HEUREKA

for Jane Scarpantoni
at Irving Plaza
July 27, 1995



How did I
just a man
imperfect
and unwise
discover
this passion
fathoms deep
within your
burning eyes
and brawny
wired cello
vibrating
for hours
between your
sweat-soaked thighs
releasing
rhythms rare
as angels’
wings we hear
ascending
through night skies



Roger Armbrust

GREELEY’S HEAD

A pigeon shits on Greeley’s head
in Greeley Park near Macy’s.
But since he’s carved of stone or lead,
Greeley never minds feces
plopping, oozing down his face.
Like most of us, he knows his place.



Roger Armbrust

SUNDAY MORNING

The framed glow
of your naked body
silhouetted against
the backdrop
of half-closed blinds
as you dance
and sing
at the stove
to the track
of Mary-Chapin Carpenter
while your hands
like gentle birds’ heads
nip at the coffee urn
ignites inner glow
to my naked frame
laying in wait
on this firm mattress
to embrace you again
with the closing wingspan
of my now strong
now gentle
dancing
singing
self



Roger Armbrust

LOVE POEMS AND PAST-DUE BILLS

I keep love poems
and past-due bills
in the same brown manila folder
covered with bloodstained fingerprints.
I don’t know how they got there.
I only remember
wind chimes of gentle laughter
rhythms of stuttered breathing
and flashes of mute mouths
miming screams
from distant corners
of a room shaded in tones of flesh.
Portraits on scarred walls ignite
each time I close my eyes.
Yesterday they turned off the lights and heat.
Dim memory seems all I have left.
Tonight I keep the door locked
shiver in darkness
and try to deep breathe
as I wait for them to come.

Roger Armbrust

BEFORE YOU PUT THE BOTTLE

or gun to your mouth, give me a call. I’ll
tell how I obsessed over suicide
at seven years sober, raw flesh numb while
each shaking breath reeked with methyl bromide,
every swallow jagged shards of shattered
mirrors through my chest and gut. She had gone,
money dissolved, ego a smashed platter,
my higher power tossed a bitter bone
and shoved in a dungeon. Or so I thought.
How did I know you can’t imprison love?
It kept shoving me to meetings, then taught
me to pay attention. I sensed safe coves
when I heard a guy say: Get honest. Pray.
Help someone. I work on these every day.

Roger Armbrust
September 26, 2009

WHEN IT ALL GOES AWAY

I hope I’m in a safe place. Maybe with
gardens—roses, violets, sunflowers
maybe. Someone nice to read me Greek myths,
even act out Zeus, lightning bolts powered
by his gnarled hands. Maybe apple orchards
to invite sweet pies. A view of water,
maybe, nurses dressed like mermaids. It’s hard,
I know. Regs call for order. But laughter
still feeds the universe. And song. And dance.
Classical guitarists to play after
dinner, maybe—Broca and Auric. Chance
might bring a relative or old lover.
We can sit under stars, magnolia trees.
They’ll smile and tell me who I used to be.

Roger Armbrust
September 23, 2009

LOST IN SOME ETHER

for Nick Flynn


I really never stood a chance. Reading
the second page of acknowledgments, I
started to cry: …for being here always…
…for deep understanding…and…love that keeps
opening. What odds of survival could
I possibly muster once my fingers
curled in to those memories of your mother?
Once my eyes caught the glare of your words
flaring to images, counting all those ways
the heart can die: …hard O of its mouth…
conniving holy cards…you left naked
in snow…chalk scrawlings on the garage door…
small cuts on your forearm…commands to bike
into speeding cars…How can I explore
these lines for that crevice of light sensing
hope, signaling how suicide must lead
somewhere? How, when you keep quoting Einstein:
you can’t find it because it isn’t there

Roger Armbrust
August 12, 2001

SHALL I THROW THESE CANDLES AWAY

Shall I throw these candles away?
These condoms and baby oil too?
The classical CDs we’d play
softly to frame our gentle mood
of love? We adored Beethoven.
Shall I throw these candles away?

Shall I toss the pillows and sheets,
this blue comforter turning gray?
The futon mattress where we’d sleep
those winter nights you’d choose to stay?
In candlelight your warm face gleamed.
I’d watch your closed eyes as you dreamed.

Dare I take down The Odyssey,
tear out the page where you wrote “Love…”
or try to read Yeats’ poetry
bookmarked with pearl-white envelope
filled with strands of your sunrise hair?
I’ll hear your voice if I go there.

I’ll see blue eyes in candlelight,
soft fingers flicking guitar strings,
feel arms enfolding arms at night,
recall words, laughter, countless things,
silences, how you loved to play…
Shall I throw these candles away?


Roger Armbrust

SHADOW DANCER IN THE DARK

I grabbed from Ted a painting he wanted
to toss. Wrestled it really. He hates it.
I love it: Black on black. My bro’s haunted
by visions of eyes (like every artist)
glaring, condemning the incomplete. I
call it Shadow Dancer in the Dark—a
single contour sweeping—graceful body
center stage, slender-armed ballerina
in long ebony silk, elevé held
after lights have dimmed. Or spiral swaying
in sightless universe, arc poised to meld
with future light. Or lone priestess praying
in great night from home on my bedroom wall,
asking Loving Absorber to heal all.

Roger Armbrust
September 21, 2009

FORTUNE COOKIE

I watch your slender fingers crack creamy
crescent’s spine, shiny smooth-filed nails of thumb
and forefinger slip out white strip. Free me
of wonder, love. You read, lift sugared crumb
to your tongue, slide back, smile like a model
shooting a cosmetic spot, eyes blue lake
at sunrise. You stay silent. Why not tell
what your future holds? What’s lot’s psychic take
on life after General Tso and green
tea? Share if this brief fate concerns us two.
I list queries with my gaze. Now you lean
toward me, surrender cool destiny’s cue.
Two red-letter typed lines crimp my lips and brow:
Never tell romantic what he wants to know.

