SOLDIERS OF LIGHT

Grasping white-cylinder weapons between
forefinger and thumb, they trace slate green fields
with pearl curves and points, each mark creating
letter, word and phrase, while shrill scratches yield
formulae or designs guiding us free
from dense fog toward traces of gleaming wisps
we one day will call grace of clarity.
Wielding book shields like mirrors, their lips lisp
great lines, echoes of warriors—distant, wise—
who braved constant skirmishes carrying
our flank forward, showing how to survive,
keep fearful pretenders from burying
us alive, love as humans—not to win—
but laugh, embrace till our next fight begins.

Roger Armbrust
November 7, 2009

COSMIC LATTE

And what shall we conceive of cosmos, love,
now scientists have erased azure from
our sky, finding arrays of beige above
tinged with white like some swirling liquid sum
of espresso and foamed milk? Shall we fear,
lying at night, gazing out at angels’
eyes glistening beyond our atmosphere,
it’s illusion? Do asteroids dangle
in self-igniting only to dissolve
as neutral light, their ancient bright cycles
from blue to yellow to flamed red resolved
as pale cosmetic? Let’s trade such trifles
as physics for bed—our glowing bodies wed
with spirit, blazing heaven as stars once did.

Roger Armbrust
November 3, 2009

TRONZO, YEARS AGO

Cool summer drizzle outside on Leonard
while reverent Knitting Factory crowd
inside studies him, standing with guitar
alone in stage’s gentle light, head bowed
while he begins soft, almost tinkling chords
as if leading Buddhist meditation,
musical mantra rising through fjords
of glistening jazz, soaring to union
of blues and passionate rock, his taut face
in silent pleasure-pain as crescendo
climaxes, descending slow to kind place
where he began. Then silence. Who could know
such glory exists, such gifts to share, cause
humans to rise, embrace him with applause.

Roger Armbrust
October 29, 2009

DARKENED WINDOW

Once, in Greenwich Village, 5 or after,
Saturday fall sun flickering behind
those short roofs west on Houston, their laughter—
those silhouetted ladies’ charm—windchimed
out that narrow bar door. They claimed my glance
through darkened window, first sight mirrored glow
filtering through liquor bottles. Let’s dance!
one smokescarred soprano cawed out. I bowed
my head, wishing she were summoning me,
then shrugged in shame having wished it, knowing
I really craved the old routine: whiskey
sip flowing to lust to maybe crowing
naked at dawn, or drubbed by some bouncer.
I grabbed my cell phone and called my sponsor.

Roger Armbrust
October 29, 2009

“PARASITISM”

for Joseph Brodsky
sentenced by Russian government in 1965
to five years of exiled farm labor for
“parasitism.”


Bureaucracy craves to fish in muddy waters
of generalities. Nets so wide and tight-meshed
no gentle organism swims safe, free to wander
into warm, clear sea and grow, take chances,
or merely lie on ocean bottom, gaze up and ponder
beams of light dancing across bright, dazzling surface.

What happened when they tossed you on the cold
slick wood floor? Did you flop and gasp for air
inside, while to their intestine-colored
eyes you seemed stiff as bone hurled from some lair
in Siberian snow? I see you glow,
inner fire showing only God is fair

enough to judge you. The free man within you spits
out hooks of their rusted words. Your bloody mouth shouts,
“Let’s get specific! Drop your hammer-and-sickle
psychology! Call me some solid name! I doubt
you have it in you! Am I a leech? Did I stick
to you with dual suckers? Can’t you pull me out?

You’ve got it wrong, tyrants. I don’t gnaw flesh.
It’s hard shell around your spirit I crack
with my verses. Hear it? Feel spewing fresh
images of love sear your ulcered back-
bone, freeing childhood dreams you thought had flecked
off like scales of dead memory? Dark shacks

where you heave our minds as rewards for staying silent
can’t stand against this blaze you fear is hate.
I wonder. Will your frozen hands ever touch or sense
the way we burn inside? How this flame motivates
us to stand? Will you hear sorrowing violins?
Learn to live the way we learned from Akhmatova?”


Roger Armbrust

I WANT TO WRITE A POEM ABOUT

your left hand
soft as her face in Gérard’s
Psyché et L’amour
softer than God’s hand
in Michelangelo’s
The Creation of Adam
your left hand
wrapping your right bicep
like some rare porcelain
poised in natural sculpture
leading Rodin
to stop and ask your name



Roger Armbrust

MAKING LOVE TO A SUNFLOWER

My fingers feel flesh
lift head toward light
I smell balm, slip lips
tongue tip inside
hairs of moist dark eye


Roger Armbrust