VISION PRAYER

This haze I exhale on my eyeglasses.
This moisture forming soft fog on each lens.
This dry tissue cleaning as it passes
over small frames. Let this process now cleanse
me. Help me see clearly every image
I encounter this day and night. Glory
in each letter’s curve, each word’s growing stage
through phrase and sentence to structured story
or poem, memo or report. Guide me
in viewing each face I face, in reading
lips offering contact. Please remind me
how all things connect, mind ever heeding
clues to hidden links. Provide me with light
enough to sense faith, to keep hope in sight.

Roger Armbrust
December 30, 2010

THE RUNNER

I have two more blocks of trees
before I start to run
shielding my eyes
from explosions of sun
and finding again
deserts of asphalt
and again
far beyond
stone and glass towers
where the sad people run

All day among towers
I run with them
but never get close to them

To survive within this dying land
I play sad people’s games
Now they are the hunters
and I am the prey
Now I am the hunter
and they are the prey
Sometimes
we don’t know
who we are

When exhaustion strikes
ripping my lungs and gut
I hide
vomit and cry
and whisper
I am afraid

All this
only to return
to the running
while the sun
hovers and falls
a signal for me
to fall back
to the trees
and the night
and to you


from How to Survive © 1979 by Roger Armbrust

SPEAK SOFTLY OF MIRACLES

I want to speak softly of miracles,
love: of Haydn’s Miracle symphony,
how its violins ascend—lyrical
praise; of Vivaldi’s Summer—rhapsody
through harp’s replacing violin’s sweeping
storm; of Bach’s sweet Violin Partita
transformed by eight-string guitar in keeping
with master Pound’s imaged command: Make it
new. I want to whisper to you how strings
release to fingers’ pressing tips—spirit
flowing forth in cords’ response, creating
vibrations throughout our cosmos. Hear it
even in still air as we breathe right now.
Our mute lips touch—miracle of our vow.

Roger Armbrust
December 3, 2010

BLAZING STAR

Father, we saw a blazing star appear
from nowhere! My son, have you been drinking?
We cowered, shocked shepherds, then knelt in fear!
My son, now it’s clear: you must be stinking.
An archangel then appeared before us!
My boy, you surely are delirious.
Virtues stood with him and sang in chorus!
Jessica, his sickness is serious!
Go find a physician! The angel said
a savior child is born in Bethlehem.
We went to see him, no longer afraid!
Wait! Who is “we?” I, Mered and Abram!
What! You just walked away and left the sheep?
My son! My boy! Oh, Yahweh, how I weep!

Roger Armbrust
December 1, 2010

DARK MORNING

I rise in dark morning, lava burning
through my body, my mind’s maniacal
editing session steeped in lost yearning
for you and yet beyond you, radical
voices screaming and whispering rumors
of what we’ve been and may become. I must
write it out now while fire brings light. No more
images spewing relentless. No rust
coating cold memory. Record the storm.
And yet as I write, I’m hearing again
Dvořák’s Cypresses, feel healing calm
surround me, caress me through gentle rain
of violins, reminding again how
all brings prayer: rhythms of words, music’s flow.

Roger Armbrust
November 29, 2010

VISION

Sometimes when I close my eyes, I’m floating
suddenly beneath strange pulsating sea
calming yet electrifying, something
like bright cloud yet not cloud surrounding me
in vibrating rainbow light. I feel you
with me, love, though you’re gliding out of sight
somewhere in our mystic ocean, its hues
a dream spectrum of mystery, like night
and morning weaved in silent meteors
blazing in slender streaks through gray-blue space.
Then I somehow sense something like splendor
of your psyche, me suspended in grace
of your eye’s iris, my soul free of fear,
and through your magic sight my vision’s clear.

Roger Armbrust
November 27, 2010

GINGER

Yes, I bow to his greatness, yet still I
watch just you, flowing in your feather dress,
mirroring his every move, and I sigh
when he enfolds you, delicate caress
so natural to your ballroom ballet.
You gaze and seem to adore him, then glance
away as you float toward floor, briefest sway
to your curved form, then stop, sensual dance
turned to still photo. You trust his holding
you with single hand completely. He lifts
you. Together you whirl, leap as one, bring
your lovemaking to an end—artist’s gift
to all—stroll in graceful steps to that wall
where you lean, stare with love. Again I fall.

Roger Armbrust
November 25, 2010

SPEAKING IN MANY WAYS

I whisper to you with song lyrics, call
softly through links to my sonnets, offer
prayers to our intelligent loving All
to heal and guide you through spirit’s softer,
easier way. It’s raining tonight, pure
gentle chorus seeming to echo how
mind, body and soul form chanting contours
of our days, speaking in many ways: Vows
sometimes, sometimes suggestions, tearful pleas
for distant days past and future, laughing
sighs as we recognize ourselves at ease,
rising from our present fog. It’s raining
tonight. Oak trees glisten like jeweled hills.
Car lights guide dark, hissing shells. Then it’s still.

Roger Armbrust
November 24, 2010

YOU STAYING WITH ME

My feelings you may never realize,
these sonnets you may never see. My thoughts
of you when fading night turns to sunrise
and I too rise, your smiling vision caught
up in my psyche and calmly welcomed
there like an old friend caressed so warmly
before holiday’s fireplace. Your grace comes
so briefly and yet reverberates, flees,
then returns to walk with me through countless
days. How do I account for you staying
with me through these sacred hours, my eyes blessed
with your essence? Surely constant praying
to my higher power confirms your kind
spirit’s presence, consecrating my mind.

Roger Armbrust
November 23, 2010

I REST IN YOUR SADNESS

I rest in your sadness as our earth rests
in dusk, aware of night. I rest in your
joy as ocean rests in dawn, hints of crests
mirroring sky’s great light. I rest in pure
pores of your body lying still in late
afternoon, Liszt’s Dreams of Love pouring through
us, spirit’s phloem. I rest in palette
of your whispers, those brilliant colors you
blend into images of our soft calm.
I rest in your silken arms as a king
wrapped in scarves blessed by some archangel’s palm—
once touching gentle weavings—now stroking
our breasts. I rest in your soul’s divinity
as stars in cosmos caress infinity.

Roger Armbrust
November 22, 2010

LIFTING AND FALLING

This milky fog lifting past our great oaks
and pines will soon give way to dawn. This dawn
will soon lift subtle dew’s soft sea that soaks
fallen leaves and needles covering lawns
as we walk past Grace Church, St. Mary’s school
stretching for blocks—a compact corpse rising
to life in a couple of hours. This cool
wind sends leaves and needles falling. They sing
so softly. Listen, love. Pause with me here.
Hear this crowded chorus performing its
near-silent chant. Should we two humans fear
its descending dance? Mounting deposits
of cells no longer flowing? We’re moving
as one now, slow, meditating, loving.

Roger Armbrust
November 21, 2010

DIVERTIMENTO

You who come to me in moonlight over
this silver cloud sea, you who ride glowing
seashell defying all odds, my lover
in dreams golden fathoms deep, allowing
me lives within my life, please wait for me.
You who lead me out of mystified sleep
to magic fog veiling dawn’s reverie,
you who whisper sacred legends to keep
us alive, keep me. You with angel hair
flowing, ether breath blowing all knowing
into my yawning mouth, sealing your care,
your glistening-mist arms lifting, showing
me distant stars where lost psyches repair,
pause, caress me, lift me from here to there.

Roger Armbrust
November 20, 2010

ANGELS HEAR YOU

Angels hear you when you pray. I hear them
in their singing when they sing of you, their
voices majestic wind chimes—Seraphim
surely, six wings in rhythm with your prayer.
I can’t tell what they sing. I’ve never learned
angelese—their syllables blending tongues
from Christians, Jews, Islam, all souls concerned
with petitioning higher power, sung
in single chorus. Still, in their joyous
messages I seem to make out your name.
I seem to sense how Virtues enjoy us
humans while their chants of praise spread your fame.
I catch the sound hands—your hands—their smooth angles
spread like gentle wings: envy of all angels.

Roger Armbrust
November 18, 2010

YOUR BIRTHSTONE

Astrologers assign you beryl, gem
of hexagonal crystals, its colors
varied as our visions—a diadem
stars would decorate in heliodor,
morganite, aquamarine, emerald,
even gold. Jewelers offer you citrine
or translucent topaz, stone to herald
clarity I saw in your eyes that time
you spoke to me at Crazee’s. Remember?
(I like your birthday rising up five suns
before my clarity date—November
day I stumbled into graceful region
to calm my soul.) Ancient mystics would bestow you
with pearl: its birthplace like your eyes—the sea’s gray-blue.


Roger Armbrust
November 17, 2010

RAINFALL

Rainfall trods past like distant troops tonight.
Raindrops pile in blurred puddles reflecting
lightning strikes of streetlights. Where is your light
tonight? I’d stride through pellets deflecting
off pavement like senses bombarding our
brief lives if I felt you’d welcome my soaked
body, that your body wouldn’t cower
to my slick, warm arms, let my torso cloak
you as I’d stroke you soft as gardeners
tend flower petals, let you enfold me
as water encloses swimmers, tender
response to their smooth, rhythmic reverie.
Do you see me outside your door? I call
from your curb: Let me hold you in rainfall!

Roger Armbrust
November 15, 2010

GRASPING

for you just won’t do, nor should it. When my
body moves toward you, let it be our dance,
waltz perhaps, or tango. Whenever I
reach for you, let our fingers touch, slight glance
of palm on palm as we pirouette, our
eyes blazing, mirrored joy of exploding
stars. Let our graceful limbs ascend and pour
like spiritual waterfalls, floating
over shining floor, bright as great legends
called forth in song. If ever I do grasp
you, oh let my open mind comprehend
your blessed, unflinching gaze, my psyche clasp
your gentle face as sails catch winds, seething
in passionate moisture of your breathing.

Roger Armbrust
November 15, 2010

GRACE

How many gazers mightst thou lead away,
If thou wouldst use the strength of all thy state!

