KILLING THE ENEMY

Let me tell you how long this takes. The same
tick of a clock as to spit. Gasp. Maybe
spurt a surprised “ha!” Flow a single frame
of film over the projector’s bulb. See
a lightning bolt’s glow across the night sky.
Flick your lid’s lashed flesh to cover eyeball’s
iris and lens. Bite your lip or tongue. Cry
for help. Sweep the arch of a waterfall.
Swat a fly, blow a kiss, slap a high five.
I’m talking about that instant you prove
you’ve learned war’s routine for staying alive.
Forget everything you knew about love.
Reality flares in your Ka-Bar’s slash,
M9’s flash, Mark 77’s ash.


Roger Armbrust
January 30, 2008

LUISA

for D.

Luisa lies sleeping soft on my chest.
Your Luisa. Who I nearly cover
with both hands. So small. Three months old I’d guess.
Yet her breath matching my breath, like lovers
in rhythm. Earth lovers at peace with earth.
She sings in her sleep: her name and your name.
Too soft to hear, yet so clear. Sings of birth
from your body. Deep from your heart she came
almost without warning. Almost a dream.
I’m almost afraid to touch her smooth skin
lest I tarnish its color of pure cream.
I’m almost tempted to…I do pretend
she’s ours. Just for tonight, with this soft kiss.
Our Luisa. I smile as I write you this.


Roger Armbrust
September 9, 2003

"HERE'S LOOKING AT YOU, KID"

In mystic airport fog, Bogie’s talking
to Bergman. Curtiz and Edeson hold
him in close-up. I find myself flicking
the remote on still, pushing like some bold
producer up to the legend’s face. “Shit,
Rick,” I snap at the 26-inch screen,
“Cut the crap. You’re smarter than the film script.
Grab Ilsa, Laszlo, Renault, Sam. You’ve seen
they all hold transit letters. Jump the plane,
soar to Lisbon and its nest of spies. Dance
under King Jose’s statue. Laugh in rain,
Ilsa pressed to your chest. Yes, choose romance.
Let Victor win the war, fitting his name.
Let Louis slide. He understands the game.

“Leave the free French garrison for DeGaulle.
Sly your way to New York. Open up Rick’s
Café Casablanca somewhere near Wall
Street, or in the Village. Let Ilsa pick
the apartment in Soho; let Sam play
on a Steinway. How many years do you
have left, anyway? Thirty? Forty, say?
Look at me! Roosevelt’s lied, Truman too.
Ike will lie, Kennedy, Nixon, Clinton
will lie, and Bush will set Guinness records.
They don’t care about us. Why stay bent on
sacrificing? Set your own peace accord.
Hold Ilsa as though the last day lurks near.
Kiss her. Whisper those words she longs to hear.”

Roger Armbrust
January 26, 2008

I LONELY AM

I lonely am you of thinking night this
when smile shadowed of moon from above shines
and hill this beyond village lights small kiss
echo like memory like wind of pines
through falling long glistens shoulders your hair
over and breasts as angel’s hand your flow
wing-like my face blessed on warm feeling air
eyes my one your eyes as light heart aglow
as beating one let oh night not this fade
body before your my body burn grass
in soft as one lie we smiles our bright made
stars of angels heaven’s like flight in pass
over they us calling voices follow
to only they lovers place the allow.


Roger Armbrust
January 25, 2008

STREP THROAT

They always sneak in the side door when I’m
not looking, pyogenic pointillist
muggers curling across my tongue, red-slime
bodies contorting, minuscule sadists
covered in sandpaper and broken glass
scraping over my larynx each time I
swallow. They wallow in delight, then pass
up the Eustachian. Oh, my right eye,
flexing radish, secretes sticky fluid.
Now I’m on Amoxicillin. I guess
it’s working, a morbid man-virus quid
pro quo: My constant gulping inflicts less
pain, and yet I’ve lost my voice. My crusty
rasp makes my writing students smile. Trust me.

Roger Armbrust
January 24, 2008

GOING TO HEAR JAMES DICKEY

Summer 1992

Whisper rhythmic, I push south through a crowd
in Washington Square Park, angling toward
LaGuardia and Rozillio’s, proud
to be alive now, going to hear James
Dickey read, breathing in schizoid flames
of exhaust and stifling wind as I frame
words I’ll say to him: How, back years ago,
I’d end my Little Rock radio show’s
intro with The Performance’s sad close;
how on first playing his Caedmon’s Falling
I yelped like a pained pup: my applauding
his deep-gut “Ahhh, God!”…But he’s not coming…
stalled by a love’s illness…Hearing this, I
feel sand grind in my gut, like when I cried
the night Frank told me our father had died.


Roger Armbrust
August 1, 2001

LEONARDO AND LISA

Sometimes he felt guilty. Sudden flashes
of Anghiari would make her vanish
for brief seconds. She’d rouse him with dashes
of queries: Did he believe the Spanish
would attack Naples? Was he sad his head
grew bald? Ah, such questions from you, Monna,
he’d murmur, focusing on pyramid
and spheres, skin’s consistent color on a
hand and cheek. The poplar panel would warp;
he must frame it soon. He knew his fine oils
eased sfumato—flesh both shadowed and sharp,
without tired lines of motherhood. I’ll spoil
Andrea, she’d giggle. Winter down south.
He’d hear himself sigh, Please don’t move your mouth.

