Robert Rorabeck Poems

Rain lays jubilance upon these hills,
Lays down like sated fauns in indescribable clefts,
And the bellies of Amazons who have sunken single breasted
Into the panting grottos;
...

I’ve called you by the last line of a poem,
As often as by the first,
And you answered insouciantly the way an obese
Detective decides to solve murders only when
...

I do not want to lay down upon you again,
As if the resin of a petrified cornea, this disgusting
Sap of my aping ventriloquism,
Another apocryphal psalm barefoot and asthmatic
...

I get the feeling someone has stolen the water
From the bucket filled up hidden in the ruddy hibiscus
Where my childhood played in afternoon,
Where I saw her needled and meek saying nothing
...

You’ve said this is the summer,
But you do not know, but are just attempting
To wax poetical,
Even though a better poet than I am,
...

Rains abate,
But the sky remains perturbed:
Fumbling through my bachelorism, I put my
Money in a new bank;
...

Love me with no cause, for I am no longer
Beautiful, but bloody bone,
And hung-over for you, rasping,
And make my home leaping between the waves;
...

All books should begin
With sunlight, with rain,
With jovial violence, with her lips parting:
A cliché, a motif,
...

These storm clouds caterwaul around me in
Their august monsoon, like jaded debutants wailing
In their pretzeled boudoirs,
Leaving a hallway where the angels descent whispering:
...

The joviality of a prince tucked-in and
Slept in the indentation beside the highway
In the corner, like a dimple, of the malevolent
Penumbra, while many curly-headed devils way
...