EILEAN DONAN

for E.



Somewhere among Son of the Fair One’s genes
is your gene as he walks the castle grounds,
feeling surrounding hills, how their green
risings cause his blood to rise, how the sounds
from godwits sweeping across Loch Duich sweep
him to song: melodies his grandmother
taught him, Gaelic lyrics which made her weep
as she sang, stroking his sunrise hair, her
rocking chair keeping rhythm with her voice.
He recalls stories of her emerald home,
how her husband made this island his choice.
How his own choice led Alexander to come
in thanks, hand him this highland fortress. He
reaches a crest, gazes west toward the sea.



Roger Armbrust
March 23, 2001

WAS MUSIC PLAYING

for C.



Caught up in your eyes’ glow, your honest words,
and my own yakking away, I just can’t
recall: Was music playing while we heard
each other sing our histories, our chants
of fear, hope and care? Did melody fill
the relaxed, cool air flowing through Loca
Luna? Our close, deep conversation thrilled
me, each rhythm its own life. Our local
tour of old homes creaked open memory,
brought faces to doors I never knew stayed
there. Did you tune the radio as we
drove down those streets? What composition played
with such deep passion, I still feel near it,
much like my chest’s heartbeat. Did you hear it?



Roger Armbrust
June 27, 2007

VIRGIN BIRTH

(Or, Komodo My House)

for Jack Browne




Only eight years old, Flora shocked her elders
when she bore the five little bastards,
having never seen a guy of her breed,
much less cuddled, or shared a slinking seed.
Yet the staff saw no reason for clergies
to panic and blame it on allergies,
swearing no blood relation to Mary
and the Child with power to be buried
and then rise again. Still, it brought the press,
though Flora and her fivesome could care less.



Roger Armbrust
January 29, 2007

MY PIMPETTE, MY LOVE

I close my eyes and see you still, strolling
the Herengracht’s bank that first day we met.
Sun caressed your curls. Fishermen trolling
called out, praising your smile. I won’t forget
how you blushed when I bowed, saluting you
as William’s stadtholderette, your laughter
ringing like Zuiderkerk’s bells. Your friend, who
frowned like a moistened prune, stalked off after
you kissed my cheek. Wandering Amsterdam,
we pledged love outside Rembrandthuis. Oh, how
you glowed in moonlight. I call you madame
still, despite my father nulling our vow,
your mother cursing my life. Now you’re free
of me, but not my heart. François-Marie

Roger Armbrust
December 27, 2007

JOHN ASHBERY AT NY'S 1995 SMALL PRESS FAIR

Rising from the audience, slumped in slim
sweater, he responded to George Plimpton’s
intro: “I’m afraid I left my poems
where I stopped for lunch.” Scratching stirred ashen
hair, Plimpton, log-long and limber, replied,
“Well, John, perhaps you should quickly retrieve
them.” Monk-mute, shy John with slow shuffle-slide
left the room. Calm George laughed softly, relieved
the stunned, muffled crowd with literary
vignettes, prestoing a half hour into
five minutes. Back at last, papers buried
under left arm, quietly slipping through
his faithful and shaking the emcee’s hand,
the poet uncrimped his work, and began.

Roger Armbrust
December 27, 2007

ONLY THE LITTLE CHILD KNOWS

for Maggie Cavanaugh


What did Joseph say?
“I could find only this stable.”

What did Mary say?
“Then here we will stay.”

Where did they sleep?
They placed hay in a corner
to make a mattress
and covered themselves
with their only blanket.

And that night Jesus was born!
Yes, that very night.

Can we go see the stable one day?
It’s not there any more.

Can we go see where it was?
No one knows where it stood…
Wait…yes, there is someone:
In a little apartment…

A little apartment like ours?
Yes, on an old street in Bethlehem,
a small child…just about your age…
wakes up every Christmas Eve
to see a glowing light
in a corner of the room
and angels descending
like gentle rain through moonbeams.
They kneel and kiss the light
then rise like shining mist
into the starry night.
The light fades to dark
and the child goes back to sleep
to dream glowing dreams.

And only the little child knows.
Yes. Only the little child.


Roger Armbrust
December 20, 1995

FEAST OF LIGHTS

I have dug out this small fir
these roots from earth
to carry to you
to share with you
gentle touch
of wrapping limbs
with ribbons of bright cloth
slender rain of icicles
topped with my last dollar’s compromise:
a frail and wrinkled star
cut out of a Budweiser can.
We have dressed the tree
and now undress:
You drop waitress’s skirt and cap
your thick dark hair
cascading to shoulders
like night
over slender horizon of snow.
You lift my rumpled jeans
from the floor
brush sawdust and dirt
away with care
and move my open textbook
from your side of the bed
setting it on our only chair
as a scholar genuflects to thought.
You slide under our lone cover.
Push next to me.
Our heads rest on an old coat.
We hold one another like roots.
Gaze at the tree
alight from pulse of neon
flowing through shadeless window
reflecting your deep brown eyes
falling into mine of blue.

Never mind those eyes far from us
who turned away
when we spoke of love.
(Why did they stalk to ancient altars
vowing to never forgive?)
We have this tree
this bed to bind us
with something stronger
than rings or words
from slit-eyed rabbis and priests.
Our bodies glow.
We nod in silence
our eyes aflame
blazing in our feast of lights.


Roger Armbrust

OUR LATE MOTHER'S BIRTHDAY

for Joan and Frank

Today we celebrate our late mother’s
birthday, December 23rd. I smile,
recalling her pose for photographers,
feigning a coquettish cover-girl style
on our couch or front doorstep. We three kids
would laugh as she turned family snapshots
into five-second fashion shoots, eyelids
fluttering, hazel eyes wide like in plots
of silent movies, lips pursed like Lily
Damita. She never complained, that I
recall, of her long days and nights. Early
mornings she prepped breakfasts and ham on rye
for school; managed the Prospect each evening,
locking the movie-house doors when leaving.

Roger Armbrust
December 23, 2007

A GLIMPSE OF STAR

Lying on my futon
I opened your homemade Christmas card.
Loose gold glitter sprinkled
across my black-jerseyed chest,
my navy-blue comforter.
You had turned my bed
to starlight sky
and made me a part of it.
For days
I left the cosmos in tact,
slipping carefully under covers
alone
feeling like a god
enfolded in firmament.

You won’t believe it.
This spring
I cleaned the apartment:
Files lining the cream-colored cabinet,
clothes stacked in the corner
as straight as the books
in unpainted shelves,
audio and video cassettes
columned like giant, surreal teeth
beneath the VCR.
Even the doorway’s Indian rug
now smiles in small loops of pearl white.
Still, sometimes when the light falls right,
I discover a glimpse of star
gleaming on the clean-swept
dark tile bathroom floor
or cradled in cracked pages
of old poetry books
I last read at Christmas.


Roger Armbrust

SONG: CHRISTMAS MAKES ME CRY

Christmas makes me cry
Need I tell you why

I miss her like wine
we aged over time
to drink when we dined
at Christmas

I miss her like light
vast starscape at night
She made my life bright
at Christmas

I used to believe
you spent Christmas Eve
with a lover
a partner
a friend
but this year I’ve learned
Christmas candles won’t burn
You discover
you’re lonely
again

I miss her like air
see her everywhere
although she’s not there
at Christmas

Christmas makes me cry
Need I tell you why




Roger Armbrust

I SIT NEXT TO MY DAUGHTER'S ARTWORK

I sit next to my daughter’s artwork, white
canvas hosting shaded loam, clear ocean:
rectangles of bright blue flowing with slight
ferns, splashed with patches of tanbark terrain,
and above this paradigm that’s most us
smooth tinted texture—semblance of soft fur
you want to stroke with cautious fingertips,
or cave painting embedded with tincture
water-blue, like aqua protozoa
magnified, breathing at ease on moist beach—
bordered continuum of land and sea
inviting imagination to reach
skyward: the first eagle viewing slow birth
of deep-sea islands, rippling lakes of earth.


Roger Armbrust
December 17, 2007

ABDEEL

Having dimmed his inn’s lights, he walked through chilled
night to check the stable, holding warm soup
chest-close, fresh vegetables to help fill
the soft-spoken couple; glanced through slight loop
of curtain to avoid disrupting her
breast-feeding the child, now a week old. How
surprised he was. Three stylish men knelt there
at the manger, bright robes draping damp straw
and soil. One lifted a small, carved chest
of gold coins; one held the medicine
myrrh; the third waved putrid incense, a pest
repellant to Abdeel’s nose. Cause a scene?
Not him. He’d enter, bow, faking a cough,
hoping his charity at last paid off.

Roger Armbrust
December 20, 2007

GREAT BREATHING

Oh, Ibn al-Nafis, tell me how pulse
measures heart absorbing cooling spirit,
expelling its warm waste, body’s repulse
of imbalance forced by reflex. Hear it?
Shhh. Surely you do. No, not the heartbeat,
but the pulse. Soft as memory of wind.
Tell me you hear it, then let me repeat
how, thanks to you, my deep breathing portends
Great Breathing—evolving spirit revives
body exhaling to renew lily
and oak leaf in turn restoring our lives.
Hint how arterioles, venules rely
on capillaries, then heed my whisper:
how my pulse feels Great Breathing flow through her.

Roger Armbrust
December 20, 2007

AFTER THE ICE STORM

for Catherine and Eric


Riding the Super Shuttle from Kansas
City International Airport’s like
gliding shopping carts through a Steuben Glass
superstore. Trees’ crystal-cluster limbs strike
the eye—a museum of giant gems
hovering under smoke-gray clouds—their dull
glaze, patient as faith in old sculptor’s whim,
awaiting the break in haze, steady pull
of sun’s glow flowing over and through each
branch, frosted trunk, turning crusted fields
of grass into brazen, bright blaze, its reach
grasping slithered highway curbs, risk revealed
in ice-scarred signs warning of dark, dull-gold
flesh—hidden, slick-spot temptress in the road.

Roger Armbrust
December 12, 2007

LADYBUG

On the far edge of Damgoode Pizza’s black
table, it seemed a minute, distant world
orbiting space, elytra varnished dark-
auburn gold, like curved fleck from a Bradford
pear tree’s autumn leaf. I ripped a romaine’s
tip, blocking its sure path, followed by torn
corner of paper towel. Playing vain,
it ignored the plant scrap—a guest who scorns
leftovers—then embraced snow-white, refined
fragment as if treasuring home, circling
the towel scrap’s embossed core like a blind
trapper in snow. Thumb and finger curling
the fiber flake, I joined outdoors’ crisp air,
set the small life in grass. It disappeared.