Your form, from a distance, portrays power
of divine gift—how limber limbs, figure
curved classic draw eyes’ respect like towers
constructed for praising goddesses. Your
eyes control our universe, it seems, from
your face’s oval frame as souls face you
at close range, curtain of golden hair prom-
ising graceful stages—gentle venues
offering romantic comedy, smart
drama to crush the heart. Lips’ curved platform
displays more than words express. Still it starts
always with grace, lifting you to conform
with light, revealing honest essence—glow
letting me applaud you more than you know.

Roger Armbrust
November 12, 2010

WARRIOR BRINGING PEACE

for Major Tim Williams

In 1919, history books tell
us, under Amanullah Kahn, the Third
Anglo-Afghan War began. Now we’ve heard
how a warlord of similar name fell
last November. And now how you, no way
to tell the future, went down from Shindand
to Zerco Valley, hope in heart, to say,
“Let us have peace here.” And how warlords’ hands
reached out in peace, exchanged Holy Korans,
silencing screams of death between the tribes.
And now you stand in green robe with gold strands,
gold medal over your heart, words inscribed
to honor your bringing peace, your blue eyes
looking somewhere. Perhaps home: the great prize.

Roger Armbrust
March 5, 2007

KEEP CLOSE

dear shadow, but please don’t overshadow
me. Keep close, dear light, yet refrain from bright
blinding sight of you. In deep blue halo
of your ocean eye, flow each day and night’s
focus to our primary purpose—sane
action rising from earth’s each breathing cell
sharing spirit. Keep close to heart our main
line of contact that we may smile and tell
of gentle days, of shadow’s tears, laughter’s
light, how lips’ horizons guided us through.
Keep close through silent prayer so long after
our brave slender hands have waved farewell, you
will feel close to me, texture’s tender care
as warm as spring sun, as vital as air.

Roger Armbrust
November 11, 2010

TIME

Giving slight time to sorrow, I refuse
to borrow but a bit from denial.
Showering precious hours with song, I use
melody to measure honest trials
of time, tones of my poems both recalling
and calling up images of you—my
method of celebrating beauty. Sing
of my muse, gentle wind, I intone. Fly
to caress her in sleep with my deepest
mantras of care. Carry us to your heart’s
canyon, fertile spirit’s field of deep rest.
Since selfish time grasps and holds us apart,
I won’t base our continuum on years,
but laughter, your glistened prisms of tears.

Roger Armbrust
November 10, 2010

EVERY POET SEES A MUSE

Every poet sees a muse. I see you.
Your oval face, pointed chin, sacred skin,
slender brows crowning eyes of piercing blue
caught me off guard during lunch that day when
you suddenly appeared, amazed to meet
me, you said, though I was the soul amazed.
I gazed at you, prayed to appear discreet
as we spoke, though your magic rhythms raised
mystical images, subtle rhymes. Soon
you disappeared like mist rising to sky.
Yet I watch you daily in shadows framed
by our small space where honest words abide.
Now, lying by myself in darkest night
I’d swear you’re here, lovely in candlelight.

Roger Armbrust
November 7, 2010

LOCAL HERO

You don’t know this. Tonight we watched this film
together. Smiled softly to its gentle
tone. Laughed till we cried at eccentric whims
of loving souls. Cried till we laughed, able
to caress Scottish brogues and honesty’s
showering scenes with color and light to
challenge aurora borealis’s
ballet. Lying on my flowered couch, you
turned to watch me watch you until I rose
to join you. We sighed at neighbors strolling
the beach, moaned our oh no with the hero’s
leaving. Sat in silence, credits rolling.
We held one another like lovers do.
You don’t know this. But, then, maybe you do.

Roger Armbrust
November 9, 2010

I WONDER

if you ever wonder if I wonder
about you at dawn. Silent, I listen
to Blackberry Winter, distant thunder
of mountain dulcimer blend and glisten
with violins. Sweet tension. It rushes
to tap dance as they circle in ballet
surrounding us, you and I. Small thrushes
soar around us like brief spirits, blue-gray
in morning glow, land in brushes to test
early fruit, its unripe essence frosted
jade sculpture. I’d pluck jewels to invest
in earrings for your Christmas, each embossed
with couplets of my care for you. Still, I
leave them to mature to black pearls, soft-bright
rare treasure, like your soft eyes in moonlight.

Roger Armbrust
November 9, 2010

LAST NIGHT I DREAMED

we sat by St. Mary’s pool, you leaning
on narrow diving board, your legs dangling
like gold wands toward blue water, I meaning
to praise you, yet blurting as if strangling,
I’ve been thinking about you a lot. Your
blue eyes teared, looked straight ahead, not at me,
slim body slowly sliding to water,
then underwater, my eternity
of imprisoned voices gasping, Oh no!
I dove in, treaded water, watched you rise,
floated in wonder. How your soft smile glowed,
matching gentle eyes. In flowing surprise,
we swam side by side. Though we never spoke,
we seemed somehow to pray. Then I awoke.

Roger Armbrust
November 7, 2010

PEOPLE KEEP GOING

I try to make them stop, wave them over
to cracked curb, or thrust my arms out, shouting
“Halt!” I even scream, “Hey, I’m your lover!”
Hurl my body in dark road, lie pouting,
awaiting crushing wheels. But only hear
tires howling, angry wail of horns, tongue blasts
billowing flaming curses. Through charred tears
I view their blurring carcasses streak past
like flaring rainbows. Then silence. Lying still,
still alone, I start to listen. Sense clicks
of crickets, skylarks’ litany fill
clean breeze, scent of distant pines, discern flicks
of sun. Raise my head. See far-off hills, fair
and emerald. Rise to make my way there.

Roger Armbrust
November 6, 2010

1492

The year Columbus set off from Palos
de la Frontera, his voyage blessed by
Isabelle, Pietro Torrigiano
broke Michelangelo’s nose, it’s bridge nigh
a knot in the legend’s future portraits.
By October, Chris found San Salvador
as Il Divino, his artistic fate
painted by Lorenzo’s death, set off for
home. He cuts into corpses, studies their
muscles’ structure and grace, sculpts Hercules,
learns later how it’s lost in France. Near year’s
end, carves a wooden crucifix, Jesus’
naked body a slender reed. Christmas
morning, Santa Maria runs aground
on Hispaniola. She’s left abandoned.

Roger Armbrust
November 5, 2010

PORTMANTEAUX

I keep repeating it in a whisper
as I lie in bed, rhythm vibrating
darkness as if I’ll somehow disappear
resolving into foreign countries, bring
luggage beside me in each, Greece perhaps
and Germany, or distant orbits like
Venus and our moon. Now set as two chaps
wandering different auras, psyches
surrounded by forms blending images,
we echo their evolving meldings: smog,
brunch, woons for our icemilk. Then in muterage
we sight gerrymandering, napalm, log
our brief lists of morphings much less rueful,
fill our ginormous needs to feel clueful.

Roger Armbrust
November 2, 2010

TARNISHED KNIGHT

I tell myself time will arrive to get
you started. Time will come to stand beside
you. Time will stand as we lie under sets
of oaks, leaves and stars reflecting the tide’s
rhythm through brief night. Time will hear rhythms
like soft breeze through your vocal chords. Time will
touch your throat, feel vibrations as schisms
of earth and air when breath flees body. Still,
we will watch one another like heroes
created by great poets: blessed maiden
touching dark water, bringing light, a rose
warmed by the vase of your breasts, gentle grin
causing this tarnished knight to wish all time
would sing as I hand you this leaf of thyme.

Roger Armbrust
October 31, 2010

JULY 4, 1974

Phillies versus Mets. Jones knocked in four runs
in New York’s 5-2 win. We four leaped
from our third-base box seats, shouted like Huns
having conquered Rome, then joined bleating sheep
who didn’t keep seats for fireworks, winding
to the lot behind Shea. We chose to stay,
sitting on our Chevy’s fenders, finding
Orion before the blazing display
ignited the night. I thought of Franklin
in Philly, inking the declaration.
I saw Washington viewing stern Britain’s
navy crowding the near bay, our nation
on the brink. Cinder pellets tapped our laps
and shoulders, rhythmed off our Met-blue caps.

Roger Armbrust
October 31, 2010

SHY RETREAT

When you touched my hand and called me poet
I crumpled and curled like an ancient scroll
deep within my heart. I didn’t show it
outside. Acted as though your warm words rolled
away without notice, like some marble
cracked and abandoned beneath your dark chair.
I’m sorry. I longed to reply, warble
honest praise honoring your soft face, stare
at your glistening eyes the entire hour.
Instead I joked softly, mocked my praying
hands, cherished your laughter, then I cowered
to the side wall. Sat and gazed, portraying
your half-hidden profile as classic. Emailed
my inner self verse about your ponytail.

Roger Armbrust
October 29, 2010

BURNT TOAST

Crisp and cracking like dried bark, my fingers
breaking its charred, pockmarked skin to quarters
with dark gummed borders, aroma lingers
like ancient scent of lost cities, martyrs
smoked from village huts, my love letters you
struck a match to once you ruled we’re no match.
I study blackened rind, my heightened view
as a falcon might sight forest’s edge, batch
of cinders melted and melded like parched
leather strip, corpse of soft ribbon you bound
around my letters long before you marched
out from this breakfast room, our hallowed ground
where light jokes and laughter rose after we woke,
life’s bread lost in our…my…toaster’s phantom smoke.

Roger Armbrust
October 28, 2010

WHEN THE NOTE COMES

mark its symbol in proper location
on your staff, designating each tone’s pitch
and duration. This communication
resonates with musicians, showing which
key or string to impress. When the note comes
promising to pay his debt, pray for all
who must respond to its effect, since some
fate may surely intervene, cause your call
for days in court. When the note comes giving
you her answer, revealing her love’s weight
place it gently on your scale, reliving
her psyche, each graceful sentence’s state.
Consider what it connotes, why you’ll keep
it forever, whether you shout or weep.

Roger Armbrust
October 27, 2010

ORBITS

Love, if I may call you love, when my first
glance dove to stare, studying your stature
there (though seated on narrow bench), my thirst
for deep caress returning with rapture
of the deep, my eyes orbiting away
then back again, feeling our brief distance
would never narrow to touch, just what swayed
you toward me? Would Al Einstein call it chance,
how joy of gravity drew us closer?
Would soothsayers cite the full moon neighbored
by Venus’s magic glow? She chose her
holy light to show us just who we are.
And so we closed hands, said hello, agreed
to go our ways, not knowing where they lead.

