Robert Rorabeck Poems

Far away windows of shattered visions,
The corpses that lie waiting
Inside of your salt:
The Jack-in-Box wound
...

I told her,
“I’m the man who shot Jesse James.”
She said,
“Poetry don’t work on whores.”
...

Now I’ve said too many things, as pensive as an apiary
Of afflicted numbers,
And now I question the space between our bodies, and how
To rush through that space to find you:
...

I have the Almost Nation in the back of my throat,
All the armies gathered and defeated who would once
Have rallied forth to capture her, and to tell her those
Voluptuous words which grow in fair gardens or hang upon
...

I really want to touch
The cliché of your golden ransom:
Oh yeah, hemlock,
Also other pain killers like-
...

Robert’s eyes are red: he is taking off- You
Can get so much of him for free,
And the wind is a dying wife who once kissed the
Upturned lips of his fingers,
...

I’ve climbed forty of the fourteen thousand
Foot mountains in Colorado,
Sometimes four in a day, past tree line
Where the rocks gossip in a lightning storm-
...

What have I done,
But haven’t looked her in the eye;
If she is a beautiful woman, she doesn’t
Care,
...

I give long witness to your eyes
Looking for silence.
Where is your child underneath
The mountain- There could be so many
...

These are the painful errors reflected from my face,
As if I had been in a knife fight instead
Of going to prom, and bled in the swimming pool
Where my luxurious sisters had planned to swim,
...