Roger Armbrust
December 10, 2007

LEONARDO'S STREAM

for Eric Sweet
after his 30th birthday


Now in sunlight rather than darkened morgue,
he pulls from his pouch a child’s artery,
dips it in clear stream, watching clotted blood
weaken, loosen, then wash away. His heart
racing like the stream, he gently squeezes
the frost-gray tubing, marvels at its soft
structure, recalls how last week he had eased
from an old man’s cadaver a like piece
nearly hard as a stick. Now night. His loft
dark as a morgue, he lies alone, his eyes
watching the dead child alive, running and
halting by the stream, then kneeling a while.
He breaks the current in two with small hands.
He sees a man with wings, a woman’s smile.




Roger Armbrust

DERACINATION

By ’79, parched from booze and scum
spirit—my stale statoliths ripped away
from my mycorrhiza mycelium
called home—I tumbled northeast. Frigid spray,
incessant wind of the Atlantic tossed
me across Jersey Shore’s edge, up mired coast
to Greenwich Village, nearly brain-dead, lost
as mite in beehive, gnarled meristem frost-
bitten, sapped of will, then strangely anchored
in church basements, libraries, museums,
soft, sober voices replacing rancor,
invisible power—psychic phloem—
nurturing all, my creative rebirth
lifting me back to native Southern earth.


Roger Armbrust
December 7, 2007

THE BILDERBERG BOYS AND I

are chomping caviar, sipping champagne,
and growing blisters rubbing elbows here
in the plush Istanbul Ritz-Carlton’s main
ballroom. Folks keep bending Don Rumsfeld’s ear,
offering support: “You got a bad rap
on Iraq, D.R.,” mumbles Goldman Sach’s
exec. “Good show,” Bank of England’s head chap
adds, “closing in on world order. Relax,
I’ll refill your glass.” “You’ve helped our corrupt
effort to rule global markets,” the Czar
of Pharmaceutics smiles. I interrupt,
“Why aren’t China and Russia here?” They snarl.
“Europe and U.S. only!” Rumsfeld shouts.
“Be gone, Satan!” Two guards escort me out.



Roger Armbrust
June 22, 2007

GABRIEL

Sitting above Beit Sahour, the hill’s peak
letting him see Bethlehem’s distant lights
merely two kilometers away—meek
shepherds walking there once he’d rocked their night
of calm in the cave, announcing the birth—
he decides to serenade their sheep, his
voice soft and pure, like spring wind kissing earth,
deep peace filling all touched by gentle kiss.
He recalls how, months earlier, he had
startled the shy, young virgin, waking her
from sleep. How she seemed frightened, even sad
at first to learn wondrous seed had entered,
void of passion. How she knelt whispering,
eyes closed. He studies the far star’s flaring.


Roger Armbrust
December 2, 2007

JUST DOIN' MY JOB

for Frank Wills


In North Augusta, they still recall how,
till the brain tumor took you at fifty-two,
you’d tug your worn jeans, light a candle
in your wireless shack at dusk, and smile that
tolerant smile they call your ‘sweet spirit’
when Bo Trimble would nudge you: “Frank, tell ‘em
‘bout Watergate, how you found the door they
unlocked with tape, and you took down Nixon
and his whole crew.” How you’d look far away
for an eyeblink (maybe seeing yourself
in security-guard suit at twenty-four),
tongue ground snackcake from between your teeth,
then breathe out in half-growl, half-sigh, as you’d
half-whisper, “I ‘uz just doin’ my job.”




Roger Armbrust
September 30, 2000

I'M LONELY AS

a lost firefly trapped in capped mason jar,
my luciferin fading like embers
untended, confinement crushing bright star
of hope. Ebony wings seem dismembered
by despair, wires of legs and antennae
curl in despondent concession to this
transparent cell with its taunting display
of earth and air that must lure yet dismiss
my life posed in glass like shriveled raisin
in clear gelatin, framed on this window
sill, longing to be free in wind rising
through leaves of distant oaks, my body’s glow
signaling to some lover in nearby
garden I’ll touch her soon or surely die.

Roger Armbrust
December 2, 2007

INTERIOR DESIGN

A birthday poem
for Catherine, my daughter


Our first thought, of course, flows to brilliant rooms
which glow of craft, or, if we’re lucky, art.
But, being artists of earth, let’s assume
how our simple phrase relates to the heart,
its atriums and ventricles--each space
laid out to house just what we humans need
in blood supply. And how the muscle’s pace
responds to other muscles. When we bleed,
how the heart knows, before the mind, our plight.
How the same goes for sensing wrong or right.
How its landscape’s flexible symmetry
leads us beyond our original view
to discover a host of imagery:
Mostly the heart as love, like mine for you.




Roger Armbrust
August 21, 2000

NEW YORK HARBOR, JUNE 1945

Great lady veiled in Bondi blue, with bright
copper torch flame reflecting sun, offers
salute to Queen Mary, shimmering light
forming vast, rippling halo around her
thousand-foot profile as she steams toward port,
nurturing mother of 10,000 troops,
returning them home from their last-resort
battles with Hitler, who slumped with head drooped
two months earlier, blowing his brains out
while biting cyanide in a Berlin
bunker, thus silencing his insane shouts
to sink the proud ship and mark Great Britain’s
defeat. How she flows with grace in white gown—
two-dozen lifeboats, three smokestacks her crown.


Roger Armbrust
November 27, 2007

ARTIST GAZING THROUGH

for L.


Sometimes, while contemplating your postcard,
I marvel how the camera loves you:
delicate impression, as if Vuillard
had controlled the lens, artist gazing through
to find the most sensual angle, catch
the bemused mouth at just the moment when
the viewer wants to kiss it, longs to watch
the lips curve to smile, laser eyes soften
to not-quite sadness, as if you’ll begin
the ballad at the start of your next breath,
loving what you do as the string within
the guitarist’s hand tremors, as if death
and life are mere lyrics within the song
of love for which we seek, for which we long.



Roger Armbrust
April 14, 2001

WATERBOARDING CATS

It’s tougher than with humans, he tells me.
Can’t tie their arms behind them, so their claws
cause problems sometimes. Still, they look funny,
strapped belly-up on the board, layered gauze
masks he soaks with water each five minutes,
gagging, hacking, spewing, screeching in plumed
spurts when their gurgling throats catch breath, send it
spraying out in gasps like mist from perfume
bottles. Thin legs flail. Thrashing paws slash down
at air like curved, starved bird beaks. He feels bad
sometimes, he says, if he errs, a cat drowns
or suddenly snaps inside, going mad.
“They’re not like humans, you know—evil men
who’ll lie to you, kill for their religion.”


Roger Armbrust
November 25, 2007

GEORGE WASHINGTON

Rising with the sun, almost every day
you take breakfast of biscuits and honey
soft enough for your one tooth, gums you lay
with hippo-tusk dentures before you see
your public. At six-feet-four, tall enough
to survey crowded rooms, you draw all eyes
as you walk, talk of peace, Congress, the stuff
of gluing states into nations. You try
to keep Tom and Alex in line, knowing
if the center holds, the country may too.
When the time comes, you say farewell, showing
us freedom’s price, work we still need to do.
Slowed by opium for your gums, you bend
to time and pain. A sore throat brings the end.




Roger Armbrust
March 25, 2001

THE POWER OF KEEPING IT SIMPLE

I’m not drinking today. I don’t know why,
really, except someone said to come here
every day. And someone said take this book
and read it, and then let’s talk. And someone
said I just couldn’t stop, and my life went
to hell, nearly killed my wife one night when
she grabbed my Wild Turkey and threw it out.
And someone said me too. And someone said
I just drank beer, never took any drugs.
And I said me too. And someone said you
need to tell her you were wrong. And I said
can’t I just tell you. And someone just looked
at me and didn’t speak until I said
I’ll go tell her now. And someone said on
your way, stay quiet and pray. And as I
was leaving the room, someone said my first
name, shook hands, and then said keep coming back.
I do that. And I’m not drinking today.




Roger Armbrust
July 6, 2001

LOVE SIMILES

I love you like I love the mirrored dome
of a faucet’s single water droplet
clinging to my fingertip; flexing comb
of the captive cockatoo who sublets
the pet shop window’s corner stall. I love
you like I love the smooth tinge of amber
curling along my Indian rug, lean
as a sleeping fawn; the solid hammer
of great Pujol’s bat on a baseball, keen
as a thunderclap. Caress of a glove
holding back the snarling gnaw of winter;
the ballet grace of the greatest center
of all time: Jabbar and his soft skyhook.
I love you like you love to read a book.




Roger Armbrust
September 16, 2003

ANYWAY, WE TRIED

She was twenty-four, lovely as royal
garden, intellect like sunlit ocean,
yet twisted in emotional coil
of her mom’s early death, obsessed notion
she’d match her swift demise at twenty-five.
She, not we, survived. I proved both faithful
and errant knight. Grateful for both our lives,
I’d offer silent thanks; tender, careful
touches followed by passionate caress;
then sink like a folded sponge, soaked and swelled
in self-absorption. We both would, I guess,
swirling through days and nights, frightened, propelled
like lost dolphins, flailing breaches to save
ourselves, burst-pulses lost in roaring waves.


Roger Armbrust
November 19, 2007

RHYME OF THE ANCIENT LAWGIVER

Carved on a stele, Hammurabi’s code
opens with legal history’s longest
run-on sentence—the king dropping a load
of gods’ names to hype his noble quest:
“to enlighten the land, to further the
well-being of mankind.” Laws numbering
nearly three hundred. In the U.S., we
could take a cue: Prosecutors bringing
grievous charges—yet failing to prove them—
lose their heads. A judge’s errant ruling
finds him paying twelve times the fine—a gem
of an idea. Still, the old code brings
evil where we, sometimes, show bravery:
King Hammurabi promotes slavery.



Roger Armbrust
June 2, 2007

WING ONE FOR THE GIPPER

First taste of the Wishbone offense, I guess,
for ol’ Number 66, right femur
plucked from his skeletal frame. Caused duress
for distant cousins, they gravely demur
in their lawsuit against Gipp’s great nephew
who exhumed grand halfback’s remains to get
a leg up on DNA testing. Frueh
won one for the Gipper, ending some threat
our Notre Dame legend might have fathered
a daughter via an eighteen year old.
Digging sports news, ESPN gathered
a film crew at tomb’s sideline to record
backhoe in motion as it clawed the vault,
flagged by plaintiffs as more ill-planned assault.