Roger Armbrust
October 23, 2010

POOR GHOST, OLD LOVE

Our potholed parking lot would threaten us
nightly as we weaved in from Dickson Street’s
haunts, sauntered in laughing zigzags and cussed
each stumble and scrape, motions indiscreet
as savages attacking our front doors.
Locked inside, wrapping ourselves within each
other’s skin, carpeted living-room floor
metamorphosing to bed, muffled screech
of coming buffered by Dylan’s cool plea
for his lady to lay, we’d lie at last
silent, save for soft-sigh breathing, gently
stroke each other’s groin, bodies sensing vast
night’s blessing. Our smiling ironic lips
barely echoed the record needle’s lisp.

Roger Armbrust
September 28, 2010

THE MYSTERY

she said, lies never within your question
but always within my answer. My words,
she said, ever effuse cloud, suggestion
masked like faces passing in some absurd
candlelit hallway or strobelighted room
where surgeons flash scalpels, laughing as they
slash mannequins stuffed with orchids from tombs
of ancient pharaohs. Remember? We’d play
doctor and nurse as children. I’d touch your
body parts and you’d clutch mine like gumdrops.
I’d giggle and you’d cry, felt your impure
soul would sizzle like ground round now you’d cropped
your psyche’s uncut prod. I’d start to pour
honey over us. You’d squirm ’cross waxed floor,
squawking like Poe’s raven, then out our door.

Roger Armbrust
September 16, 2010

SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

for William Packard


The day before your sixth birthday, Auden
wrote of sitting in a dive observing
a city caught up in fear and awe. When
he did, I suppose someone was serving
you dinner miles away, Mamaroneck,
pre-party promises as you slurped ade
while Auden sipped ale, alone in the dark
bar’s corner, napkin stained with words he made
stand at attention in eleven-line
stanzas. Some thirty years later, he told
you he had disowned those verses: a fine
line he had drawn for truth. Now, on this cold,
evil day, after you’ve turned sixty-eight,
we smell death, feel pain, can call his lines great.

Roger Armbrust

POSTILION

No coachman’s padded rest for my body.
Mount me on muscled flesh of the left front
stallion, ancestor from Poseidon’s seed
who seems to breed salt sea through pores. We hunt
unknown rutted highways as one, respond
with single reflex to dip, bend and rise,
feel brash wind slap our manes, our bodies fond
of refreshing rain, sparking sun, our eyes
flashing at night from dark road to bright stars
and mystic moon, swarthy forests swiping
at our shoulders. What life can be bolder
than latching legs to massive galloping
loins, than pressing groin to back, face to crest,
hearing speared hooves pursue great earth’s conquest?

Roger Armbrust
September 10, 2010

TURTLES AND TATERS

Turtles and taters is what I like.
One you play with, one you bite.
Funny thing is, both have eyes.
Turtles and taters I idolize.

(Turtles come in a shell.
Taters come in a sack.
You can gnaw on a tater
but turtles snap back!)

I’d like to live a myth
in a small happy state
where turtles are played with
and sweet taters are ate.
Where you never grow up
or have to go to school.
Just mash taters in a cup.
Play with turtles in a pool.

(You can make tater soup,
make turtle soup too.
Taters don’t mind so much,
but turtles sure do!)

Someday I’ll be king of a land
with a turtle by my side
and a tater in my hand.
And there we will live
just like a family:
that ole tremendous team:
turtles, taters and me.

Roger Armbrust

BURNING

Lately I’m waking burning with the sun,
images and phrases pouring through my
mindyard—waifs released for recess. They run
in circles, then scatter and hide. I try
to call them back, but they laugh and dissolve
in some distant morning fog. I manage
to grab one or two, hold them with resolve,
promises of nurture. After they rage
or plead, depending on moods, I hear sighs
of surrender, feel their forms succumbing,
begin to fall in line. I watch their eyes.
They start to play. Others appear, thumbing
noses, prancing away. I smile and sway,
focus on chants from those who chose to stay.

Roger Armbrust
September 9, 2010

TO MOVE WITH THOSE WHO MOVE

Perhaps this is all I want. To admit
my one hundred trillion cells each exists
in its own universe yet moves to fit
with other cells. How they wink-quick resist
gravity to divide and conquer (so
to speak), combine to form instant truces,
live well together as their numbers grow.
Attack insurgents without excuses.
Always respect nuclear families.
So how do I, collected mass of their
civilized societies, match such peace
and focused energy? Do they say prayers?
Throughout their days, as functions integrate,
reproduce, do they pause and meditate?

Roger Armbrust
September 8, 2010

FLUTE

Eugenia Zuckerman’s hypnotic
notes flow through my earphones, levitating
me over rainbow waters of Alec
Wilder’s Air for Flute, our meditating
as one within caressing melody.
Surely these mythic sounds enamor Pan,
recall his search for Syrinx, her body
turned to slender reed, her haunting song fanned
by soft breeze. Surely now I see how ired
pied piper could entrance Hamelin’s brood
to trail him out of town, their psyches fired
with visions of paradise. Did their mood
change, I wonder, or simply stay entranced?
I think I know. I seem to rise and dance.

Roger Armbrust
September 7, 2010

FACE FACTS

She’s coating her mouth with black licorice
and her closed lips curve like two-lane blacktop
before laying centerline’s yellowish
stripe. Now she’s shading her eyelids (oh stop!)
with bat dung she found in the cathedral’s
bell tower last week when hiding from nuns
searching for her after vespers. Their calls
faded like virginity after one
semester in college. She’s painting her
puffed cheeks with pine tar she scraped off Brett’s bat
last month at the Hall of Fame. Monitors
were eyeing Lincecum on iPhones. (That’s
a home run, wouldn’t you say?) I’m swearing
now she’s leaving, and that’s all she’s wearing.

Roger Armbrust
September 5, 2010

WAKING UP LONELY

Tell me again of solitude’s power,
of how I need you, not her, to grasp all
not in my hand but in my heart: stark hour
of meditation when my mind recalls
I can’t create false reality no
matter how I try or hope to. Rivers
run backwards only in pentimento
of my imagination, its liquored
and lacquered landscape reappearing like
flashing frames of a bad film. The townhouse
next door’s baby cries, leading my psyche
to window, sky, vast view where spirit’s roused.
It doesn’t take long to find you today
since I have yielded, decided to pray.

Roger Armbrust
September 4, 2010

YOUR SKIN

Sacred earth of your existence. Essence
of humility. Guard for your body’s
internet. Sensitive shield whose presence
soaks up sun yet fends off evil disease.
Chalice of your vital ocean. Outlet
for salted waste. Vast elastic coating
fitting you for motion and sleep’s pallet.
Multilayered cover ever boasting
nature’s greatest sculpture. Now gaze clearly
in your mirror. See ultimate in art:
Your face’s texture and glow could nearly
turn a Greek god into fire, a man’s heart
into lava, raise a goddess’s ire
since your dimpled smile’s just what gods desire.

Roger Armbrust
September 3, 2010

UNAVAILABLE WOMEN

Passing, they pause and smile and kiss my cheek
then run away, entering rooms where I
can’t go. I call to them, but they don’t speak.
They lock their doors, never explaining why.
I sit by firelight, hear a guitar’s soft
hum from one closed space. I’d swear there’s crying
within the music. From a sealed-off loft
a trace of laughter, and sensual sighing
rising from the basement. Why don’t I leave
this negative nunnery, this teasing
mansion of rude solitude? I still cleave
to each smile and kiss, find each pause pleasing
though brief as a breath. It’s like, I suppose,
purgatory’s promise. Well, so it goes.

Roger Armbrust
September 1, 2010

IN CONFIDENCE

It’s of the cliff I must speak to you now.
The rising cliff which holds our gaze like light
hypnotizes beings in flight. Look how
it invites each grasp, each foothold. Could night
warn us to halt, it would, but we would not.
Feel moist tease of this slippery crag, mock
of the crumbling ledge. We grab at limb’s rot,
anything to hold us as we climb: rock,
brush. This limit of choices teaches us
if we pay attention. This will to use
the barest tool as we clutch and focus
on balance. This effort to not confuse
scent of storm for pleasing breeze, denial
of approaching trials to our survival.

Roger Armbrust
September 1, 2010

WINDWARD

Ancient Polynesians sailed their canoes
thousands of miles into wind, exploring
for new worlds, not fearing distance. They knew
Tāwhiri would caress their backs, soaring
them across gentle seas when they returned.
Playing the odds in their search, they’d follow
birds whose windward flights found land. How I’ve yearned
for such a life, longing to flee hollow
smiles, graced by symbols of sure things as I
sail away and toward. Tell me, love, what you
wish for. Do you long to seek secret isles
where we two can breathe as one? Tell me true.
Would you rather live alone? Bid me sail
without you, my song lost in the wind’s wail?

Roger Armbrust
August 31, 2010

NOBLE SOUL, NEVER SLEEPING

ever guarding our marked yet unseen path,
balancing my will’s churning, weeping search
for peace within this mountain storm’s vast wrath,
let your calm light lead, ease my body’s lurch
at every lightning bolt and thunder crash.
Lift me each time I hide. Return my sight
to your sight. Push me past boulders of rash
actions, my fear-filled responses to night’s
treacherous ghosts. Hold me tight with hope’s taut
rope as we hover on cliff’s edge. Pledge your
everlasting loyalty. How I’ve fought
you in our past lives, my passion’s pleasure
always shoving off your care. Now I yield,
pray to cherish you, all your light’s revealed.

Roger Armbrust
August 31, 2010

FEELING NIGHT’S PULSE

again our eyes turn to stars’ soft rhythm,
rippling leaves responding to barest wind,
crickets’ sly castanets urging schism
through dark fields and forests. Why don’t we mind
brash woodpecker’s syncopated tapping,
stubborn rebel drummer, beak mining dead
oak at midnight? Will our lake’s tongues lapping
thick-lipped shore disturb our sleep, make us dread
growing flood of fireflies at our tent’s screen
curtain, portenders to some massive blaze
turning our woods into burning, pristine
rows of ember and ash? Will smoke’s rash maze
blind our way of escape? Do these extreme
fates await us, love? Do we merely dream?

