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