Roger Armbrust
November 17, 2007

THE U.S. SUPREME COURT AND I

are mingling over whiskeys in Roberts’
chambers, quintet majority giggling
about trashing our civil liberties,
the minority judges bent wriggling
in despair. “We goosed that Alaskan kid
daring to display his sign off campus!”
the rookie Alito laughs. “Screwed the lid
on taxpayers exposing the White House
for its marrying church and state!” guffaws
Scalia. “And corporate and union
bosses now can pick presidents!” heehaws
Thomas. “What about the Constitution?”
I butt in. “You know…The First Amendment?”
The chief justice growls, “Damn all precedents!”




Roger Armbrust
June 26, 2007

SHIRSHASANA OBSESSION

She’s told the posture’s “king of asanas,”
surges brain’s circulation, stimulates
her vital glands. But she envisions mass
lobe explosions—her screaming yoga mates
soaked in her cerebral spinal fluid,
basal ganglia and cerebellum
splattering walls like chunks of mortared squid,
meninges scattered like scraps of vellum
over the room’s padded mats, medulla
oblongata’s cranial nerves dangling
like spaghetti in sauce a la Ulla
Winbladh. Urging emotion’s untangling,
her master suggests posture of dolphin,
but her mind previews a closed, sealed coffin.

Roger Armbrust
November 15, 2007

HOW WIZARDS FALL IN SLOWEST MOTION

for A.


When the wizard walked on water, flowing
over the falls, he must have felt like I
did holding you that day of my going
away. How heat rose as I watched your eyes
when you walked toward me, pushing close, your voice
soft as an ancient chant: “I have to go.”
Your arms enfolded me. I had no choice
but to kiss your cheek—gentle way to show
you how wizards fall in slowest motion
when overtaken by gravity, safe
in caress of mist, glorious ocean
of another’s care, like embracing wave
responding to some distant shore’s welcome,
or gliding clouds carrying angels home.




Roger Armbrust
March 27, 2006

DANTE

You contradict yourself like an eclipse,
pretend this bare first level’s “ease in Hell.”
Show me ease in living without hope, lips
parched, whispering eternal desire. Tell
me why earth’s time dwelt in honor deters
heaven, demands pain on ledge of despair
due to dearth of forehead’s holy water
splashed by some sap in white collar declared
holy by blind old men hoarding treasure.
Your politics reek of Rome, asserting
Homer, Horace, Virgil, all their pleasures
of verse—a holy life—undeserving
of eternal berths beside All Wisdom
from lack of a Catholic baptism.

Roger Armbrust
November 15, 2007

DUBYA AND I

sail the Potomac. My talk brings distress.
“Now, your administration backs Iraq’s
Shiite-led government.” I nudge him. Yesss,
he hisses. “But you’re anxious to attack
Iran because they’re bankrolling Shiites.”
Different Shiites! Not ours! the prez cries.
Their militias threaten Iraq! “Their fight
you consider war with the U.S.?” Aye!
howls the commander. “Meanwhile Saudi
Arabia…” They’re…our…friends… the head-drooped
chieftain growls. “They let Arabs join Sunni
insurgents battling American troops.
So…why won’t you bomb those Saudi louts?”
Dub straps on his life jacket and jumps out.



Roger Armbrust
July 29, 2007

WILLIAM WILBERFORCE

Brandishing diagrams of a trade ship’s
bowels—bent, black bodies jammed in columns
like burnt corn kernels—you challenged plump, rich
lords in Parliament, battled a solemn
quarter century, abolished slave trade
in Britain but not slavery, then fought
sugar plantation barons two decades
before seeing the beast’s fierce blaze snuffed out
three days before you died from common flu,
Barbara at your Highwood bed, casket
carried to London, laid by your fellow
William Pitt in Westminster’s North Transept,
your seated statue raised there. Tourists file
by it, viewing the abbey’s north choir aisle.


Roger Armbrust
November 14, 2007

MARTIN LUTHER AND I

are recalling his Protestant reforms
at his old home in Wittenberg. He’s on
the potty. I’m outside the door. “You formed
your doctrine of faith as sole salvation
for Christians while sitting there?” I query.
“I suffered from constipation,” he states,
his voice a bit shaky, sounding weary
through thick wood. “The BBC’s accurate
in quoting me. I was ‘in cloaca’
when inspired.” “The Roman Church challenged you
to deny your writings. You objected…”
“…at the Diet of Worms,” he follows through.
I confide, “Then you wrote—scholars confirm—
On the Jews and Their Lies.” I hear him squirm.



Roger Armbrust
July 1, 2007

THOROUGHBRED AND FAWN

for Bob Sweeten

Smooth sorrel coat like autumn leaf, phalanx
of teeth nipping grass blades, the two year old
seems at ease in sunny field as this lank-
legged lump of snow-flecked tan trots out, bold
and naïve as a green recruit, falling
in chow line next to the cool, muscled colt.
Then, as if feeling some distant calling,
forearms and gaskins flex like bowstrings, bolt
the red beauty toward the near rise, over
and out of sight. Did centuries of genes
sense Arabian desert wind? Lovers
rolling in a Shropshire marsh? It must mean
nil to this hungry fawn, ears large as head.
It turns white tail to where thoroughbred fled.


Roger Armbrust
November 9, 2007

RECALLING THE REDS' EWELL BLACKWELL

Intimidation in baseball is vitally important.
--Hall of Famer Ralph Kiner

Kiner, who averaged 37
homers a year, swears your sidearm fastball,
lashing in at a batter’s head, often
made players pray. No helmets then to call
on for help, only wool caps. Your hurling
toward the plate “looked like a man falling out
of a tree.” The ‘40s sports recordings
cite four prime years you sacrificed and fought
the Germans. Second season back, your reign
on the mound brought 22 wins, 16
in a row. All Star six times, then arm pain
tore at “The Whip.” Lean, 6-feet-6, bull mean,
you hung on, then retired. Pressing his case,
Kiner calls you “the best I ever faced.”



Roger Armbrust
June 24, 2007

JOHN WILMOT

Libertine with the lovely face, bawdy
batterer of Charles II in verse, your
drunken stint with the Merry Gang, shoddy
trampling of Bess in a marriage obscure
as ghosts, pin-prick affairs with actresses
on the London stage flopping your flagrant
body on syphilis-stained mattresses—
all made you flee king’s court, hide as vagrant
Doctor Bendo, then crutch to the Lords’ house—
rotted nose capped with silver—your prelude
to dying at the same age as Jesus.
Strange how such a life so debauched and crude
could flower with poems of truth and flair,
bring praise from Hazlitt, Goethe, and Voltaire.


Roger Armbrust
November 9, 2007

ABOUT THAT SECOND AMENDMENT

In my dream, the woman blond as desert
sand, leaning against the darkened man, kept
staring at me, pulling at her white skirt
as if it were a rip cord. Her guy leapt
to his feet, howling at some untold joke,
riddling vast walls with his automatic;
turned framed photos into confetti; spoke
in rapid babble, gunfire like static
from a giant concert amp. No one ran
away. Couples kept on dancing, talking
as he stumbled through the club. Cops began
to cordon him off, a blue line stalking.
Bullets slashed him, sent his carcass skidding.
Slumped, smiling, he wheezed, “You guys weren’t kidding.”




Roger Armbrust
May 6, 2007

SPONSOR

When you called phenomenon of craving
an allergy, the Rubik’s cube clicked in
place—how drink’s comfort followed with raving
night after night, waking next day in den
of pain, razor blades of fear and despair
slashing every pore, finding brief relief
only through drink again, hoping to pare
the party down to just one beer, belief
my brain could control my hand’s insane grasp
for the glass, suffering once more my soul
soar then slowly crush into dust. When you clasped
my hand, your clear eyes glowing as Rigel
and Sirius gleam, at once I sensed our
first step in seeking some higher power.


Roger Armbrust
November 5, 2007

LIGHT

for D.

Robert Lowell loved the way Vermeer used
light (“grace of accuracy” he called it),
won Pulitzers with his words, yet abused
alcohol and wives, staggered into fits
of breakdowns. I suppose, like us, he must
have felt undeserving of grace, that too
much light can blind, burn gold talent to rust.
Last night, south of the garden, I told you
how, in new light, we feel at first like blind
Homer, powerless to show how Sungod
blotted out the day, how Windgod divined
the brave warrior off course, to foreign sod
then home again. But hear what Homer says
to help begin his “Odyssey”: he prays.




Roger Armbrust
April 2, 2001

FIRST FLIGHT

Imagination is more important
than knowledge.
--Albert Einstein


The spike-topped apple snail has lunged with its
lemon-chiffon muscular foot too long
through crystal-glinting aquarium grit,
its burnt-orange eyes surveying thick throngs
of the same tropical fish. Bored with old
colors, it swells this dark, rose-streaked shell, dreams
it’s a hot-air balloon, lifts off with bold
swipes of butterscotch antennae past streams
of fins, finding water’s crest, then fresh air,
avoiding an antique desk lamp, floating
toward and through wide gaping window to stare
while discovering sun’s glow feeding spring
flowers, leaves of apple trees, sudden flight
raising dazed mollusk through clouds to great light.


Roger Armbrust
November 2, 2007

NASHI

Nashi (rhymes with Nazi) dubs its youth group
“Putin’s Generation.” Kremlin funded,
its paramilitary wing will stoop
to attack critics of their heralded
leader. Designed by Surkov, called Vlady’s
Karl Rove, young teams eye future elections,
hope to stifle party opponents by
force of voice and fist, assure selection
of “Putin’s People.” Knowing teens and best
laid plans, idealists can melt into
frustrated laborers, turn scythes against
presidents who lie. History may view
Putin’s day, which he hopes to seem balmy,
darkened by an erupting tsunami.




Roger Armbrust
July 8, 2007

CHENEY AND ADDINGTON

Locking yourselves in the windowless cage,
mirroring glares of flaming Goethite eyes,
nostrils like bright, stretched pimentos packaged
with sky-blue whipped cream, screeching you despise
the Constitution, you wipe it on your
matching rose and blue-flag rumps, gnaw through reams
of new laws, dubbing the waste paper pure
Signing Statements, turning your mammoth screams
and canine teeth on all critics whether
in-house, press, Congress, or public, forage
the country of freedoms though unsevered
from your secret room, your unceasing rage
ripping young from mothers’ guts—mad mandrills
shoving them out in the wasteland to kill.