Roger Armbrust
August 30, 2010

RUBICON

We stand together here, love, just outside
Savignano, among the riverbank’s
deep grass, where red-gray water’s flow collides
with blue sky’s glow, inspiring artist’s thanks
as she paints, balancing her lean easel
on hill-steep shore, a mere five yards from us.
Dark forest’s legion of trees seem to swell
at our backs, reminding us of Caesar’s
historic choice and, yes, our decision
to cross our own doubt-filled, mud-hued shallows,
face pain and former dear ones’ derision,
those wars no match for our own sad, hallowed
search within ourselves—that night we confessed
in whispers: Alea iacta est.

Roger Armbrust
August 29, 2010

LOVE ALWAYS

Your email, anchored by eternity
of these two words, echoes through my being
these days later. Like breeze I quietly
rise, unfold my blinds like leaves, now seeing
flickering dawn singe away lazing dark,
small lasers for slightest instant only
turning true leaves to brief fireflies, lean bark
to long, soft-burning lances. I’m lonely
no more. Looking west, I imagine you,
meditation done, flowing through glowing
day. What words will carry you like light through
your gathering with friends? Somehow knowing
this, I listen closely as you speak, say
the words you say, watching you as we pray.

Roger Armbrust
August 29, 2010

MIDNIGHT MOON, BIRTHDAY MOON

for Catherine, my daughter

Full gleam holding its lace-sculpted shadows,
opal sphere edges past my writing room’s
double windows, light heading north. Now bows
and exits right past my frame, and yet looms
a while on its top ledge as though wanting
to remember this cloudless ebony
stage. Still I, having checked your sky’s daunting
radar view, see what our bright moon’s stony
satellite eye sees: mass of swirling storms
stretching across central Missouri. They’ll
scatter through the day, bring late sunshine’s warm
caress to you, as I would were I well
within reach. Then clear night will hold you soon
within your own midnight moon, birthday moon.

Roger Armbrust
August 21, 2010

MAKING LOVE IN HEAVEN

Sunday morn, clicking on KLRE
my heart falls deep within Parish-Alvars’
harp concerto, floating strings’ reverie
enfolded by violins, sudden stars
enveloping cosmos of my closed eyes,
tingling of my waking skin waking all,
and suddenly my senses realize
what my soul already knows: this long fall
through passionate serenity must be
memory: our making love in heaven
before body-mind flight to gravity
and solid earth’s captivity. Even
Icarus rising recalled this, like me,
before he plunged, smiling, into the sea.

Roger Armbrust
August 15, 2010

LONELY AS SILENT LASER

Lonely as silent laser lost in space.
Spaced as bass guitarist losing his band.
Bands of plasma’s ultraviolet trace,
trace our equator, ionosphere’s wand.
Wand of Merlin’s power, reflect my eye.
Eye children who cower, craving magic.
Magic moon, pour tonight your bright reply.
Reply to stars warning of what’s tragic.
Tragic song from drowning crickets, silence!
Silence swimming through heartless space and time,
time your phases marking music’s absence.
Absence always loving void, help our rhyme
rhyme where black holes swallow eternal light.
Light of laser lost in space, enflame night.

Roger Armbrust
August 12, 2010

UNTILTED SONNET

It stands upright, rectangular as you’d
expect our respectable classic verse
to appear, yet new, like a window viewed
from both inside and out, a widow’s purse,
its leather black etchings on white, its loose
metal latch urging easy opening,
like a poet’s mind or murderer’s noose.
You choose. Say lost beauty of opal rings
glow once again through our imagined lines.
Whisper how love’s exhausted hope revives
within this stretching form which now declines
to remain a square, but most gladly lives,
elongated to fourteen rows of words,
mature enough to be both seen and heard.

Roger Armbrust
August 11, 2010

DIEBENKORN

Play for me in blue, sing to me in blue.
Let me overhear your lovers asking
with blank stares just what you’re trying to do
with your rectangles, squares, multitasking
angles like short airstrips or dead-end streets.
It’s like me smearing makeup on some old
fence, Mathilda might say. A less-discreet
ex-Marine buddy could laugh aloud, scold
you for turning to a faggot’s work. Price
of opening your heart. How they’d change their
tune were your pallet a music sheet, sliced
notes like sculpted aqua stars tossed out there
for all to hear through your trumpet paint brush,
your canvas the air, their eyes now ears, hushed
mouths as you play and sing for them in blue.

Roger Armbrust
August 10, 2010

AQUAMARINE

Vermeer often defied its great expense,
offering pale-bright hue to mere chair back,
sharing value of insignificance,
engraining it deep in off-white walls’ cracks
and tints so subtly only microscopes
discover its minute globes. Consider
his girl with wineglass, how shyly she copes
with her admirer’s urging, edge of her
flecked wooden seat nearly lost from our sight
controlled by dominant white of their cuffs,
collars, flowing table towel. That might
be himself, bored in left corner, sly stuff
of great artists to hide within our view,
fist blocking face, denying light its due.

Roger Armbrust
August 8, 2010

MENDING TORN PAGES

Holding the magnifying glass to each
one, I study both sides' fibrous edges,
feel how they long for each other’s touch, reach
to interlock and meld again, pledges
of union in their jagged smiles, know how
their clipped lips curl if kept apart too long.
I slide them slowly side by side, like brows
of continents, realize longing’s wrong
to seek some perfect fit. Settle for seams
to please the naked eye. Yet under this
tight sight, I survey interlacing streams
and outlets, envision a single kiss.
I always seal them with clear solvents, eye
them under gentle lamplight till they dry.

Roger Armbrust
August 1, 2010

HOW THE DAY ENDED

We flowed Big Muddy to stark, bouldering
Pinnacles, scaled its nougat-gnarled portal
to flat-breast crest, gazed west at smoldering
dusk revealing our mortal-immortal
essence. Our shoulders touching with crutching
gravity, supporting one another’s
weight like quivering peaks, our breath clutching
late July’s broiling air, we two lovers
softly hummed some wordless chorus we heard
small children chant while circling a campground
south of Columbia. That mockingbird
mimicking us must have known how we found
each other those years ago: Our stunned eyes
mirrored dawn burning dark night to sunrise.

Roger Armbrust
July 28, 2010

THE PAGE

It's when I finish reading the poem,
then hold the page up to the light. Each time
I see your face embossed within that dim
cloth, your texture fertile as earth sometime
in spring when all awakens, your eyes slender
as fern leaves, as if asleep, as if dream
carried you through the poem, its tender
rhythms causing your soft mouth's smiling stream
of whispers to echo each syllable.
Whisper to me, love, something new and yet
eternal as spring now my hand's able
to lift you to light, your face amulet
of peace, keeping me safe from demons' ire,
your spirit's presence a poem of fire.

Roger Armbrust
July 23, 2010

ORPHEUS

You who Apollo blessed with golden lyre,
who learned to create celestial lyrics
from Calliope, followed Hades' fire
to find your love Eurydice (pyrrhic
dance with sad end); you whose music silenced
the beguiling Sirens, pray for me whose
frightened mind challenges powerful gods,
fighting off those raving women licensed
to rip me to bloody rags of flesh. Choose
to entreat on my behalf him who nods
yes to morning, rides wild sky to brazen
dusk, plays for Zeus whose fingers cast bright rods
of light throughout Earth. Free me from Thracian
girl cuddling my head in Moreau's vision.

Roger Armbrust
July 21, 2010

LOST AND FOUND

The day had crumpled around him, or so
it felt—as if he were paper and some
spastic had failed at origami. Show
me the trash bin, he thought. I’ll call it home.
Recycle me into confetti. Let
partygoers turn my desperate loss
to celebration. Strip me to stringlets
waxed, wound, boxed and passed off as dental floss.
Whatever you do, make sure humans can’t
recognize me. For a split second, mind
went blank. Silence. Somehow his ego’s chant
turned to prayer, as if stumbling on some kind
angel singing soft psalms of his real life.
He Facebooked, I love my amazing wife.

Roger Armbrust
July 18, 2010

SOLAR ECLIPSE

If ever we’ll see God’s eye, isn’t this
it? Moon pupil, hypnotic as witch’s
gaze, circled by sun’s consuming iris—
they’ve forged yet frozen sunset. Night twitches,
anxious to see fire fall behind our far
snow-wrapped Andes. Love, we’re nested eagles
here above El Calafate, our car
resting yet creaking from our climb, regal
city lights below us crowning Lago
Argentino’s blue-gray crusted surface.
Remember how we, centuries ago,
kissed just like this. Your silhouetted face
suddenly reveals your true identity:
Chasca—dawn goddess loved for eternity.

Roger Armbrust
July 15, 2010

THIRD BASE

for Theresa

And now you know why we call it the “hot
corner.” How right-handed batters can fire
blazing line drives toward you like mortar shots,
how lefties’ bats can blast scorching live wires
down your base line by hitting an outside
pitch “the other way.” And what it takes to
field and zing a peg to first. How you glide
once you’re caught in the game’s flow, dance like Bo-
jangles hearing music. The great ways moms
show they love their sons don’t always appear
in parenting books. So what if you bomb
at the plate, hit one in the stratosphere,
or just take a walk. A parent’s real fame
grows in young eyes because you play the game.

Roger Armbrust
July 15, 2010

SONG: GOIN’ HOME TO STAY

I am goin’ home to stay
past the land of broken dreams
through the bean fields far away
from the frightened city’s screams

I will walk the hallowed aisles
past the passioned pews of pain
knowing no unmeaning smiles
that can hurt me e’er again

The windchild’s callin’ me
Can you hear her gently?
I hear the windchild callin’ me
back to the way things used to be

If you hear the wild wolf’s call
or the last cry of his prey
don’t you fear for me at all
I am goin’ home to stay

I can’t wait till break of day
Need no light to show the way
If you see her simply say
I am goin’ home to stay

Roger Armbrust

WHITE-GOLD MOON

after blossoming always asks this one
question: Who worships me? I say, Poets.
We adore each sight of you. Stand alone
longing in your absence, empty cruets
stained with loss. She laughs. (Have you ever heard
her?) Stares with her shadow eyes narrowing
like melting mountains. Your glittering words
flatter and fade, she sighs. Such harrowing
response from you, dear goddess, I complain,
wounds our tender souls—we who you inspire
to record lines clearly not our own—pains
us to near madness. Her face turns to fire.
I see my chance: Who’s that man within you?
She: You wish it were you. I: Yes, I do.

