Robbie Coburn Poems

Been here too long, have to get out
the fear that beats into you
living in the country remains with you long after you've gone
becoming a second skin dislodged when away from the grasses
...

I often ask for the ending.
blood-soaked white sheets you wake to each night
beneath their betrayed minds abandoned to your care.
I am sorry the body does not decide when.
...

And now the day clearer
in the unthinkable, nameless air
where I may have died in the night
and you are not alerted and not questioning.
...

I will be the ghost who dreams of you
until our eyes collide.
there is no map in my flesh, no doorways or windows.
no spurred heart or bruised throat when we touch.
...

I cannot love you here.
fragments of cinder begin to fall.
it is winter and the night is coming faster.
I could not see the air escaping, saying
...

I prepared my flesh for its new life yesterday
steadied the crudely fashioned handles and pulled
quickly.
the rip left sheets of scar tissue emptying
...

But the past forms so naturally.
an overrun of trees, thick spirals of branches
assembled in the centre of the paddock
...

The mirror is foreign
learning this language of the body, the ways it alters
in the throes of a deliberate brutality,
...

Starless sky
the black cord
to the fuse box
...

Midday shower
the rider unconscious
under the bull's hooves
...