Roger Armbrust
November 1, 2007

JOHN YOO

The White House’s Hans Frank, clutching your law
book, you lurked in a back room at Justice,
inking secret opinions—brazen flaws
untapped until Goldsmith cited your vice:
crowning Bush king in 2001, you
tossed Congress and courts in the trash, renamed
torture to seem like a handshake, and screwed
citizens’ rights with surveillance’s shame,
all to support Cheney’s mythical war.
Korean born, you’d think it ironic,
would you not, to find yourself jailed, deferred
habeas corpus, your citizenship
stripped through a power shift? You’d cry, I guess,
of human rights. Deny you’re Dr.Yes.


Roger Armbrust
November 1, 2007

DAY CAMP'S LENS, 1982

She’s 10, watching the thin girl’s wagging lips
chide her about her plump tum, but hearing
the bomb she’d love to shove between her hips,
turning Spaghetti Betty to burnt string
bits. Sweating more than the June day calls for,
she stifles tears, stuffs in the apple pie
in reverse revenge, slumps out the side door,
stumbles under misty Long Island sky,
forcing a vision of Blackfriar’s Bridge
she saw in a travel book at home, its
piers with stone carvings of freshwater birds
freeing her from these neighborhood browbeats,
unaware under Blackfriars this day
Calvi’s hanging body twists with wind’s sway.


Roger Armbrust
October 31, 2007

LEFTOVER CRUMBS

I’ve just seen “Crumb,” Zwigoff’s record of art
rising from a father, raging Marine
who’d break small sons’ collarbones while their hearts
shriveled to dried fruit as amphetamines
crazed their mother, leaving them no fortress
to fall back on. Charles Jr. turned recluse,
then to suicide. Maxon, the youngest,
fondled women, charred childhood his excuse,
then sat on nails for penance while tossing
a bullet in his hands; now sells paintings
in San Fran. Robert found fame by crossing
mainstream to underground comics, feinting
love at every chance. All three sons, obsessed
with sex, used their art to scalpel their chests.




Roger Armbrust
May 14, 2007

SUDOKU AND SODOKU

Define one as a number puzzle played
by half the nation—a Latin square marked
as nine regions, their nine spaces displayed
with digits ranging 1 to 9. It sparks
backtracking by rapid-style solvers who
crave logic. Term the other as fever
from a rat bite or scratch, the victim screwed
for months or years, healthy cycles severed
by pyrexia and meningitis.
Though both Japanese words appear brothers,
in truth, they’re more like strangers. Still, each fits
translation: the puzzle, “single number,”
the disease, “rat bite fever.” You can bet
they’re often confused on the Internet.


Roger Armbrust
October 29, 2007

BATTER UP

for Steve Barnes


Anna Nicole’s corpse, the Broward County
medical examiner confided,
fades like honey in mud, a poor bounty
for voices claiming love, yet divided
over where to send her: mausoleum
on a Bahama beach? Set adrift off
the Pacific coast, jeweled museum
aboard a fiery yacht? Why do we scoff,
we fellow humans, our own forms burning
inside out, wasting like old newspapers
in week-long rain? Our smirking heads turning
toward the TV, watching our nights taper
as baseball again beats morbid winter,
thoughts void of our frozen Splendid Splinter.




Roger Armbrust
February 21, 2007

PARANORMAL PARANOIA

They appear everywhere as I dash through
town. The Yeti glares and growls, snarling mouth
large as a cave entrance, red hair askew,
slashed by a cross-eyed barber. “Why come south
when you need snow!?!” I shout. No answer. As
I cross the bridge, the Great Sea Centipede
slithers onto shore. Shaking, I speed past
screaming, “Scat, you cryptic cryptid!” I need
a cross or bible, but scurry unarmed.
On Main Street, ghosts and zombies lounge smiling
at sidewalk cafes. Spaceships portend harm,
levitating at traffic lights. I fling
my body into an empty doorway.
I’ll hide here till dark. Keep watch. Kneel and pray.


Roger Armbrust
October 28, 2007

A HARD DAY'S NIGHT

Internet radio’s playing Beatles’
greatest from “A Hard Day’s Night,” sweeping me
back to ’64, pop movie’s title
blazing on Center Theatre’s marquee,
pal Lee Rogers cuddling with Lesley Smith,
me maneuvering my arm around her
friend Janella Howell, Fab Four’s mythic
smiles and harmony swirling their power
throughout the house. Back in Lesley’s dark den,
we quiet down with Mathis’s soft sound.
I fall into Janella’s eyes, golden
in candlelight; respond to muffled pound
of her heart. Her liquid lips bring such bliss,
I adore how her jaw pops with each kiss.




Roger Armbrust
July 10, 2007

SURVIVOR

What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.
--Friedrich Nietzsche


Sometimes after midnight, when mad silence
mortars the dark, flashing fragments of her
face before me, shredding all sane defense
to memory’s shrapnel, my lone offer
of prayer dissolving in blackened air
like bone powder in ink, my body sways
from the bed barely more than a corpse, flare
of my Dell’s monitor burning away
those black devils deriding me to die
in my sleep as I dream of her lying
beside me, listening as I reply
to her soft, sad, sighing prelude, trying
to grasp her meaning: “I must leave my friends,”
she whispered. She should have said, “It’s the end.”


Roger Armbrust
October 26, 2007

BONDS

I’m waiting in Section 148
down AT&T Park’s right-field line (just
in front of McCovey Cove) for my date
with The Record as ol’ Barry—Muscle
Mass Mammoth Man, baseball’s Dinger Despot—
cranks a Florida pitcher’s hanging curve
off his black maple bat, a searing shot
flying straight at us. It takes killer’s nerves
to fight off fanatics. My long arms flash
up; pained hands snag the white, whirling pellet.
I hear my pal screaming, “Go for the cash!
You’ll be a millionaire when you sell it!”
I spew flames: “Dirty money!” Lips grow sealed
as I hurl the ball back onto the field.



Roger Armbrust
July 27, 2007

THE ARMCHAIR ASSASSIN XIII

I’m losing hair from this Kurdish quagmire.
Their P.K.K. guerillas fight Turkey.
The Chief calls them terrorists. We’re to fire
at them on sight, but only secretly,
with missiles. Blow them off the friggin’ map.
But their brothers, the P.J.A.K., blast
Iran. The Company helps. It’s all crap.
These warriors deny Islam. They’re Marxists,
“scientific socialists.” They even
support women’s rights. I monitor their
movements by satellite, warning them when
the Revolutionary Guard comes near
enough to attack. I help these Commies
fight Muslims. I can just smell World War III.


Roger Armbrust
October 23, 2007

WAS JESUS A FUNNY GUY?

Did he play with the blessed Big Twelve, cracking
inside jokes? Riding through Jerusalem,
did he lean to John and whisper (smacking
of low humor), “I’m on my ass again.”
Had Luke dined at the Last Supper, would J.
have groaned, “This is my body, and, hey, doc,
I got this pain in my lower back.” Say
he joined Magdalene in bed: Would he shock
his mistress, aping that line to his mom
at Cana (his first miracle, I’ve no doubt)
moaning, “Woman, my time has not yet come?”
On the cross, did he quip, “I’m just hanging out?”
D’you ever read whether some critics felt
he’d have proved a huge hit on the Borscht Belt?




Roger Armbrust
May 28, 2007

BOSS FLOSS

“How’s it going?” the first boss asks, as if
he didn’t know the company’s budget
and inventory; thinks it’s your motif
of life. You want to tell him (but fudge it),
“It’s all downhill, like your hairline, you [bleep].”
Then jerk his gum from his gums, jam it up
his nose, hurtle him down that staircase steep.
“You’ve lost weight,” second boss chimes, like a slup
in a bad Subway spot, blind to his blurb
connoting, “Hey, you’re not as fat as last
month!” “Boss man,” your mind growls, “would it disturb
you to know your savoir faire’s like a fast
fart?” Maybe one day he will discover
beauty’s deeper than magazine covers.


Roger Armbrust
October 22, 2007

WORDSWORTH AND I

dangle legs over these steep and lofty
cliffs above Tintern Abbey. He’s writing
in a parchment notebook, sips Twinings tea,
taps rhythms with his pen. I’m reciting
his “Intimations” ode. He loudly clears
his throat. Snaps, “Do you mind. I’m trying to
craft a sonnet.” “Your first work to appear
in print was a sonnet,” I recall. “True,”
he scowls, “and I’d like to pen another
before sunset.” But I’m feeling impish.
I lean toward him. Smile. “Bill, would it bother
you to discuss your past?” He frowns: “Go fish.”
“Tell me about that French girl you knocked up…”
My skull catches his shattering teacup.



Roger Armbrust
July 28, 2007

GOD AS VERB

Watching you pirouette to Tchaikovsky,
I see glistening moon orbiting earth,
sense brilliant igniting in distant sky—
art-inspiring eye of a new star’s birth—
feel timeless melding of universe’s
caress as your body spins, ascending
with violin’s vibrato, my verses
rising with you, our dimensions bending
like liquid glass, each will melting into
one will, energy swirling, creating
fire of voices swelling as angels’ do,
embraced by cosmos’s endless mating.
Suddenly you and music stop. We kneel,
holding still inside the eternal wheel.


Roger Armbrust
October 22, 2007

KLIMT

He kept away from those fin-de-siecle
cafes, their world-weary gossip; preferred
private dinners with dear friends. At his peak,
age forty-five, he finished Bloch-Bauer’s
portrait, heaping her in silver and gold
which still couldn’t match jewels of her eyes,
while Egyptian eyes on her gown seemed cold
set beside that face his brush idolized.
Raising the bar far beyond realism,
he also lifted Vienna’s vision,
seeming to find his own innate prism
to project color: master’s precision.
Never self-portraits, or so he’d insist.
But how he revealed his soul in The Kiss.



Roger Armbrust
September 6, 2001
from "The Aesthetic Astronaut: Sonnets"
published by Parkhurst Brothers Publishers
 

ALLISON CORNELL

In her Astor House apartment just up
from Juilliard School, sunlight from window
beaming at her feet, with viola cupped
between clavicle and chin, she played. Bow
rose and fell like subtle lightning, striking
the soul with classic melody. Strong as
a slender weightlifter, back to me, ring
of haze haloing firm legs, pinched buttocks,
straight spine, curved horizon of broad shoulders.
Short-cropped hair shining. I thought of Jeanne d’Arc.
That was long ago. Now we’re both older,
on far roads. But her email touched my heart,
and I’m haunted by her recent CD,
recalling that day she played just for me.