Roger Armbrust
July 14, 2010

SONG: THE UNIVERSE

I’m connecting with the universe
Earth and sky and stars surround me
I’m connecting with the universe
At last the universe has found me

I’m lifting this weight
my troubles and pain
I’m hoping that fate
won’t lead me in vain
won’t drive me insane
will let me be great

I’m connecting with the universe
Earth and sky and stars surround me
I’m connecting with the universe
At last the universe has found me
She’s touched me to let me know she’s found me

The universe
The universe
I’m connecting with the universe

RISEN

A child, I’d raise my arms, plea to mother
or father to grasp me within strong hands,
lift me from earth, see all from another
god’s view, become him or her, understand
without knowing how rising protects us,
provides new perspectives. I’d discover
powerful plateaus of tabletops, fuss
over cabinets’ contents, turn lover
to cool sweep from refrigerator’s wing,
laugh when saved from enticing ceiling fans,
spread my arms like sun rays, hear myself sing
when carried outside to witness titans
shading our vast field, heads swaying, vessels
searching sky where everything’s possible.

Roger Armbrust
July 13, 2010

THIS FEELING

when I see you turns me to galaxies,
tens of thousands of bright stars reflecting
in dreamlike lagoon. I’m Demosthenes’
voice sculpting images resurrecting
Athens’ glory. My prayer-plant leaves unfold
to your light, appearing as hands reaching
out past others’ wandering vines to hold
you. I’m Prometheus unbound, fetching
fire only for you, defying Zeus once
more, laughing as I do. I’m Socrates’
antidote, ancient herb’s magic ensconced
in your smiling face. I’m Hippocrates’
solemn oath, its healing power glowing
throughout me. I’m bold Zephyrus blowing.

Roger Armbrust
July 12, 2010

FEARING WHAT’S AHEAD

—although we cannot tell it—we slide off
our main road, avoid byways and narrow
routes, hack through deep brush and trees, suffer coughs
and gags through pest-gushed air, constant harrows
feasting our swelling, silent terror. Why
this insane forging forward, love, within
this blackened, mapless swampland where our cries
fade in dark like lies of thieves craving sin’s
false honors? Tell me, what is faith to you?
Is it our near-blind foraging here touched
by mere glints of sun, legs dragging through sloughs
offering no clues of clearings? We’re crutched
only by some slight hope, aren’t we? Pray paths
lie somewhere? Plead they bring mercy not wrath?

Roger Armbrust
July 11, 2010

2010 ANNO DOMINI

Humans never stay very kind for long.
Most days we’re defined by actions at work.
Most nights we’re resigned to our lonely songs,
deny our roles in a world gone berserk.
Last dinner party, our smug minister
crucified his wife with rusty-nail words.
His calm smirk implied nothing sinister
had scourged his chosen partner. How absurd
he seemed in his pure-white collar. I thought
of hollering You’re a prick! Then gripping
and ripping his ebony vest. Grace fought
my reflex, I suppose. Sent me tripping
off muttering a curse, in verse, of course.
I’ve read in the press she’s filed for divorce.

Roger Armbrust
July 8, 2010

NIGHT CALLS OUT

to burning streetlights, questions their pain, why
they challenge nature with such suffering,
knowing their glowing’s so temporary,
their scattered beams a futile buffering
for shadows. Night shouts out, warning meadows
to enlist thickets, yearning crickets: share
moonlight’s stark spoils before black clouds’ hedgerows
overgrow sky’s glisten, make birds beware,
convinced no one listens. Night fills forests
with ebony lasers, lost to human
eyes, yet adored subtle onyx on breasts
of fairies, nymphs whose eyes they illumine
with night’s deep insight, balm for all who keep
watch for spirit’s rain bringing dreams then sleep.

Roger Armbrust
July 5, 2010

SOLON

Sleep a lost jewel, he unfolded her
from his flexing arms, rose and settled next
to the central hearth, stoking its meager
flame, his brain revising tight legal text
entering all citizens in Athens’
Ecclesia, sealing democracy.
He would soon dissolve all Draco’s heathen
laws, denounce their brutal hypocrisy,
secure the town from desiring tyrants
like Cylon. What else? Ah, Nomos, enough
for tonight. He’d let warm fire’s crackling chant
consume him. Then walk at will to a bluff
above the Aegean, gaze out as far
as he could, bless where dark waves touched bright stars.

Roger Armbrust
July 4, 2010

PASSAGE

Hope is a waking dream.
--Aristotle


He learned from Plato, taught Alexander.
Cicero called his writing a river
of gold. Hope seemed his pathway to candor,
root to paying attention, how slivers
of soft light pass from knowledge to wisdom.
Step close with me, love. Let’s study his bust.
His curved locks combed forward offer winsome
hope to fend off baldness. How human. Must
we trust his brushed beard helped him look wiser,
his books and teachings not enough? Affairs
with Herpyllis and Palaephatus serve
to show him no miser with lust. It’s fair
to say he trusted love, defined its ties:
a single soul living in two bodies.

Roger Armbrust
July 3, 2010

WHAT I SAID

to the long rock wall across North Lookout
from my writing room windows sounded like
Ben Gunn’s rusty voice lisping whereabouts
of treasure—whispers of how, as a tyke
I’d dream of sailing, not pirates’ rough seas
but starlight air like Barrie’s boy who would
never grow up. What I shouted to leaves
of my parking lot’s white oak, these words should
never be repeated or remembered.
What I thought about at lunch today when
her blessed breasts pressed to me won’t be rendered
here—sighs saved for confessing mortal sins
to some blind priest far from home, words of drama
to even shake faith of the Dalai Lama.

Roger Armbrust
July 2, 2010

STARLING

Smooth wings of iridescent royal blue,
your dresser must also serve fluttering
Morpho butterflies. Shocking the way you
alter sound, range from early utterings
of humans to blatant car alarms. I’ve
heard in glowing morning echoes of your
mating call, your boast flexing how you thrive
on sex, admire your love’s turquoise eggs, lure
of a virgin’s eye. Gregarious as
politicians, invasive as taxers:
some stamp your brood a nefarious class.
Yet my love and I, poetic waxers,
rave how your name’s first syllable infers
Nyx created you to soar among stars.

Roger Armbrust
July 2, 2010

YOU NOW IN THE MOON

seated in shadow on your curved cream floor,
fit a gardenia in your flourishing
hair, your silhouette a mosaic, pure
marble sprinkling your dark gown, nourishing
tips of your near-bare breasts, one imploring,
nudging out, ancient portrait of goddess
ignoring her voyeur while adoring
his watching, letting your crystal bodice
hover, inviting drama through silence.
Don’t I recall you, you now in the moon,
in some recent setting, your reticence
and soft gaze? Yes, of course, across our room
of crowded joy, only today. You waved
hello and walked away. I wish you’d stayed.

Roger Armbrust
June 30, 2010

I WANT

to call this nun in South Carolina,
tell her to scrap the convent, buy a gown
and birth-control pills, meet me in China,
Bonsai Forest, Penjing Garden, lie down
with me right there at the pagoda. Night
time, of course, when nobody’s around. I
want moonbeams to sing for her while starlight
reveals her fortune, explains to her why
I want to slop mops as a janitor
in Greenwich Village, earn enough to pay
rent and health insurance so she can pour
her soul into oils on canvas, display
her work in Soho weekends while I pen
verse at home. I want our hearts to open
like prayer plants to sunlight in our dwarfed den.

Roger Armbrust
June 28, 2010

SADNESS LEADS US

for S.

Sadness leads us to this peak where legends
live. Unsure how we reached here, we raise arms
to sun, gaze at lake, see it’s not life’s end
but starting again our journey, sense charms
from gods infuse us. We kneel, release tears
into pristine blue water, view current
send them to silent river flowing years
before us. We follow this stream, events
beyond our power, kept intact by faith
in nature’s whispering dream. What carries
us like graceful deer down this shaded path
perhaps angels will explain, or fairies
singing legend. We only know now we
stand and pray, our feet touched by throbbing sea.

Roger Armbrust
June 28, 2010

THIS HYMN YOU HEAR

flowing soft deep within me also flows
deep within you. Press your ear to my chest.
This hymn you hear, ancient rhythm like slow-
motion thrust of angels’ wings, constant quest
for a higher heaven, lifts me to you
and to all, although I seem not to move.
This hymn, when you rise from me, rises too,
vibrates throughout air, mirrors wind. Oh, love,
this hymn you hear and carry with you makes
earth’s slightest quiver a chorus of praise
for every second of sight, breath we take,
each true sense renewing us through our days
as we wander and wonder why. This hymn
we hear once more fills and heals heart’s chasm.

Roger Armbrust
June 27, 2010

MOON DANCE

Li Po would drink alone, talk and sing to
the moon, dance and marvel how his shadow
followed his lead to perfection. I who
don’t drink this evening still mirror his show:
sit and stare instead of sip, speak aloud,
sharing my sonnets, hum a Broadway tune
or Dylan’s Sad-Eyed Lady, rise like cloud
beneath our beaming disk, knowing it soon
will slip through black-laced tree clusters, fragments
of light still commanding dark night like bent
giant’s chip-toothed smile. Then this sacrament
of space will break free, gleaming to portray
black-pearl silhouette of my body’s sway.

Roger Armbrust
June 25, 2010

TROUBLED PRIEST

Because I don’t know, I keep making up
answers. “Where does God live?” asks eighth-grader
Tommy. God’s everywhere, I say. “That cup
Christ drank from, what happened to that?” Nader
questions. It’s with God, I reply. “That means
the cup’s everywhere?” confused Tommy tries
to reason. Grace butts in, “I’m wondering,
Father, why aren’t you married?” I smile, sigh,
I’m married to the Church. “So then…maybe…”
Mary Ann smiles and bats her big blues, breathes,
“I’m baptized in the Church since a baby,
Father. Does that mean you’re married to me?”
Could Christ’s crown have felt any thornier?
I tell her to go stand in the corner.