Roger Armbrust
January 14, 2008

FESTIVAL OF THE SPIRITS

My wife and I stand on Dahanyang Peak
able to spy a cove of Lake Poyang
where hundreds of citizens cast small teak
boats, each with a lighted candle, Jiujiang’s
honoring the dead...I’ve never confessed
how forty years ago, on an August
night like this, I crept—a killer, noiseless—
through a small lodge here, the general’s lust
quelled when I slit his throat, his concubine’s
windpipe crushed with one blow. The lovers shook
as though passion still danced. I slipped through pines
for hours. Rendezvoused. The Cav chopper took
me back to Khe Sanh…Candles glow like miles
of stars, she says, gazing at me. I smile.

Roger Armbrust
January 14, 2008

ROBERT PENN WARREN'S 1980 CAEDMON RECORDING

heard in April 2002


Your voice on tape, rasping meld of ancient
Southern preacher (only honest) holding
vowels an extra beat with sly penchant
for drama, and withered bullfrog scolding
us children on swamp’s edge not to enter
that dark mystery of slime and swarm lest
we fall, lost in the unholy center
of ourselves, guideless, gasping, with no rest
until the mud floor grasps us, releasing
then our new lives to rise and somehow find
within your lyric lines love so pleasing
we lose sight of all but falling snow, wind
chimes of you recalling your old friend Kay,
and embracing life as you walk away.

Your voice swirling me back to Little Rock
in the Seventies, shaken by power
of holding your prize: awe of Willie Stark,
but more of Jack Burden alone with her
in the huge house, and me, a poet young
in the work, stunned by the bolts of your art
striking page after page, leaving my tongue
dumb, caught up in beats of my aching heart
as I hear the once loving Muse whisper,
“No sense for you to ever write again.
I’ve given him all. You see? Let despair
hurl you away from me.” Bleary, tear-stained,
my eyes can’t focus on next week’s synod
when I’ll drink with friends and call you a god.




Roger Armbrust
April 19, 2002

FRIDAY PRAYER

At Hillcrest’s Damgoode Pies, Jason’s playing
the Beatles’ Revolver CD. Yuba
City, CA, my teen grandniece can sing
all lyrics to Elvis gold. A tuba
haloes Tronzo’s slide guitar on Spanish
Fly’s ’94 Fly By Night flowing from
my Internet. Spirit, please grant my wish:
Fill our great globe with Bill Asti’s wisdom.
Let fearful eyes see what he sees—vast breath
of human song, a single song’s lyric
in every action, each chord joining death
and life as one dance linking our mystic
selves to our earth selves—a city divine,
meeting this inspired architect’s design.


Roger Armbrust
January 11, 2008

MEMO TO THE ARCTIC'S NEANDERTHAL

New Evidence of Early Humans
Unearthed in Russia’s North
--The New York Times headline



Well. You’re fifteen-thousand years older than
we thought. While we haven’t found you per se,
today we discovered stone tools, which man
surely made, here by the River Usa:
a sharp rock edge held for chopping, its date
aligned with the four-foot mammoth tusk you
adorned with grooves. Still, we question what fate
you encountered when your artwork was through.
Did you kill, chop, chew, carve, and then move on?
Or spy a high mound to climb and cling to,
confiding to your mate, “We’ll call this home,”
just the way we apartment dwellers do?
We’ve found plenty wolf bones, no cave or tomb.
Which leads us to question just who ate whom?




Roger Armbrust
September 6, 2001

DEEP LONELINESS

Perhaps today, bare winter trees screening
afternoon sun into bone-thin shadows—
lain like starved corpses across this winding
asphalt drive and still creek swelled with stuffed rows
of wet dead leaves—or perhaps Hillcrest’s cold
streets with stripped Christmas trees tossed onto curbs
I studied as I walked here, let unfold
this feeling like my constant dream (disturbed
heart pounding, body falling, forever
falling through sphered black hole, endlessly deep
gorge of Great Evil’s jaws). Or perhaps her
sad eyes—glowing like misty light—I keep
locked in my heart’s vault, gem of memories,
reflect my soul. Perhaps it’s all of these.

Roger Armbrust
January 9, 2008

READING "HEROIN"

for Charlie Smith



I don't mind crying
in the NYU library
holding your new book
reading your first poem--
as sadness presses
against my chest
like forearm of a lover
rising to leave--
feeling loss of your wife
from heroin overdose
and wondering how
you handle license:
whether you had a wife
and if she used
and if she died.
I reflect breath-fast
on drug's ironic name.
As I reach bottom
I read the last line
whisper "stop there"
and smile slightly
as I turn the page
to learn you do.