Roger Armbrust
September 17, 2009

THANKS BE TO GODDESS

Homer was no blind poet.
Fast as Hermes he saw
how bloodshed might blow it
in Book One of The Iliad.
Raging Achilles wouldn’t kneel
to vain Agamemnon.
Calling King Ag a heel,
Ach reached to hip for iron
to belt him on his crown.
Lucky for Ag and Homer both
the bard hurried Athena down
to force Achilles’ oath,
or heated debate could have turned gory,
making this epic a mere short story.

Roger Armbrust

CAPTIVES

Not daily two-hour bus rides from Jersey
to Manhattan and back—stinched seats rug-thin
molded to shockless floors—but those queasy
flashes through frost-grit windows: high wire fence
topped by barbed wire piled like unraveling
tumbleweed, capped again by shaved razor
wire curled like warped sabers. No traveling
at will from there, dapper in blue blazers
and shiny cordovans, bitching in our
minds how we hate our jobs more than they hate
us. That Newark prison made me cower
in split-second gratitude, clean my plate
at Shoreline Township Grill, cherish those nights she
sat with me, cupid-bow lips sipping coffee.

Roger Armbrust
September 13, 2009

PROPHET

They’re upset with me at church, don’t want me
back. I keep dashing down tight aisles during
sermons, pausing like Jonas at pews, see
feet peeking out and stomp them hard, curing
wicked souls. No one understands. Ushers
grab me, sometimes tackle, push me quickly
out exits. Last Sunday, one guy—crusher
with Samson biceps—crowned me with prickly
knuckles rather than thorns. I handle it.
Keep the faith. Think next week I’ll sneak in through
a sacristy door, Roman candle lit
and set for stars, smile humbly at guards who
carry me away, cop my ancient plea,
Oh take me and cast me into the sea.

Roger Armbrust
September 11, 2009

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

Birthday sonnet for
Catherine, my daughter


Sullivan told him, “Form follows function.”
He, of course, revised that to suit himself:
“Form and function are one.” No injunction
to stay fenced within European el-
ements. He was an American, free
to pioneer, use God-given talent
and the rest from God: draw naturally
from the site and all needs of the client.
Use native materials. Only stain
wood, never paint. The Prairie Houses proved
his point. Still, his good sense never abstained
from using machines to beautify wood,
but always with simplicity—vision
leading to his legacy: Taliesin.

Roger Armbrust
August 21, 2001

ANNA’S MARCHES

Early on, every major event
seemed destined for March: Kolya’s return
from Middle East; his leaving for Abyssin-
ia; and her publishing those yearning
first books, Evening and Rosary. By
your age called “Anna of all the Russias;”
by my age, she would pay for it dearly.
Early on, those Marches, she didn’t write much,
marking poems by day, month, or year.
Then, age 47, she sees Osip’s fate,
penning “Voronezh” to record her fear.
Four years after, holding barred prison gates,
she dedicates “Requiem.” Later on,
she dies in March, leaving us her poems.

Roger Armbrust
March 23, 1999

CONSIDER SPENDING TIME WITH ME

Consider spending time with me,
touching with such sensitivity
we trace each other’s fingerprints:
their rivers of identity and hints
of scrapes from guitar strings and scars
from tiny paper cuts. Do stars
glow below this skin where hands meet?
Our faces and eyes reflect their heat.

Roger Armbrust

SHORT RUNS OF LOVE

I’ve been listening to Sirius late-
night radio—love songs, fifties pop sounds,
sixties rock, slow moves mainly—like sly fate’s
shoved me back to my teen days when sad hounds
of loneliness and longing howled down deep,
hidden from full moon but feeling it push
and pull dark bloodstream. Those nights when lust reaped
eternal blaze of earth’s gut in your flushed
face and scorched groin, and shame sent you to bruised
knees, praying forgiveness, all while craving
to shatter a mirror or find excuse
to burn down your house…Screw all this raving...
I’ve been blessed: short runs of love through years saved
me from gallows, gas ovens, early graves.

Roger Armbrust
September 6, 2009

NO WAY TO SAY GOODBYE

Feel this: nothing between my shoulders and
thighs but my heart and nuts clamped in a vise
tied with a Gordian knot. Sweaty hands
hurtling small cassette’s forward and reverse
in eternal relay, hearing Leonard
Cohen over and over: Hey, that’s no
way to say goodbye…a caveman retard
impotent to tears, hunched on Avenue
of Americas’ curb, passion’s discard
numb to spring sun and blossoms. I didn’t
even want to drink. Just die. What’s so hard
about life: instinct. Its ape hand senses
and snags will’s last rung, refuses to let
go if we’re lucky, and won’t collect bets.

Roger Armbrust
September 5, 2009

DID YOU KNOW

power of touch when, passing by you reached
out, squeezed my forearm, released it and walked
through the door? It doesn’t take much for each
gesture to create a universe. Talk
of weather and I hear an aria
honoring cosmos. No wonder you smile
shyly when I stare, mute hysteria
overwhelming my eyes, their glazing while
you glance at me, wondering where I’ve gone.
Probably I’m skydiving, falling high,
scanning hurtling earth below, often prone
to wonder where you are, your luscious thighs
crossed like sacred arcs, your mouth a cupped rose.
I miss you now. But that’s the way it goes.

Roger Armbrust
September 4, 2009