Roger Armbrust
June 25, 2010

OUR MOUNTAINS NEVER STAY SILENT

The scientist explains our ancestors
make up each stone, and suddenly I hear
their constant singing. How each edge scissors
and crevices wind, creates slight whispers
from barest breeze. How their vast skin invites
home for brush and trees to add soft rhythms
of percussion through their leaves. How by night
mockingbirds harmonize staccato hymns
critics would decry in other venues.
Still, we welcome them here, love, and now we
know why. By day, their curved walls and slopes use
sun to beckon distant wanderers. See
how their shadows hypnotize artists’ eyes,
urging them to record earth’s memories.

Roger Armbrust
June 24, 2010

WORTH ITS WEIGHT IN

apple blossoms: my keyboard. Smiling Muse
infusing fingertips with windlike dance
as letters form words form phrases form blues
and jazz images with each digit’s glance.
Starlight: my monitor. Duskblue skywall
caressing brightwhite canvas as it bleeds
nightink etchings—shaded blackbird love calls
cut from ebonypearl beads, soul’s midnight seeds.
Earthcrust: my hard drive. Dark concrete essence
containing memory, keeping fertile
vast forests of creation, stark crescents
and streams of consciousness, mad maker’s style.
Child’s laughter: my Internet connection.
Grasping universe, cosmic perfection.

Roger Armbrust
June 20, 2010

SO WHAT DO WE SERVE?

Crush the bag of minnows and tell our guests
it’s tuna fish. Mix salsa in dog food
and talk up the tacos. Answer their quest
for cheese dip with granny’s cold cream so old
it’s turned yellow. But don’t ever, ever
reveal your casserole’s ingredients.
If anyone asks, say something clever.
Tell them we’ve both become expedient,
a term of their endearment. How secure
they’ll feel. We’ll ape their vocabulary,
praising them as they do themselves, manure
drooling from our mouths. You won’t feel very
anxious, will you? No need for contrition.
They’re just a gaggle of politicians.

Roger Armbrust
June 19, 2010

SEEING YOU

I burn, magma throughout brain and body
longing to erupt, flow around and through
you, glow, simmer, settle. I embody
your aura, it seems, like new moon imbued
with sunlight’s softest fire. I ripple, calm
mountain stream in dusklight, gleam descending
toward cliffs of everfalling, lost in balm
of your spirit’s abyss, soul transcending
to cosmos, found again. I harvest star
fields of your laughter. Explore galaxies
within your gaze. Discover bright quasar
of your heart pulsating Terpsichore’s
arabesques and songs, Aphrodite’s terse
rhymed whisperings throughout my universe.

Roger Armbrust
June 19, 2010

JARRED BY JADED

for Michelle Renee


So this is what it looks like when a heart
explodes. Organs and exterior flesh
even in chaos reveal body parts
of her varied selves, her image still fresh
through surreal memory though it changes
your shaken sight, taut female form turning
to swirling lava and back again. Strange
how eyes influence mind: Endless yearning.
So this is how Gaea first appears years
before soothing under Uranus’ cloak,
brands her own body with prophecy’s tears,
introduces all to shadow and smoke,
tortured throughout her fiery, flexing frame,
yet somehow sensing hope within the flame.

Roger Armbrust
June 17, 2010

MUSE RISING

Dawn sets fire to temple roof’s angled eaves.
This Lutheran church across my street seems
to reflect again sun’s rising, believes
its own legend: how carpenter redeems
all mankind. White oak leaves nodding consent,
slick skins glowing in response to flame’s rise.
Slight summer wind, even now, breathes assent
with hints of passion. And so you rise, eyes
of blue fire igniting my mind to words
divining you here. Again you inspire
through your spirit’s rising, absent voice heard
in simmering breeze, angel’s soft whisper
praising my essence as only you, whim
of heaven, can turn men to sacred hymns.

Roger Armbrust
June 17, 2010

MIDNIGHT WANDERING

through hidden tunnels in my cranium
coping with twisting images bleeding
each lane. I hold brilliant geraniums,
wondering how you’d accept my feeding
your soul with beauty, your aesthetic sense
with purple Bloody Cranesbills. Would you fill
a Chinese carved lacquer vase with incense
and herbal oils, then paint a tranquil still
life of this sculpture supporting flowers?
Let its endless spectrum stand here with us,
study us as we caressed truth for hours,
massaged each others’ temples? Let’s discuss
how simple and fair our night treats lovers,
how there’s more than bodies to uncover.

Roger Armbrust
June 16, 2010

SAD EYES

I want to talk with you about sad eyes,
love. Eyes of loved ones here and loved ones gone.
Soul magnets, let’s call them. We realize
their power, mirrors of our past, someone
we hoped would stay. Reflections of today,
limits to our hours and songs to capture
our sighs and smiles, how we react and pray
for happy lives we know recede as pure
air we once shared. Tell me, when I watch you,
what you see. Do you feel me kneel within
your heart’s corridors? How my thoughts catch you
before your spirit falls through lost walls thin
as ash? Could your hands sense my silent prayer
that noonday I first saw you sitting there?

Roger Armbrust
June 13, 2010

LYING

Great Breather who gives me each breath, each thought
and all, I suddenly admit my lies
also are you. So my fearful soul’s caught
abusing you as I do trustful eyes
of other lovers who track my actions,
seeing how I contradict smiling words.
How my darkened tongue’s contrived contraction
shoves me from reality to absurd
cells of isolation, psyche lying
helpless and alone, lost in despair’s black
cold. Tell me why my heart keeps relying
on masks and false mutterings? Why I lack
faith to simply say what’s true? Avoid sham
of who I seem? Show who I really am?

Roger Armbrust
June 13, 2010

WHEN LAST I SAW YOU

black night crawled like a panther prowling late,
silent in its stalking, only stark eyes
piercing dark space as we balked in our gait,
knelt in garden’s void, slender tender thighs
touching slight as cloth on bone after flesh
has gone, after breath has ceased long ago,
like acrylic dissolved years after fresh
strokes by some lonely artist only flow
in memory, canvas bare as shard-scraped
carcass. We let our hands speak, our fingers
oracles of bodylight, our pores draped
in perspiring jewels. Your scent lingers
still, sensual incense caping moonlight,
hazy white panther prowling late black night.

Roger Armbrust
June 10, 2010

DRAGONFLY

You with unequal wings, transparent pairs
laced like ancient Greek shields or warped tennis
rackets. You whose compound eyes somehow stare
both east and west, glare stalking our menace
mosquito or filthy fly. Your legs six
jagged sticks void of walking option, sly
as slick card dealer shuffling sneaky tricks,
snagging a load of victims in one try.
How do I praise you as admirable
yet urge you to commute our honeybee,
preserve our winged monarch and admiral?
I wonder, do you sing? Ever feel free,
within poor nature’s now expendable laws,
to laugh aloud through your extendable jaws?

Roger Armbrust
June 7, 2010

I CHRONICLE

bodyflow’s tributaries, how my veins
and arteries cycle lifeblood over
eons of heartbeat and breath, let me reign
in brief kingdom of mindflow, seal lovers
to rippling thoughtstreams, my trickling actions.
I record careful steps through uncharted
frontier of my soul, psyche’s reaction
to earth’s stimulus, to lovers parted
or renewed, response to spirit’s closing
and opening. I list precious seconds
when our night’s enhanced by light, exposing
cave-painted portraits, stone-tablet words, fond
memories of miracles, devotion
to echoes offering hopes of oceans.

Roger Armbrust
June 5, 2010

MOONLIGHT SONATA

Daniel Barenboim preludes haunting
Almost a fantasy and I wonder
what your spirit senses. I hold daunting
image of your music—from blunt blunder
of a clumsy student or alluring
master’s rehearsal or CD replay
or FM airing or, most enduring,
live concert-hall performance—how each day’s
moment somewhere on our globe, your notes rise
in crystal showers, nourishing you there
throughout our teeming universe, your wise
glow always with us, our sighs and cheers fair
warning of your eternal energy
composing our passionate entity.

Roger Armbrust
June 4, 2010

YOU WHO RISE

before the sun, I sense your deep longing
to drowse. I feel your body rippling through
dwindling dark current toward elusive song
from some mockingbird you cannot see. You
who gaze now at fading Venus’s pearl
face through dew-moist window, I glint lightning
dancing around your iris, silent whirl
of inner spirit flashing, frightening
demons who lurk in shadows. What power
is this who summons us toward dawn’s renewed
fire, helps our linked cells no longer cower
before that terrorizing unknown? You
who rise in predawn grace laced with layers
of dozing stars, I wear your whispered prayers.

Roger Armbrust
June 2, 2010

PSALM

I will wander among our nodding oaks
and kneel long before our fallen acorns,
marvel at their blending with soil to stoke
our earth with fuel for forests. Who scorns
nature’s faithful witnesses? Who decrees
green fields belong to malls rather than hoards
of daffodils safe and open to breeze
and sunlight, their thin shafts our only swords?
Let me rise and flow with clouds, Great Breather.
Let me witness your wonders as angels
see us for the first time. Sail in ether
as Hermes bearing lambs to quell all ills,
to carry your message of hope, bestow
care and insight to all living below.

Roger Armbrust
May 30, 2010

WE WHO DRINK RAIN

We who drink rain straight from the sky borrow
patience from trees. Feel drops pellet our tongues
like liquid fallen from mother sparrow,
soak pharynx, larynx, even haze our lungs
as moisture circles moon on cloudy nights.
We who drink rain feel our clothes embrace it,
how it permeates each fiber, each blight
and sore and eager pore. How we trace it
bodywide, our eyes open but blinded,
our flooded faces sensing Noah
pounded by the Deluge, soon reminded
to plant the first vineyard, crush grapes for a
prime cup of wine. We who drink rain wallow
with spirits. We’re baptized by each swallow.