Roger Armbrust
September 9, 2007
.

OLIVIER READS DAVID'S PSALMS

Birthday sonnet
for William Packard




I hear your clear voice these five years later:
“David’s psalms are the greatest collection
of verses.” As if on elevators,
we huddled in silence, blank reflections
on faces, left mute by your legend.
Stout-bodied, heavy-bearded, unoffended,
you with searchlight eyes refused to pretend
we had heard: “I’ll repeat that.” And you did.
Now, listening alone to Olivier’s
sharp consonants crack like crisp lettuce,
I wonder how you’d respond to his ways
of altering tone from lisping softness
to shouts. Still, I pray for what David sees:
“…he shall give his angels charge over thee…”



Roger Armbrust
September 2, 1999

"FOOL THAT I AM"

The Ravens’ rich harmony flows from my
Dell, mellow rhythm and blues massaging
my heart like DeBakey in surgery.
I gaze at the snapshot where she’s blogging.
Gaze for hours, fool that I am, addicted
to those sad eyes, or is that my sadness
mirrored through, fool that I am, predicted
by my angels to wallow in madness
of her present and our past she’s folded
away in a cedar chest or tossed out
with the kitty litter years ago. Ted
will have to deal with my pouting or shouts
at lunch, fool that I am. Wait. Will I bleat?
Or should I kiss her pix, then click Delete?

Roger Armbrust
October 17, 2007

INVITATION

As you sit by the crib reading this book
aloud to the child, awake or asleep,
look upon this life as Wordsworth would look:
a soul before birth with knowledge so deep
the Great Spirit chose to wipe memory
of heaven away, except for some sense
of “trailing clouds of glory.” Poetry,
Wordsworth would say, is the child’s renaissance:
rhythms aligned with the mother’s heartbeat
starting the process of learning again
the soul’s purpose. Poems tend to complete
this role through rhyme and images like rain,
sun, tree, wind—sound and sight forming a view
of nature and time, and love for what’s true.




Roger Armbrust
2002

NUNNA DAUL TSUNY

Shoved from Georgia homes like old dogs over
to Tennessee, now the death march begins.
Our brave men, women, small children cover
a thousand miles by foot, horses, wagons
and boats. Soldiers eat meat as we forage
for fruit and nuts on the Mississippi’s
and Arkansas’s shores. Invisible cage
of a false treaty offers no release
from our fate. Our four routes see our slow crawl
past Memphis, Little Rock, Fayetteville and
Springfield; stumble our way to Tahlequah
and Fort Smith. Four thousand within our band
will die. White roses will grow wild beside
Nunna daul Tsuny, The Trail Where They Cried.


Roger Armbrust
October 16, 2007

LOVING TO WATCH YOUR VOICE

You don’t know this. I’ve linked my new spectrum
analyzer and Windows XP to
my phone. I gaze at your voice as you hum
then breathe your love song, sensual sotto
voce. Horizontal rippling rises
to full screen, creating dancing rainbows
in glistening waterfalls; disguises
your brief laugh as firefly confetti. Rows
of quivering colors flash then vanish
as you ask me what I’m feeling. Did you
know your phonemes’ formants flow, so high-pitched,
twice as fast as mine—waveforms like bright blue
lightning? I’m recording this. You’ll smile so
gently, viewing the email video.




Roger Armbrust
August 7, 2007


.

CHLAMYDIA TRACHOMATIS

This cell culture resembles off-white cake
icing stamped with myriad micro-seals,
like embossed mini-moon surfaces. Take
a closer look at what the screen reveals.
See those three dark-auburn flakes, lying like
rust flecks on an old linen cloth. Yes, they’re
grainy like small anthills. They live and strike
only in human cells, cause the water
discharge like weak milk from your penis, your
swollen testicles. We’re lucky to find
it before eight weeks, your safety tenure
before going sterile, or even blind.
And you possess symptoms, for men endemic.
Most women? No. The “Silent Epidemic.”


Roger Armbrust
October 15, 2007

SUBWAY STRIKE

My old girlfriend would never ride subways,
terrified it would crack thick scars, release
visions of her mother running away
just as the car door wrenched shut, a wild, pleased
flare to her eyes, glaring back at her child,
five years old and screaming, face and hands pressed
like fresh batter against the window, wild
herself with panic, fear-serrated chest
heaving to spews of vomit as the car
lurched away. The bitch would always relent,
grab a cab to two stops uptown, just far
enough to meet the train, weep and repent
as she’d lift my future love in her arms,
rasping lies of how she really meant no harm.



Roger Armbrust
July 6, 2002

LOGIC

What is my nature? What is my value?
If my quarks and leptons formed from ocean
and earth—an exploding star’s residue,
particles of universal motion—
if my matter’s mass mirrors all else in
the cosmos, am I not only part of
the heavens but heaven itself? Essence
of life everywhere? If I fall in love
on clear nights when stars chorus eyes and song
flowing through me, my body imploding
and exploding at once, is that not strong
and weak uniting, gravity’s prodding,
electromagnetic charging? Each force
fundamental to each particle’s course?

Roger Armbrust
October 14, 2007

FOXGLOVE

At distance, they seem a field of beehives
huddled in groups of lily white, soft pink
of roses. Now near: “You kept me alive,
your family here,” I whisper. Then sink
hands softly into a chosen cluster,
caress their silk-like flutes. Move my face close
to observe their mouths, tongues holding luster
of dusk, each interior stained with flows
dark red, like blood droplets. I kneel to tell:
“You see, my heart had stopped. The hospital’s
emergency room revived the limp shell
of me with digitalis. So I called
the drug firm days later to learn who grew
the crop, then came in love to thank you.”





Roger Armbrust
June 8, 2002

LIGHTNING

Our cloud structure forms, your pilot streamer
flows toward me, my stepped leader following,
your atom and my electron dreamers
bonding, our shaking arms and legs glowing,
then flesh flashing in jagged limbs of white
fire—Thor’s laughing ire—as we bolt the bed
with passion’s searing volts, our savage rite
of passage lifting us like angels’ heads,
vast-current return streamer leaping toward
some whirling heaven only vincible
souls risk and reach, slashing like flaming swords
through massive clouds, forming a crucible
of celestial sprites, elves, even blue jets
reflecting in our eyes like amulets.


Roger Armbrust
October 11, 2007

THE HOLIEST LIGHT

Galileo, his telescope the new
extended eye mapping orbits of stars,
must have whispered to himself, “Dear sir, you
now, both scientist and poet, rise far
too close to heaven. What do you think popes
will say to this sacrilege? Rewrite Church
law for your sake? This curved glass is a rope
they’ll use to noose your neck. But let my search
kill both me and their terrifying faith,
strangle their shouts with truth of heaven’s face.
Let this universe, as one, form the lathe
which tools all fear into a sacred space
where we speak from hearts: the holiest light.”
Our eyes traject our deepest love tonight.




Roger Armbrust
February 12, 2000

YELLOW IRISES

A quartet with Kelly green stalks standing
four feet high draw me off course from my walk
down Beechwood Street and into this sun-ringed
backyard to gaze like awe-struck lover, talk
softly as if wooing delicate blond
beauties posing for my camera, praise
their skin’s silken texture as they respond
by shivering in breeze, each mid-rib braised
brown by some great Chinese artist’s brushstroke
forming wing of a sleeping butterfly.
I lean close, whispering, “If you awoke
now to see me, would you lift to the sky,
carry fertile pollen to her garden,
surprise her with gifts of golden maidens?”


Roger Armbrust
October 9, 2007

JABIR IBN HAYYAN AND I

lounge in his lab sipping canned lemonade.
I probe, “Scholars call you the father of
chemistry.” He puckers his lips. “I made
experimenting alchemy’s key. Loved
inventing processes still used today,”
he slurs in between slurps. “Like what?” I pry.
“Distillation,” he snaps. “Ugh. Booze,” I say.
“Crystallizing,” the Arab sneers. I sigh,
“Table salt. Promotes stroke.” I hear teeth grind.
“I synthesized nitric acid,” Jab growls.
“Acid rain,” I frown. His wild eyes grow blind.
“I improved on Aristotle!” he howls.
“I refined dyeing, and pigments in paint!”
“Lead poisoning,” I whisper. Jabir faints.



Roger Armbrust
July 18, 2007

SNIPER PRODIGY

The preteen boy steadies his M40
rifle, clear blue eye centering distant
target—a Vietcong bivouac’s sentry
fifty meters away—in an instant
through his telescopic sight. Calculates
minute of angle to assure he’ll rip
the skull. Wishes he could insure such fate
for Jenny Warner’s boyfriend as he flips
the trigger. Feels blood’s hot rush—his first kill
of the day. He hunts this way after school
each weekday for hours…Hears a sound…grows still.
Someone’s in the hallway. He plays it cool,
eyes fixed on the screen. Hears his mom exclaim
to friends, “He loves his new video game!”


Roger Armbrust
October 7, 2007

HAYDN AND I

are walking in Greenwich Village, and I’m
wearing my Sony Walkman; he’s sporting
his powdered wig, recalling when he climbed
a wall to see the empress cavorting
in Vienna’s court. “I was only twelve,”
he chuckles. But I can’t hear him because
the volume from my earphones only shelves
any chance I have. Still, I sense him pause
in his stride. I look up and watch him frown
like a teacher seeing a pupil sleep.
I know my buddy feels I’ve let him down.
I hand him my earphones: “Here, yours to keep.”
He slips them over his wig...Eyes grow wild.
I know he hears Die Schopfung. And he smiles.



Roger Armbrust
June 14, 2002

THE ARMCHAIR ASSASSIN XII

I’m monitoring Company agents
interrogating this Qaeda suspect.
Amazing his head’s unbruised from the stint
of slaps with a rolled phone book. You’d expect
that assault and the ripped-out fingernails
to be called torture. But Justice says no.
Or stripping him naked, feet in ice pails—
his unheated cell able to store snow—
blindfolded, pushed backward on a flat board,
flooding his gagged mouth and nose with water.
Makes him feel he’s suffocating. A hoard
of heavy metal CDs will batter
his eardrums for five straight hours. We’ll bare,
not what he knows, but what we want to hear.


