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