Roger Armbrust
May 29, 2010

I AM TIRED

of blaming old lovers for my sadness.
Weary as a lost wolf, my sick howling
mute to caring souls I longed to caress
but chased away, my twisted face scowling,
my hooves clawing at air, all blind motion
to eyes gone. What now, prowler of the night?
Stay slouched on dark cliffs above black ocean,
long hoarse wail lying of your morbid plight,
draining artist’s essence through self-pity?
Or move toward light, seeing dawn approaching?
Time to decide. What’s this inside? Witty
whispers of some bright life now encroaching
on this blight? Some minstrel, imprisoned long
through fear’s delight, now sharing hopeful songs?

Roger Armbrust
May 27, 2010

TOTO

Now 770 in dog
years, you’ve aged gently in our hearts and minds.
As books progressed, you morphed within Baum’s log,
terrier migrating from Cairn to find
Yorkshire then Boston your breed, then returned
to your origin. Why such traveling?
Perhaps your creator’s subconscious yearned
to mirror his own life’s journey, or sing
of constant change in all from earth to earth.
The movie settled you for most of us.
Made you a legend and, for what it’s worth,
125 bucks a week. Trust
me, your image always comes to the fore
with this: “…we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

Roger Armbrust
May 26, 2010

ALONE BUT NOT LONELY

May. Weekend. Midnight. Dark void nicked only
by glints of scattered streetlights revealing
brief tree leaves. Silence sliced by some lonely
ballad from hoarse male tenor fingering
electric keyboard on So Restaurant’s
outdoor balcony. All this flowing through
my townhouse writing-room windows. Cars haunt
North Lookout in flickering wisps, breathe whew
as if at last reaching safety. Soft glare
of monitor only light inside my
room as I write this sonnet. Ask me where
all this is going. Even ask me why
I sit in dark on a Saturday night.
Truth is, inside me glows another light.

Roger Armbrust
May 22, 2010

THE BEAUTY OF ART

for Madi Coldiron and her First Masterpiece

The beauty of art, you see, is this: it
can be what your viewer wants it to be.
Loving your wonderful colors, I sit
and watch a candy-stick forest with trees
of various candy tastes. (When it’s dark,
I’ll sneak onto that vast canvas, lick my
lips, and gobble up all their honey bark!)
But wait! That would be stealing. Let me try
instead to dance through your color and light.
Pretend red on the left’s a hint of dawn
sun. And fluttering brightly on the right
a white-speckled cardinal who’s just flown
from its nest. Or butterfly seeking its twin.
Oh, thank you for art that lets me imagine!

Roger Armbrust
May 21, 2010

ONCE MORE, THEY’RE STILL

Again, Great Breather, you’ve silenced morbid
quarrels in my mind, quelling my brutal
committee’s condemnations, laid torpid
those bitter, slashing tongues despising all
I am. Slugging shots and popping pills may
numb harsh slurs for a moment. Hazy smoke
can glaze their eyes and make them dumb for, say,
half a day. Yet soon I wake to brash pokes
from their scepters, lie shaking, awaiting
earthquakes of their lies. Then feel my lost soul
scream above them, sense despair abating
through my simple prayer: Help…me. They cajole
me, changing tactics. Then their spotlights fade.
I meditate within your peaceful shade.

Roger Armbrust
May 20, 2010

MEALYMOUTHING VERBS

Summer sun bacons my skin, egging my
eyes, sausaging tender nipples and balls,
cantalouping my perspiring pores. Why
am I figging my morning jog with calls
appling fruits in Congress who blintz our lives
with taxes raisin for war, to sweetmeat
Wall Street, to sugarplum their own contrived
salaries? Hamburger those thieves! Red beet
their debt out of D.C.! Coleslaw every
bureaucrat. Mustard and onion their buns
inside cells bake potatoed for severe
torture. Garlic sauce the most evil ones.
Chateaubriand their homes, their families
muttoned inside. Mince pie their puny pleas.

Roger Armbrust
May 19, 2010

WHAT FALLS

Icarus, eyes gawking at melted wax
lumps pocking his flapping arms, featherless
as plucked hens. Tamarind from Adam’s lax
right hand as, with left, he points at Eve. Dress
from Juliet when groom Romeo moves
closer. Henry’s voice to a whisper while
he confesses to Becket. Fanny’s glove
to catch Keats’ eye. Rome when its leaders pile
marble statues to kiln lime for plaster.
Rain over their faces as Holly holds
Cat and Paul clutches them both. Disaster
on mankind when our Little Boy explodes
above Hiroshima. Your velvet hair
over my face within our gentle lair.

Roger Armbrust
May 18, 2010

WHAT RISES

Mount Nebo in the Wasatch Range, charcoal
and chalk-knuckled fist. Lazarus after
four days, bareboned, dark-earthstained, sweatsoaked, soul
confused with its fate. King Henry’s laughter
when he learns Jane Seymour’s birthed him a boy,
his highness’s pulsating paunch causing
hiccups. Applause expressing honest joy
with Pavarotti’s Nessun Dorma, sing-
er’s arms signaling victory. Crimson
sun in slow-mo from Atlantic’s blue vest.
A sonnet’s image for no real reason
from deep in psyche’s buried treasure chest.
And I from my self-saturated gloom
when you, spirit’s muse, flow into our room.

Roger Armbrust
May 17, 2010

STICKS

for Julianne Honey Gonzalez

These dried, severed twigs aligned side by side
on some old stained wooden bench, tree fragments
fenced in nearly equal size, now reside
in my inner vision, sculptured form meant
to touch us as they each touch, like fingers
sensing nature’s slightest friction. Say they
form a dryad’s spine. How she sighed, lingered
as long as she could before giving way
to death alongside her withered oak. Tell
folks Artemis laid her here, weeping free
as spring rain over her. How soft tears fell
and soaked her small sacred corpse. All we see
now is this structured column. Motionless,
silent, it’s essence still tells us we’re blessed.

Roger Armbrust
May 15, 2010

AUTO MOTIVES AND LOCO MOTIVES

The former carry me slyly up your
driveway at night. I circle past lighted
windows, slow as a tear trail, stay alert
for any movement inside. Once sighted,
I stomp the pedal, shatter through locked doors,
crashing into your living room or den.
The latter hurtle over countrysides
of fleeing bodies, bolting me through glens
of former peace where now chaos presides,
condemning every witness, crushing poor
souls who dash to stay on track, yet tumble
under my raging wheels. Call it impulse.
Cite incentive. You won’t hear me grumble.
My guzzling molds goads my mind can’t repulse.

Roger Armbrust
May 11, 2010

CABLES

My thoughts shuffle how I feel. My feelings
mangle efforts to think. So I get mixed
up, like briars. Must resort to kneeling
in prayer, confess all, admit I can’t fix
myself. Listen. Sense my tangled cables
unfold like thick roots reaching for water,
thin branches stretching to sunlight, able
to focus a moment, then another.
Something glows deep within these vibrating
wires, but I can’t make it out. Must I track
you down again? How I keep debating
forgotten propositions, leading back
to my mute, multi-angled starting line,
reseeking lost cables to the divine.

Roger Armbrust
May 10, 2010

COSMIC WRECKAGE

Sixty million light years away from us
two galaxies collide, appearing as
a Dali embryo, evolved light dust
cloud forming transparent heart of smoked glass
surrounding it—bolus of glittering
pastel jewels gestating inside like
some melting, glowing juke box sputtering
then exploding. Love, shall our bodies strike
with such mad, molten force we form new stars
as they do, our gravitational tides
crushing and stretching our psyches as far
as future planets, our frames’ pressing sides
pulling us within each other, to feel
and share secret heavens the gods conceal?

Roger Armbrust
May 7, 2010

CONSTANT MOTION

for Kay

I sensed you dancing twice in a row this
morning to my classical radio
station: the San Francisco Girls Chorus
shimmering Emerald Hummingbird. Beaux
Arts Trio loping through Saint-Saëns. Works of
constant motion yet delicate, balanced
with grace and harmony—ultimate love
of life flowing forth with seeming entranced
energy. I saw you in singers’ mellow
curved mouths, those artists’ sensitive, sure hands
caressing piano, violin, cello.
I smiled, thought of what we both understand:
We build our film libraries though we know
technology outmodes us. But we grow.

Roger Armbrust
May 5, 2010

GETTING MY PERIODS

More often I have them, then easier
I am to read. Sentences run shorter.
Sometimes just phrases. May seem squeezier
at first glance. But works if I’m reporter
or poet. Can move audiences. Or
so I hear. Mostly I’m declarative.
It’s how I state my simple case before
the public eye. Rarely imperative
language slips through. I tell someone what to
do. Once I chanced an utterance. To share
the moment. Like Juliet’s Ay me! No
exclamation point, though. I try to spare
passion. Critics complain it's very odd
I never question. I won’t. Period.

Roger Armbrust
May 2, 2010

MAKING TIME FOR MOZART

Loined lines of his 17th string quartet
linger in clearing, stallions measuring
one another, then brief as twigs snap, set
and dash through rippling creek, legs treasuring
each stretch, hooves honoring each subtle step,
each leap, cut and graceful lean through forest’s
impromptu avenues, narrow as sep-
ulchres. All this flowing throughout my best
self, and suddenly I hear Socrates,
Shakespeare, William Packard, and Bill Wilson
in chorus: How shall we live? As we please
or as some ghost-stallion carries us on
this sacred hunt? I hear Mozart’s refrain.
I cry out deep within. Let go the reins.

Roger Armbrust
May 1, 2010

STORM

drifting this way through night like wool blanket
over sweaty torso, dragging its slow
thick weight off soaked bed. Heat lightning flanks it
like dire, dying neon sign. Slight wind blows
warnings of coming gusts, then steady sweep
of howls, pellets splattering our shaky
panes. Now something like a storm sharply leaps
through me, starting to lash like harsh waves we
swam drunk on nights when rash squalls assaulted
us. Remember Lake Ouachita that dark
July when we challenged its width, vaulted
dead branches and dove deep, then rose to stark
chill of reality, both breast stroking
back to near shore, slurring in our joking?