Roger Armbrust
October 6, 2007

RAZGLEDNICAS*

for Miklós Radnóti




Fall 1944: I, an infant
crawling on the warm floor in Little Rock,
know nothing of you—shot dead near Abda,
six hundred strides from the Raba. Hemlocks,
huddled bareboned, hide the clumsy mass grave
your fellow Hungarians will find two
years later. In the pocket of your slave-
camp jacket, a palm-sized notebook soaked through
with blood, urine and fertile loam. Poems
somehow survive, taut script of visual
postcards describing your final days: Grim,
dark-rubied visions of your wife, fearful
peasants smoking pipes, captives pissing blood,
Lorsi shot dead, and you soon, in the woods.




*Picture postcards in Serbo-Croatian




Roger Armbrust
September 14, 2003

GEORGE TRIBOU

Years later, the great priest lay in coma,
light of St. Vincent’s private room dimming
as it must, result of weak heart's trauma.
Sitting at his bedside—remembering
how the monsignor liked John Knowles—Mike read
from A Separate Peace, hoping spoken
rhythms flowed, easing journey to sacred
space where body cannot go. Leg broken,
denying war, Finny recovered while
Gene wallowed in guilt. Pausing for respite,
Mike watched our mentor sleep, then whispered, “I’ll
stop. Guess you’re tired as I of hearing it.”
The old man barely shook his head “no” twice.
A teacher’s bit of last loving advice.


Roger Armbrust
October 1, 2007

FREE TIBET

Kansas City winter night, my daughter
sits knitting a wool scarf for her business,
softly singing of Tibetans slaughtered
in Lhasa, of their artisans impressed
into textile mills, of a nun dying
in Drapchi Prison just last month. She leans
her head back, eyes closed, now nearly crying,
voice almost a whisper while revealing
the reprise: “Free Tibet, oh, free Tibet.”
Knitting needles pause in their nodding dance.
Her hands raise the scarf, study wool ringlets
for any flaw. Then her earth-deep eyes glance
at me. “What would you do,” they seem to say,
“if soldiers came here and took me away?”



Roger Armbrust
March 13, 2002

DREAM FLIGHT

In my recurring dream, I am walking
in a strange neighborhood when I begin
to fly, spreading wide my arms, welcoming
sunlight, my body lifted by soft wind,
gliding in a glowing, soaring ballet,
pause of arabesque, dipping like sparrow,
whip of pirouette, arms in playful sway
as I sweep over rooftops, over rows
of stuffed freeway traffic, joggers gazing
as I hover above tree-lined park trails,
watch lovers who break their clenches, praising
my pas du cheval, then my aerial
adagio. As I reach a lake in
the wood, I awaken, feel forsaken.


Roger Armbrust
October 2, 2007

DREAM SONNET

I dreamed about a woman I don’t know.
It was last night, after watching a walk
through of Henry VI, Part III. She showed
up at a place I don’t know, little talk
as she flowed over me, sudden as wind,
but softer somehow, whispering how she
had missed me. Kissed me. I felt my knee bend
against her rippling thigh, tried to part seas
of her eyes to find their color, but could
not. And suddenly she was gone. No cast
member from the play, no character would
fit her role. No loving face from my past.
I slowly woke to find my room the same.
But I was not this man before she came.




Roger Armbrust
September 1, 2001

PORTRAIT

The Nikon film camera dresses your
head like an ebony and silver crown,
your composed hands aiming its aperture
at the bathroom mirror. Dark hair flows down
past your shoulders, rests in swirls on wide crests
of your breasts, nipples teasing beige slip’s lace.
Your slight stomach roll offers flesh caressed
by satin. I smile at how your calm gaze
recalls Napoleon when he declared
himself emperor, Pope Pius VII
slouched and frowning on his powerless chair
eleven years before St. Helena,
isle named for the mother of Constantine.
Your sensual lips reflect Josephine’s.


Roger Armbrust
September 30, 2007

GOETHE'S FRENCH CONNECTION

As Goethe turns nine, Voltaire pens Candide.
Some forty years later, the great German
has translated Francois’ plays. Then he meets
Napoleon at Erfurt, tells of bans
with Christiane, hears of Bonaparte’s care
for Maria over glasses of wine,
a Bordeaux the emperor longs to share
as the minister recites Voltaire’s lines.
Four years after, he sits with Beethoven,
describing Bonaparte’s ocean-deep eyes,
his penchant for belching, his beholding
to peppermints. Ludwig laughs in surprise.
Two years. St. Helena and no release.
Goethe reads of it. He smiles as if pleased.



Roger Armbrust
July 7, 2002

WHO'S REALLY RUNNING THE WORLD

Aakil Dhoti sits at his computer,
pushes a flashing button on his huge
switchboard. "Hello, Visa, help you?" He purrs,
offering the card customer refuge
from fraud. "We cancel purchase, you okay,"
he's learned to say. Another blinking light:
"Bank of America. Yes...Show today
rent check went through." He smiles, having eased plight.
He nibbles dhal, gazes out the window
at the Kolkata street below. "This is
Con Edison. Power's turned off? You know
it's not burned fuse?" Payment solves the crisis.
Hanging up, he breathes deep. Thinks of his spouse.
A red light. "Welcome. You reach The White House."


Roger Armbrust
September 25, 2007

CAROLINA

at New York’s Pane e Cioccolato



The busboy says he’s from Puerto Rico,
a town called Carolina, near the coast
just east of San Juan. I say did you know
I’m from Carolina too. It’s where ghosts
from the Civil War still haunt Southerners.
“Mine’s called La Tierra de Gigantes,”
he says. Smiles slyly. Adds how he prefers
the name his grandmother learned in old days:
El Pueblo de los Tumbabrazos.
He leans down, whispers, “Those who cut arms off.”
He moves to a deserted table close
by, grows silent, folding the dry, white cloth.
He wipes the marble tabletop, his hand
cloth-covered: a gull soaring over land

some twenty-thousand feet below. His eyes
explore terrain with a sad stare, making
me feel he’s lost, not in legends or lies
he’s told me, but in that sudden aching
for home we all have when strangers tap it
loose from deep in our hearts’ caverns, like some
phosphorous glow: how stalactites trap it
and hold it below until our eyes come
down to behold it. Perhaps he sees smoke
from his town’s factories there in the stone’s
brown swirls; or the Loiza River’s flow;
or eyes of a lover who’s never gone,
though he left her in Carolina years
ago, standing on the runway in tears.




Roger Armbrust
August 26, 2001

THE ARMCHAIR ASSASSIN XI

My IKON has ID'd the Chink website's
hideout right inside Nanjing. Titan Rain's
cyberhacked the Pentagon's once air-tight
classified networks. They've become a pain
now, tapping into our high-tech command
shop at Barksdale. I've hawked the Company's
minisub night mission, gliding as planned
from the East China Sea up the Yangtze.
The target's less than 50 yards away
from the piers. One SRBM should scrap
the whole neighborhood. Just ruin their day.
Waste a few hundred. Ching-chong brass will crap.
I hope they push us. We'll show who's faster,
turning Peijing into melted plaster.

Roger Armbrust
September 24, 2007

WHO WILL KILL THE KILLING?

for Barham Salih
Prime Minister of Iraqi Kurdistan



Who will kill the killing if I do not?
No person or state should take people’s lives.
How a phone call saved me from Khadir’s plot
I cannot explain. How his hatred thrives
on the same book as my care for this land
I understand but cannot accept. Our
culture says kill him, but my steady hand
won’t lift the pen nor assign the death hour.
I walk the child’s ward of this hospital
in my Sulaimaniya, touch the nubs
of their arms and legs lost to mines. A tall
nurse brushes away her tears as she scrubs
a small back. Outside, I pray to do good.
The cloud-cloaked sun seems a pool of fresh blood.




Roger Armbrust
December 31, 2002

THE DANCE

Watching her video on YouTube, I
see her body sway and bounce at the mike,
easy response to guitar's rhythm--shy
yet sure singer's rocking the ride. It strikes
my heart. I recall years ago when we
dove into love--that whirling pool of fear,
laughter, long talks, intimate touches--free
to take chances, yet cautious as lost deer
in a dark wood. Her radio echoed
an old standard, Sinatra maybe. Bright
as a deejay, I chirped, "Hey, let's dance!" Slow
as syrup, she murmured, "I don't dance." Fright
froze her. I held her close. We barely moved.
Since then, she's gone a long way. I have, too.

Roger Armbrust
September 22, 2007

THE AESTHETIC ASTRONAUT V

I know we label Mars the Red Planet,
but, Houston, this mosaic of Valles
Marineris's hemisphere befits
mirror image for Gorgonzola cheese,
swirls and splotches of blue marble engrained
in vast, creamy terrain. I'm looking down
on Olympus Mons now. This massive, stained
mount dwarfs our Mauna Loa. Its huge brown
cliffs seem an irate monkey's furry face,
wide caldera its screaming mouth, a pair
of collapsed craters as glaring eyes. Trace
its ashen-toned escarpment that appears
a grained silver frame, it turns a trophy
lying on some thick, boundless flokati.


Roger Armbrust
September 21, 2007

WIND

Your angry swirls shiver limbs of huge oaks
lining this Highlands NJ hill edging
the Atlantic. I wonder, as sheets soak
us and you storm southeast, your rage dredging
swells from the sea’s great body, will you leave
clouds behind when you reach Namibia,
streak through sunlight along vast, ruffled sleeves
of desert coast, your torrid screams rename
Sossusvlei dunes while aeolian force
reshapes fragile tiers of their highest crests,
blister their tourists as your current course
batters ours, turning our beach to harvests
of caked mush, ripping awnings off our piers?
Then, next day, whisper warmly in our ears?


Roger Armbrust
September 18, 2007

VIEWING A PHOTOSYNTHETIC PHOTO

Yes, they look like honeycombs stuffed with green
peas, but they’re plant cells holding chloroplasts:
biological pathway’s pavement, means
for keeping us alive. Your salad’s last
romaine leaf, there on your fork—organelles
galore. We heterotrophs thrive on such
veggies, breathing oxygen they expel,
then ripping laminae from earth to munch
the mesophyll jazzed up with vinegar
and oil. Light energy turning to
chemical power within us—the star
of our existence. When our lunch is through,
let’s speak of our declining aquifers,
since this whole life process requires water.


Roger Armbrust
September 18, 2007

COMPUS MENTIS?