Roger Armbrust
January 10, 2001

NEW HAMPSHIRE

Frost would say it’s far from the runaway,
more the grindstone, fire and ice, the onset
by Obama seeing Clintonites sway
with misgiving, visions of her aigrette
tossed in a disused graveyard where nothing
gold can stay, while still her plowmen, working,
watch her gathering leaves, trust her knowing
the need of being versed in country things,
whispering of our singing strength. And then
a boundless moment: the lockless door pries
open revealing a hillside thaw when
the valley’s singing day, blue-butterfly
day reveals Barak hurtling to earthward,
splayed on a tree fallen across the road.
Fragmentary blue. For once, then, something.

Roger Armbrust
January 8, 2008




.

POLISH

at Newark International Airport



Patient as a stain, he sits and waits at
his stand. Eye glasses reflect concourse light.
Brown bow tie lighter than his skin. Shirt that
resembles swans down: fluff and spotless white.
Legs, crossed in tan pants wrinkle-free to seam,
lift cuffs above ankles, reveal silk socks
off-white but clean. His laced cordovans gleam.
Shaved-head man, satchel in hand, checks the clock,
scurries into elevated seat. Hands
surgeon-quick curl up dark cuffs, sharply dash
leather with liquid, ritual command
of the show. Dry cloth, then wax. Rag long as sash
pops, flicked by rhythmic fingers. No chance
his flexing legs engage in unplanned dance.




Roger Armbrust
July 21, 2001

READING AMY

Love, I’ve read Amy Fusselman’s memoir
fragment in NYT’s “Lives” column, and
something’s changed, like when oxygen and our
lungs live as one. She writes of human hands,
how they kill spirit and heal spirit. She
does this with simple gestures, phrases small
and powerful, like child’s hand waving free
of fear, or palms pressed in prayer—silent call
to the Great All. She doesn’t say this. I
do because of what she’s said, her clear voice
urging me to answer. January
8, rainy morning. I welcome my choice
to keep playing Christmas carols, hearing
Julie Andrews. The blesséd angels sing.


Roger Armbrust
January 8, 2008

from "oh, touch me there: love sonnets"
published by Parkhurst Brothers Publishers

YOUR HEALING HANDS

for J.

No, not the terminal section of bird
wing, nor ape’s hind foot, crustacean’s chela,
single flower group’s banana cluster,
branched rootstock of ginger, not some yellow-
tan bunch of tobacco leaves, nor pointers
of clocks—all these terms referred to as hands—
these intricate human organs incurred
every day with grasps, shakes, high fives as grand
as winning, low fives as cool as wit—not
even these gestures, grace and gratitude
expressed in tactile sense, measure a jot,
or so it seems, to calm cure you exude
when you touch and hold my fingers in yours,
gently gripping bicep, rubbing shoulder.



Roger Armbrust
December 21, 2007

POST-"UN LONG DIMANCHE DE FIANÇAILLES"

After Mathilde looks at Manech, and looks
at him, and looks at him, after we see
La Fin, credits roll, and screen matches nooks
of darkness inside my lenses, finds me
seated alone in black room, I decide
this happens: She stays the weekend with him.
Alone in his shadowed bedroom, they glide
like great waves uniting, sleep at peace within
their sacred arms. She covers her right breast
with his hand, like the old days. Each time they
make love, distant memory glints, then crests,
then glints again, like the lighthouse beam’s sway
above them as they played years ago, sly
children laughing, echoing the gull’s cry.

Roger Armbrust
January 4, 2008

GOETHE AND LILI

for E.



Goethe, his young guide’s oar nearly silent
as it slices through Swiss river current
pulling them away from the ship’s party,
scratches dark lines over parchment. Hardly
hearing fading laughter, his ear intent
on assonance, soft clicks of consonants,
trying to stick within the scheme, still he
struggles to find worthy rhymes for “Lili.”
When through, he slips folded sheets in his vest,
staring toward shore, feeling he’s done his best.
Two centuries later, in Strasbourg, France,
a researcher shakes, now grasping by chance
two stained, creased love poems, never displayed.
(The news came a week before your birthday.)




Roger Armbrust
March 23, 2000

RESOLUTIONS

I form them by dipping the plastic stem’s
round end—like a lens-less magnifying
glass—into the soapy solution, skim
its surface, raise the foamy blowing ring
near my puckered lips, whishing out warm breath,
send transparent spheres—sometimes small as golf
balls, often wide as classroom globes or wreaths
at Christmas (rarely melded pairs set off
by membranes, torus-shaped), like clear jewels
glistening from my window’s light—floating
through my room, reflective orbs to fuel
daydreams: alien airlifts, or bloating
bosses drifting away. Then truth. I stare
as each frail planet quivers, bursts in air.

Roger Armbrust
January 1, 2008

MONET'S CATARACTS

birthday sonnet
for Eric Sweet




History has it his brown period
began with them as all things took red tinge,
the slow crawl of their blur starting to cloud
out light. But before censorship’s revenge,
at age sixty-nine he first showed Water
Lilies at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune.
Frustrated by his slow progress three years
earlier, he had destroyed works, too soon
to realize the light would never burn
as bright again, like world’s end at noon. Still,
even with vision fading, he returned
to the lilies, now mural-sized. Not will
alone could take him there, nor memory.
They say museums’ namesake sets us free.




Roger Armbrust
September 15, 2001