Roger Armbrust
April 29, 2010

EUGENE O’NEILL

He wrote and drank and drank and wrote and drank.
He suffered from depression. Before all
this, he drank himself into the sick tank
for tuberculosis. I guess you’d call
his stay a spiritual experience:
there he first pledged himself to playwriting.
He won Pulitzers, the Nobel. You’ll wince
to hear he disowned his daughter, felt sting
of two sons’ suicides. Of course, divorced
a couple of times. Man, it makes me sad
they never lived that wilderness, his source
for youthful fantasy. Tremors so bad,
his last decade of life he couldn’t write.
That moon made me think about him tonight.

In Manhattan, for a few years I worked
near Times Square. Would often cross 43rd
Street and Broadway. Finally saw the plaque
nailed to southeast corner building’s absurd
pillar, giving it purpose: It marks his
birthplace, once a hotel, now a Starbucks.
Reads, “America’s greatest playwright.” This
still rings true. Hundreds of walkers, cars, trucks,
buses pass that plaque each day, not knowing
it’s there. But I do. And now you do. So
if your personal equation’s going
to NYC, pay homage. Whisper low,
“Man is born broken. He lives by mending.
The grace of God is glue.” Angels will sing.

Roger Armbrust
April 25, 2010

DISTURBED CHARACTER

What’s wrong with me? I keep making the same
mistakes, hurling my will at loved ones and
others through psychic lethal weapons: flames
of fear, javelins of jealousy, canned
sarcasm, rocks of rage. Then apologize,
offer lilies of lies, illusive tears.
Stand stunned or slump insulted when chastised,
rebuked. I can never trust what appears
as truth from others’ mouths. They say my crimes
include never seeing consequences.
What’s that supposed to mean? Can’t they tell I’m
special, a great mind trying to make sense
of life? How, though I’m a step above them,
I struggle to understand and love them?

Roger Armbrust
April 23, 2010

QUARRELS IN THE TUNNEL

I lie when I’m afraid. Often like some
TV voice promoting a weedeater,
sounding sharp while inside psyche succumbs
to dis-ease, reminds me how I teeter
toward a drink in subtle ways. Rarely now
I’ll connive like a killer, bury grace
in my backyard garden, hoping somehow
to cover up truth with a smiling face,
knowing this new relationship soon will lay
alongside her. I’ve learned now how to stop, change
course, what simple steps to take and allay
quarrels in the tunnel, capping this strange
desire to self-destruct, stop feeling. Only
my actions say if I’m happy or lonely.

Roger Armbrust
April 21, 2010

OUT OF INFINITE LONGING

I rest in your mind’s palm, free of desire
to fly, calmed by rhythmic balm emitting
from meditative fingertips, inspired
to nest in reeds of your ideas, ringed
with light of your shy smile. What peace to stay
so close to earth, to forage vast grasslands
of your soft laughter, breathe in wind’s warm sway
of your silence. I need not understand
each swerve to your curving fields of meaning,
or why your seasons alter with feelings.
I marvel at your heart’s subtle preening
of barbs from your words, eager eyes sealing
your care for our worth. I’m grateful you let
me stay here, for how we watch the sunset.

Roger Armbrust
April 20, 2010

CIRCLING ANCIENT TOWERS

I’m not supposed to tell you I love you.
Too late for that, I suppose. Someone out
in dark parking lot’s playing music, blues
with lone guitar, hoarse voice starting to shout
Oh lonely. Oh so lonely I think I’m
growin’ blind. Voice fading into night’s lost
memory. Street lights glowing like sublime
distant planets, their splayed gold beams embossed
on my writing room windows. I wonder
where you are. Fair phantom flowing, I swear,
within white wave seems to take me under,
lifts me above myself. Drifts away. Where
are your thoughts, I wonder. Now I’m kneeling,
whispering messages. Pray you’re healing.

Roger Armbrust
March 21, 2010

I CAN FEEL YOU BREATHE

So what if you’re across the room, seated
with friends. I sense rhythm of your breath, your
heartbeat as I watch you speak, repeated
nods of your listening head. Your smile cures
my distant longing, whether you glance toward
me or not. Something in you loves all. Is
it a gene? Kiss recalled, carried forward
from childhood? Decision from catharsis
while in her womb? Or some friend’s death? When you
move to me, I feel our world breathe gently,
like ocean at ebb tide. When I consume
you in my arms softly yet intently,
as flowers breathe air, our breasts rise and fall
as one, lost in our silent mating call.

Roger Armbrust
March 20, 2010

WHY DID YOU SAY THAT TO ME?

Did your ego need to crawl again from
its swamp-mired lair to pollute my serene
space, your fear’s wired cadaver once more come
forth like Lazarus, staggering on scene
through command rather than desire, your tomb’s
dark prison turned you insane? I thought we’d
settled this. Prayer at last has formed my womb
for conversation, where evil words bleed
away before my lips utter phrases
to grow or stifle my spirit. Hear it?
How silence pierces our night like phases
of thunderless lightning? How there’s merit
in not voicing these thoughts? And how profound
my few words can be: “I’ll see you around.”

Roger Armbrust
April 19, 2010

NO NEED TO ANSWER RIGHT AWAY

Could anyone love you more than I do?
I never really fear you’ll self-destruct.
It’s just I sense power’s beauty in you.
Wonder if time waits for you to construct
your potential’s tower of light. We smile
like ancient gods in mountain cloud’s thin air,
seem to listen for singing voices while
we meditate. Swirl our bodies through rare
crevices of solitude like hermits
resigned to sacred valleys—our wide eyes
enthralled by sudden ocean, no limits
to its deep rhythms, their constant surprise
reminding us who we are and could be.
I’ll help you gather crystals from the sea.

Roger Armbrust
April 13, 2010

THE NIGHT MY DAD DIED

in Yuba City, CA, worn away
by life, I was drunk on the Jersey Shore,
no good to him or my brother. I’d flay
selfish lines when I got the call, then swore
when I hung up, pissed to learn I’d grub no
insurance money for booze. Farted off
the funeral. Sober a while now, so
ashamed I keep making amends, I scoff
no more at words like “faith,” “spirit,” “moral.”
Years later, sat with my brother by our
mom’s deathbed, humble effort to ease soul’s
journey. Stayed through that soft, sad final hour.
“Don’t plan on how you’ll feel,” my sponsor would say.
“Just feel.” I did that. She died on my birthday.

Roger Armbrust
April 12, 2010

HOWL

for Michelle Renee


I saw Ginsberg twice in NYC, once
a Beat reunion at the Small Press Fair.
Thirty feet away on stage, his gaze pounced
on Corso, seated drunk behind him, care-
less to his friend’s reading a bright poem
advising us about our writing. “Don’t
drink too much.” Corso flinched, line jabbing him
in slack jaw. He howled a “Fuck you!” I want-
ed to cry, but laughed. I saw the great one
again at Dean & Deluca, two years,
I think, before he died. He sat alone,
reading a book, sipping coffee, no fears
of being bothered. Now he’s in your painting,
seated in moon, back to us, meditating.

Roger Armbrust
April 12, 2010

ALL LIFE IS A GIFT

My body echoes a silent laughter.
I watch others’ soulful eyes in meetings,
await their glancing at my eyes after
ages of inner journeys, my greeting
each new gaze with soft smile, my folded hands
as in prayer lifting slowly to my face,
slight bow of head, returning their stare. Bands
of transparent angels share gentle grace,
dancing among us. I see it in your
smiles, dear fellows. These simple things are true.
I hear them in your honest words. They cure
fear for a while. I sit here next to you,
feel your presence direct my sober days.
We carry the message in many ways.

Roger Armbrust
April 9, 2010

EACH ASCENT’S SHIMMERING LIGHT

I deep breathe. I rise. I whisper request
to pay attention. My closed eyes sense sun.
Through open window, steady breeze: caress
whispers back, promising inspiration,
graces my folded hands. Morning’s distant
conversation grows closer: lark, car, calls
of small children from far playground. Instant
insight to our true meaning. We are all
You, I say without sound, mute lips forming
word symbols, signaling continuum
of our conscious contact. Face conforming
to body’s reflex, I lean toward light. Some
force, gentle as lover’s touch, soft surprise
of life, beholds me. I deep breathe. I rise.

Roger Armbrust
April 8, 2010

DIVING TO OPEN DEPTHS

Most nights I gaze at my psychic mirrors,
pray, then plunge through reflective surfaces,
fearful coatings, to substratum’s terror
where my disease lurks in disguised traces
of my day’s hiding thoughts, coated false words,
most of all my subtle actions slipping
mixed messages to folks who thought they heard
honesty pouring from me. While gripping
my book’s blue cover, I review each hour’s
content, shine bright light where I spot decay,
beg to not deny its subtle power
to spread and destroy this faith, nor delay
inspecting its cause. I recall its cure:
spirit’s balm bringing peace, even rapture.

Roger Armbrust
April 7, 2010

TELL ME IF YOU KNOW

why Venus and Mercury pair off like
shy lovers in western sky, bright passion
reflecting above lazy dusk’s match strike
not quite igniting horizon’s ration
of billow clouds, their stretching lonely arms
seeming to search for heaven’s touch much as
I search for you right here, certain your charms,
flowing in hypnotic melody, pass
through my warm body while we lie awake
in this sacred room. I pause and breathe now,
my silence honoring your breath. I take
in your glow with thankful prayer. Slightly bow
to power surrounding us. Gently speed
my faith’s message to you: this kiss my creed.

Roger Armbrust
April 7, 2010

TO WORK WITH THINGS

Early April. My oak’s taken on frills
color of golden rod, nodding its locks
yes to muttering wind. Fickle jonquils
look away, no doubt seeking mirrors. Flocks
of sparrows swirl. Hermiting mockingbirds,
seeming stubborn loners, somehow chorus
echoes of cardinal, cricket, absurd
belching frog in ironic tune. For us,
love, lost in this light approaching dusk, spring
offers more than earth’s flexing its thick flesh,
wrapping us in magnificent air. Things
join us in our labor of living, fresh
sounds, sights and smells urging us to embrace
them all and each other. Church bells say grace.

Roger Armbrust
April 2, 2010