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