I’ve just read in Psychology Today
how recent research shows men prefer blondes,
tend to sleep around, incite power plays
to build great fortunes and secure their sons’
futures. Wouldn’t Anita Loos and Freud
be surprised. Pop shrinks find beautiful folks
bear more gorgeous daughters, but tend to void
short marriages, while birthing sons will coax
couples to cling. Fitzgerald and Ferber
would chuckle to learn their classic novels
rest on solid science. Would James Thurber
set a story in a Bronx street hovel
where a Muslim plans to bomb a complex,
not as martyr, but since he’s oversexed?






Roger Armbrust
July 12, 2007

JOHN GOULD FLETCHER

Though Little Rock’s library branch hails you,
it offered only one volume—South Star—
that day I sought your words. A native who
won poetry’s Pulitzer, you’re worth far
more. Wanderer, you proved Wolfe wrong, coming
home again. Fame had chased you from New York
to England where you refused succumbing
to Pound’s editing; saw your free-verse work
in Imagist anthologies. Poets,
still, deeply sense roots—their churning life-flow;
hear the haunting rhythm of home; know it’s
vital for honest writing, like sun’s glow.
Yet bipolar disorder’s bitter knife
carved slowly through; bled you of hope and life.



Roger Armbrust
July 22, 2007

B-B-B-BENNY AND THE JET

Hallelujah. I’ll help a saint ascend.
Partner Hinn (he addressed me as “partner”
in his letter) has requested I send
him a grand to help buy an airliner
for his future fleet. Dove One will carry
Ben and his entourage around the globe
to save souls. They’ll swoop up where it’s airy
in his Gulfstream G4SP, his strobe
of grace shining down on all. I can’t climb
aboard, though I’m a warrior with him. He’ll
emboss my name on Dove’s wall, though. In time,
he’ll pray for me. When he preaches, I feel
I’m inside the TV. My body glides.
My poor wife thinks he takes me for a ride.



Roger Armbrust
July 12, 2007

STRUMPETS

What shall we do to get the vote? Spread our
political legs to left and right, that
way covering the center? Scorn power
while holding secret meetings in our flats
to plan moves for taking control? Leer to
fool the public, insure ignorance, pick
their pockets while they sleep? Shouldn’t we do
them in by causing wars, assure they’re sick
through poison air, water, food, twisted words
of race, class, nation and creed? Condemn greed
while taking corporate kickbacks? You heard
our pimps laughing, didn’t you? When they read
their poll results, they know citizens scoff,
feel we screw them. But we’re just beating off.


Roger Armbrust
September 16, 2007

THE LARK DESCENDING

See that porch’s gaslight? Its flame flickers
smaller and smaller as fuel fades away.
That’s us slowly dying. Yes. You snicker.
Feel I mean just you and me. Did you say,
after reading “Flight of the Bees,” “Oh, they’ll
come back?” Shall I cite Audubon’s harrowed
report? Twenty common bird species fell
70 fold in 40 years. Sparrow,
bobwhite, meadowlark…Shall I go on? No?
Let’s argue how humans encroach, adapt,
and expect smaller lives to ride our low
conveyor belt of change. Well, the belt’s snapped.
Can we fix it for our children, knowing
our limits? Let’s…Wait! Where are you going?





Roger Armbrust
June 20, 2007

PRAYER

Since every sense is prayer, know when I think
of you, image forms communion with All.
My astral telescope’s focus, succinct
as flame, holds this great nebula’s starfall
and sees you there. My streaming Internet
captures Vaughn Williams’ “The Lark Ascending.”
I hear you in its violin. Forget
your warm breast against mine? I’m pretending
you lie here now. Velvet taste of sweet cream
atop my latte recalls your lip gloss.
Light jasmine perfume flowing through my dream
hints of you in the room. Since every loss
is prayer, I praise what others call a curse,
sending out this song to the universe.




Roger Armbrust
June 16, 2007

IVALEA II

I couldn’t take her to my senior prom.
Catholic High rules: Only St. Mary’s
girls. She went to Hall. I opted to come
to the post-dance bash; shucked the main soiree.
Weeks later, patient as ocean, she sat
through my graduation; then she caressed
my hand with the gift: a medal of Saint
Christopher, her name and the date impressed
on its back. I cherish it still. These years
later, I’ve blocked how it ended, or why.
But my mind often sees her smiling, hears
her soft voice. Betsy said, before she died,
she left this brief note: Please don’t forget me.
It’s clear to me now my heart won’t let me.



Roger Armbrust
September 13, 2007

PADRE PIO

Your photo portrays arms gently crossed, hands
bearing wounds like large bullet holes above
the wrists. Shy, you covered them with dark bands
when you said Mass. Shocked, the Holy See shoved
you from the confessional, denied your
demonic fistfights, your bilocating
to help souls at risk, the rose-rich odor
often flowing from you. The church’s sting
eased as Pope Pius privately confessed
he’d been “badly informed.” Still, you lived long
and died in Italy’s ankle; professed
how we should “Pray, hope and don’t worry!” Throngs
flocked to your funeral. Many still pray
to St. Pio of Pietrelcina.



Roger Armbrust
June 27, 2007

LATE CONFESSION

My sophomore year in high school, my Aunt
Mavis handed me a translation of
Caesar’s Gallic Wars–her gift to help scant
my chances of failing Latin, a love
act toward her favorite brother’s son—its
once chartreuse hard cover darkened with age,
the tightly weaved fiber ground deep with grit,
turned lemon-black, like harsh clouds that presage
tornadoes. She mussed my hair with her lean,
already-liver-spotted hand, softened
by Jergen’s lotion. Laughed, hugged me, chiding
my Catholic conscience when I mentioned
sins of cheating. Left when she’d kissed my cheek.
I tossed out the book after the first week.



Roger Armbrust
June 4, 2007

JOSEPH

for Ron Cassaday

Arrayed in your rainbow cloak, you explained
your brothers’ dreams. They threw you in a pit.
Then you defined Pharaoh’s vision, how grain
would flourish then fail; moved from jail to sit
as the king’s viceroy. Worth a treasury
more than the 20 shekels which once sold
you into slavery, you found pleasure
in testing your brothers, cared for your old
father, changed Egypt’s land-tenure system.
Now you shine in the torah, some Christians
honor a great saint, while faithful Muslims
see you as prophet, called “Moon of Canaan.”
Yet my heart feels, despite all these dressings,
you still value most old Jacob’s blessings.




Roger Armbrust
July 8, 2007

IVALEA

The first time I saw her, she stood graceful
as a Victorian porcelain, shy
and still at the high school party, tasteful
blue dress accenting her eyes of clear sky.
We danced. Amazed by her beauty, I sensed
irony of fragile strength in her touch,
intense intelligence in her silence.
Through those awkward months, I liked her so much,
my heartbeat dulled my head. I’d turned and she’d
vanished. Forty years have flown, yet I’ve saved
her soft smile. Last year, I learned she had died.
I’d like to go to Mayfield, find her grave,
listen and talk to her. Breathe in tranquil,
clear air. I'm praying that someday I will.


Roger Armbrust
September 11, 2007

MAX PERKINS

for Ted Parkhurst



Throughout each day, Max Perkins would edit
every phrase with no discretion. He’d
even flip words when tired. To his credit,
he remained faithful, sharing his small seed
with only one woman, and his slight swing
where they’d idle side by side, like bookends
awaiting hardbounds never arriving.
Did he label the publisher a friend?
Did his spirit rise high enough to love?
Bird watchers might know. And we can pretend
his preening proved a sign. He liked above
more than below, at least until the end,
when his floor circling announced the sad stroke,
and he fell silent, wrapped in pastel cloak.




Roger Armbrust
October 25, 2006

DINNER AT DIANE'S

Old farmhouse more than a pied-a-terre.
Her home. An aged depot, once docked
in Bigelow, its inner window here
still, frosted and marked “Tickets.” We four walk
the pasture, breathe in the peace. Chris and I
then sit, catching up on years away, while
Renie grills lamb and Diane simmers sides
of spinach and cheese grits. We dine in style.
I must say this right now about love: you
really can find it at dinner tables
in candlelight, its flame reflected through
eyes of four old friends, focused gaze able
to channel deeper than you’ll ever know.
There’s more than moon, stars, candle here aglow.



Roger Armbrust
May 31, 2007

TESLA

Unlike foe Edison, who trudged through dogged
study, you divined grand inventions in
fully constructed visions. Teachers dodged
your genius, would accuse you of cheating
for solving calculus problems in your
head. At 24, you foresaw AC
currents propelling induction motors
as you recited Goethe. Poetry,
then, would shake science. Your great idea
would change lives, lead to electric power
grids, stun thousands at Chicago’s fair—a
“City of Light”—soon see its glow shower
the globe. Years later, dead of heart failure,
the feds tried to steal your private papers.



Roger Armbrust
July 19, 2007

SECOND LIFE

I’ve had it with this bouncer’s job, tossing
virtual muscle-bound creeps out of Club
Fondle, and owner Stud Wheeler bossing
me like I’m a Neanderthal for grub
and only 50 Linden dollars an
hour. Boobie Shaker, our best exotic
dancer, won’t bed with me. She quit, began
a new gig as a banker. Think I’ll stick
hands into real estate development.
Become a sleaze landlord…Wait a minute.
This Internet fantasy game was meant
to improve my real-world view. I’ve spent it
bogged down in my same lost-soul crap, only
scrapping my dreams. No wonder I’m lonely.


Roger Armbrust
September 9, 2007

WHAT WOULD HAPPY BUDDHA SAY?

Bangkok patrols aim to halt young kissers
--Associated Press headline




Buddhist modesty, the patrolmen say,
makes them stalk by night Bangkok’s city parks,
searching Lumpini’s grounds for lust’s display
from mouth-to-mouth practitioners in dark
recesses near Rama VI’s statue, by
teardrop ponds of Royal Bangkok Sports Club,
in deep shadows of Chulalongkorn’s high
stadium walls. “If captured, will you scrub
them down with lye soap right there on the spot?”
I ask with innocent smile of Thaksin.
They suddenly spy two lovers. Their shots
flame the air as shouts spew out like toxin
toward these sinners, threats to democracy.
Like rats, lovers duck and cover, then flee.




