purring of
A ghost:
I carried your cigarettes to the cemetery, and you were
The most utmost;
...

A casual touch to be the end of me, like the purring of
A ghost:
I carried your cigarettes to the cemetery, and you were
The most utmost;
...

Life may be as hungry as death, but I am certain
It is never as fulfilled:
As I set out, my body throbs like a coward:
I get my haircut with politicians while the other tourists
...

Going down the road are cars:
Cars full of family inherited to their declinations:
Fathers drive, and mothers watch out,
And Spot is sticking out his tongue enjoying the
...

Morning trills sound beautiful to the untrained ear:
But maybe there are more than blue eyes opening to this
Sound everywhere in the trailer parks
Of the open country:
...

Now the quiet intrudes on the silence:
Bodies lay as restive as hummingbirds who have stopped
Breathing:
All of your offspring are lying beside you just as most
...

When did she lose herself after shop class
And maybe barefoot in the crown of thorns in some part
Of the off centered diamond
In the landscaping of middle school:
...

Emptied by my occupations, as by your thoughts:
This is how I dream out wounded on the perfect field,
Like the yellowest of birds with a broken wing,
Fallen from the roof of your house, fallen past the gold fish:
...

I have a band-aid but not where you kissed me;
This is a new hemisphere,
A spherical galaxy over my eye while the traffic goes blinking;
And there are famous cemeteries and famous ladies of the night,
...

Tenures of rain and all the world a song,
Girls tramping in voices that get deeper but are
Never more than shallow:
Seemly reflections in the Pentecostal refinement
...