Roger Armbrust
February 15, 2007

GRAPE CLUSTERS

These grape clusters clinging to vineyard limbs,
cresting and flowing out like sea-green founts,
form dark, mauve-shaded hearts, their outer rims
bulbous at top, narrowing to curled points
at base. Leaning my ear to dew-glistened
pericarps, I try godlike to fathom
these night-purple concords. If I listen,
perhaps I’ll sense their deep-seeded rhythms
carried up from the earth. Maybe then I’ll
absorb the pulse of healing origins:
how resveratrol aids my blood vessels
while cancers fall victim to psoralen.
I’ve read research papers of scientists.
Yet these vineyards enfold fertile secrets.




Roger Armbrust
September 8, 2007

TANTRIC SEX?

I’ve cleansed my body head to toe, even
doubling the Neti pot’s value, adding
salt to its warm water. Sandal paste’s sheen
helps my physique glow, and offers padding
to my erotic scent. Pranayama
eases my bhadrasana on the bed
as I prep for divine union’s drama:
Gods Shiva and Shakti so subtly wed,
awakening the sushumna nadi,
arousing kundalini from its coil,
climaxing in our Laja Samadhi.
What a celestial payment for my toil…
This can’t be right…I’m ripe for our mating.
So why does she keep on meditating?




Roger Armbrust
June 21, 2007

GEORGE ORWELL

Years before talking animals and Thought
Police, you stood in the trench near Huesca,
dawn at your back, when the Fascist’s gunshot
bolted through the air, tunneling your neck.
Sandbags shrunk to teabags as your eyes glazed,
blood seeping from your lips. The glaring streaks
of light fused with spewed gasps. Mates’ whispers phased
to sloshing footsteps bearing you as squeaks
of your stretcher recalled a child’s new shoes.
Somehow that image assured you of life.
A silver poplar leaf brushed your eyebrow,
making you long for Eileen, your new wife.
She would join you soon, caring for the wound.
You’d heal, your voice a haunting, muted sound.


Roger Armbrust
September 6, 2007

MODIGLIANI

Your pen-and-ink nude of Akhmatova
worships her slender form, lithe curves of her
long arms. Your yearlong affair shaped a trove
for her poems. When you lashed as lovers,
volcanoes wakened, your artists’ passions
firing new stars. She returned to marriage
and fame: Dubbed “Anna of all the Russias”
at 23. In Paris, disparaged
by debt, booze, and TB, you never stopped
painting with fire, portraying mistresses,
friends with almond-shaped heads, affixed atop
narrow necks like stretched stumps of stripped birches.
Meninges ablaze, you burned up inside,
only 35 and broke when you died.




Roger Armbrust
July 7, 2007

JAMES MEREDITH

Freedom to change has proved your battle call.
You filed suit to attend Ole Miss—its first
black student and graduate. Saw two fall
dead in riots as you entered. Were cursed
in and after classes ‘til they handed
you the diploma. Caught a sniper’s slug
on your peace walk to Jackson. Abandoned
civil rights. Became a stockbroker. Shrugged
off your brave past to join Republicans.
Ran for the Senate and lost. Complain how
white liberals prevent a black’s advance,
stifling growth with welfare programs. So now,
grown old breaking the hero’s mold, you can
fade quietly like most Americans.



Roger Armbrust
July 9, 2007

THE ARMCHAIR ASSASSIN X

I’m not much good for attacking our own,
but orders are orders. American
farmers, pissed as hell at wetback crackdowns,
have amassed land inside Mexico and
Central America. The Chief said sear
that offshore crap. Our satellite lenses
trail those dark drones easily through the clear
night skies of Baja and Belize. Rinses
of maltoxin will damage lettuce crops
and paralyze crews who work tomorrow.
Our sucker punch under stars puts a stop
to their harvests. You could hear the Chief crow.
I asked if our strikes caused market downturns.
His glare made real clear that’s not our concern.


Roger Armbrust
September 5, 2007

NIGHT OF THE HUNTER

William Packard, my creative mentor,
often lamented to his poetry
classes how Manhattan’s night sky tortured
artists: grazing herds of stars fallen prey
to those two voracious wolves—smog and lights.
Through years of walking Greenwich Village streets
or Washington Square Park, we’d cherish nights
when Venus peeked through. Seldom we’d just greet
the moon. Once, through winter’s bitter cold, I
limped lonely past NYU’s library,
turned on LaGuardia, looked up and sighed,
“Oh, my. Hello.” Orion’s glow carried
clear and bright as lovers’ eyes down to mine.
I felt caressed, warmed, lost in the divine.



Roger Armbrust
July 16, 2007

WILLIAM JAMES AND I

sally along Broadway near Astor House,
his birthplace. He suddenly starts to whirl—
pirouette flows to soft-shoe. He’s aroused
my prying: “Does this unexpected twirl
arise from some concrete spiritual
experience?” He smiles as he spins past
me, singing, “All five categories, pal.
I find them like bright, flowing gardens, vast
as oceans, deep in each creative feat.”
His feet pause. He’s listening to something.
I hear it. “Lives progress, become complete
through faith and actions we repeat,” I sing
out of the blue. He shoots a laughing glance.
Like O’Connor and Kelly, off we dance.



Roger Armbrust
June 28, 2007

PLACENTA

This bloody tissue prone in a small, blue
surgeon’s tub appears a flattened eggplant
or enlarged purple heart the span of two
hands. Perhaps a wine-soaked palm leaf merchants
offer desert travelers in Egypt.
I’m half in shock—having witnessed my wife
bear our Bess, just swept to the well-equipped
incubator—and half enthralled at life
so fragile once secured by this organ,
ephemeral and now separated
from intimate touch of loving humans
who had shared its metabolism, fated
to be bound the rest of their lives. Doctor,
please save this for stem cells. Is that proper?



Roger Armbrust
September 4, 2007

LIGHT MY FIRE

I still recall smooth sweep of her brown hair—
guarded from her sad eyes by a small clip—
blended with strands hinting of golden flair,
ends too short to touch her shoulders. Her lips
lost to any smile. Having just broken
up with some guy, fueling her self-pity
with Jack Daniels, she had barely spoken.
Our first date, I juggled and tossed witty
words to her. Ignored, they fell and shattered
at her feet. Feliciano began
his haunting “Light My Fire.” Like a tattered
coat, she crumpled in a corner chair, ran
her finger along the glass rim. She hummed
Jose’s song as his ghostly guitar strummed.

Years before in high school, I had admired
her from afar, like da Vinci’s lady.
But, oh, this college-party night, afire
with longing, I hoped to hold her, maybe
kiss like surprised lovers. But no. I whipped
down brews in revenge, ignored my despair
at her rejection. Laughed. Danced. Then I tripped
away, drunken Caliban; left her there
alone. The staggered streets of Fayetteville
sprinkled couples from frat houses and dorms
where ‘60s music blared caustic and shrill.
Their laughter beat down my slurred threats of harm.
Missing her, I cursed the night: frigid, starry.
Years later, I wish I could say I’m sorry.




Roger Armbrust
April 19, 2007

WHEN LOVE WAS A FUDGESICLE

When love was a fudgesicle shaped like a
frosted, mud-coated cathedral window
hoisted on a tongue depressor (say ahh),
we would nibble, lick, suck, and wonder how
its slick, dwindling mass still managed to melt,
stream with reckless speed down our tiny, pale
pirate’s plank, drool and dry until it felt
like tar stuck on our thumbs and fingernails.
Palates and lips numb from cold, we’d bear all
suffering; result to scraping wet wood
with our teeth when those last stubborn lumps called
for risky measures. Sometimes splinters would
curl up, find a gum, take pain to new heights—
pinpoint omens of future lonely nights.



Roger Armbrust
July 27, 2007

LIFE AS A DREAMSICLE

Our young senses swooned at surreal melding
of bright orange sherbet and vanilla
ice cream with a stick handle, slow melting
compared to sisters Fudge and Pop. Still, a
shudder of fear and wonder rose from us
when Creamsicle imposed its brief presence.
Our palates found no match for Dream’s promise,
Cream’s ice-milk dermis (watery essence)
a poor player next to our favorite’s
velvety inner flesh. And now, high tech’s
invaded our age—software composites
with Dreamsicle’s moniker, meant to work
in Walkman phones, threatening our dreamy shtick,
forcing humans to listen before we lick.



Roger Armbrust
July 29, 2007

THE ROMANCE OF AMBER

For her May birthday, I’ll honor Roman
legend; offer her this amber necklace
encasing a tiny crocus. How can
I whisper in sensual tones and trace
this gemstone’s history? Convert tree sap
to a lover caressing this fragile
flower? Reshape a poor blossom’s mishap
into a bridal shower? I’m agile
as a centurion, in strong command
of amorous conversation. I’ll show
why her jewel’s lustrous globule demands
thirty million years to harden. And how
I impart this gift without reservation.
Ah! I’ll use a power point presentation!


Roger Armbrust
September 3, 2007

THREE-MAN WEAVE

On basketball courts at Catholic High
and LRU, our practiced discipline
found graceful motion: two teammates and I
stretched the hardwood’s width, so at ease within
our moves, timed with leather sphere passed from man
to man. We’d catch and toss with fingertips
(never the palms), flicking our cat-quick hands
as if swatting gnats, our shoes’ rubber grips
yelping as they bit and released waxed floor,
passer cutting behind receiver, each
body barely missing each. I adored
the drill’s court-length curves, my ultimate reach
to the goal. We swayed as an entity.
Our dance, I see now, formed infinity.





Roger Armbrust
June 23, 2007

I'VE SEEN GREAT MEN FROM A DISTANCE

The Styrofoam coffee cup echoing
across the concrete like some haywire clock
invites me to trail its staggered blowing
down Kavanaugh. I follow for a block
and a half until it halts beneath some
blue SUV parked outside of Leo’s
gyro shop. Suddenly memory comes
sweeping back: My literary hero
Kurt Vonnegut strolling outside of Grand
Central Station in 1989.
How I decided to linger, then blend
in with the shadows as I trailed behind
perhaps thirty feet, matching his calm gait,
catching up when stoplights forced him to wait

at each corner of 42nd Street.
Cordovan loafers, brown slacks, tweed jacket,
right hand holding an umbrella he’d treat
like a walking cane, his steel-gray packet
of curly hair and thick mustache encased
a face serene as his pace. No social
critic this day. His eyes glowed, seemed erased
of any feeling except love for all
the great city displayed. At last I left
him outside the Main Library as he
rose past its silent lions to well-kept
volumes tracing our hope and doom. We’re free
thanks to words like his, urging us to seek
our own words. So he lived. He died last week.





Roger Armbrust
April 2007