57 TREES

Scientists reckon 400 billion

trees share earth with us, share life’s air with us.

Let each human care for 57,

choose them on sight, touch each one and discuss

what care means. Make each cypress a playmate,

each oak a resting place. I’ve studied you

frolicking among an old cypress’s

vines, resting with your sister—a brief queue

of two—on an oak’s bent neck. Caresses

you offer Rocky Mountain pines relate

how you understand.  When our trees first rose

millions of years ago, did our first lives

run among them, swing branches in air dance,

our bright spirits nourished by all that thrives

in nature? You, poised in your yoga stance

on one leg atop a stone, that blue spruce

mutely looking on, must confirm it all,

its body and your body standing tall.

Roger Armbrust

December 30, 2014

YODA

I sense from sayings

he imparts, that ugly fart’s

really pretty smart.

DAYCARE NIGHTMARE

Mama left me with her little angel

who morphed into a devil later on.

The kid defied me from every angle.

Why do they always wait till momma’s gone

to throw their tantrums, toss up their food,

fling their fragile toys, wet the bed and floor?

Why do they always pretend to be good

until their smiling momma’s out the door?

Why is it a crime to dunk little heads

in toilets, to scrape butts with sandpaper,

to bite their wriggly toes until they’ve bled?

I think I’ll write “Babysitter’s Caper,”

a screenplay meant to make tiny brats cringe,

seeing water-boarding as our revenge.

Roger Armbrust

December 17, 2014

HARD-WON TIMES

My heart hides behind flickering candles,

behind soft music like Jules Massenet’s

“Meditation”. I can’t seem to handle

crowds anymore, those animal displays

of emotion from ordered violence

and surface chants. I work best one on one

these days—over coffee and confidence—

words meant for only you and me. Hard-won

times alone in the quiet dark, lying

curled like secure pups or baby sparrows.

When our heartbeats match, when constant crying’s

never questioned, despair’s poison arrow

lies broken on the floor. When we whisper

those brief, honest phrases: lovers’ vespers.

Roger Armbrust

December 13, 2014

NANNERL

She sits on the hill above Wolfgangsee,

hearing her harpsichord compositions

Leopold censored from recitals, pleas

from her brother to challenge him, reasons

too radical for her heart. Recalls how

she loved applause, those bright admiring eyes

of elite audiences when she’d bow

with her brother as one. Those precious cries

for encores. That was long ago. Her men

are all passed on: father, brother, husband.

Soon she’ll return to Salzburg, six children

in tow, work as music teacher, demand

nothing from anyone. She feels fingers

ache for the dear keys. The lost years linger.

Roger Armbrust

December 12, 2014

DON'T BREAK THE SCAB

Don’t break the scab. Let it heal. Let it heal.

Constantly scratching causes infection.

Help your body stay its natural seal,

avoiding deeper ills. Aid reflection

in higher life by folding your soft hands

in prayer, reaching out to the universe.

Pretend gentle fingers are magic wands

turning blank pages into happy verse.

Recall blind Homer calling on the Muse

to help him see, relate his epic tales,

of Anna as poet, anxious recluse,

awaiting her powerful entry. Sail

through heavens, their flaming stars revealing

basic essence of life and its healing.

Roger Armbrust

December 7, 2014

VISIONS

I envision her strumming a guitar

though I’ve never heard her play. Perhaps it’s

her gentle hand caressing trimmed wet hair,

leading me to compare visions. She sits

with right elbow resting on chair’s low neck,

her arm stretching her gentle hand to strong

shoulder. Her fingers lightly run through flecks

of silk highlights natural as rain, long

once as guitar strings, now curling past chin

to throat. Perhaps I once saw a campfire

scene on Facebook, her gentle hands gracing

an acoustic’s neck. Perhaps it’s desire

all humans possess to connect visions

as dawn stretches shoulders of horizon.

Roger Armbrust

December 6, 2014

COLD TURKEY

Hacked half a bird left,

with its meal’s worth of trimmings,

tossed in the garbage.

A COLD MORNING HIKE

On the horizon, a beryl gemstone

caught fire, passionate eye reflecting light

along the stretching river’s blue-gray bone.

Photographer’s eye framing love’s brief sight

of her sister gazing out at dawn’s gaze,

seated on mountain’s chiseled crest (Blue Nile

gray moonstone, to me), clothed to halt sharp glaze

of morning frost from scraping skin. We file

such precious meditations in film’s eye,

but also deep in our hearts. Carry them

like rare gemstones to admire when lonely,

bring light to ward off hardened winter’s grim

rebuke—smile in irony, toss the blues,

cherish foreground view of her sister’s shoes.

Roger Armbrust

November 25, 2014

HER CLEAR-RIVER EYES

Her clear-river eyes, her deep-river eyes

searching the truth I share with her. Wanting

to speak, I’m sure, more than I allow, wise

enough to let me ramble through haunting,

joyous experience before time runs

out. When we’ve somehow survived the swamp, we

want loved ones to sense omens, distant sun’s

glances off signposts of hope. Who is free,

really, once scarred by pain? What can save us

but faith’s gift of clear-river eyes focused

on reality, humor’s irony,

our vulnerable hearts daring lonely

fear to surrender to life, its surprise

endless for clear-river, deep-river eyes.

Roger Armbrust

November 23, 2014

DECISIONS

She tries to decide if her log belongs

in her poem—toss it on the campfire

or refuse to add her warmth to their long

bitter-cold lost night. The Muse must inspire

us—she sees that now. In our universe

of 100 trillion images, how

can we alone choose each word, make a verse

of exact phrases unless we bow, vow

to Her to meditate, listen, record

what we hear, humble ourselves to edit

our echoes of Her chorus.  She adored

the lyre at first sight and sound, loves poets

for sitting alone, waiting, looking deep

within, trusting the promises She’ll keep.

Roger Armbrust

November 20, 2014

CONSIDERING YOUR BROKEN FOOT

for Roza

Your hindfoot possesses both a talus

and calcaneus (your foot’s largest bone).

Your midfoot touts a quintet, stout fortress

forming your arch—shock absorber for stone

or any harsh surface. The forefoot’s where

joints get tricky: those five proximal long

bones forming the metatarsus. I swear,

a misstep could crack the instep, a wrong

turn could infirm the entire team (you know

what I mean). Here’s my point: Though I’m not sure

just where your foot’s close-knit family showed

a separation (I’m no doc), one cure

I know is this (not for the foot per se,

but your whole self): I bow my head and pray.

Roger

November 19, 2014

JUST FOLLOWING ORDERS

Teach yelled, “Change the world!”

So I grabbed the classroom’s globe

and sawed it in half.

WHEN YOU SMILE

surely Earth’s outer core, liquid layer

of iron and nickel, explodes Eddy

currents to mangle magnetic fields. Your

smile surely ignites cosmos, Pleiades

rapid-evolving  20 million years,

plasma’s current abandoning arc mode.

Surely your smile clouds eagle eyes with tears,

forcing endless gliding, dear instinct’s code

for hunting lost in fog’s blur. Yet my fears

of pain, or losing memory, or death

vanish when you smile, as all nightmares clear

away on waking, just as sacred breath

recalls its rhythm. It’s all no surprise

to you. Surely you sense this in my eyes.

Roger Armbrust

November 17, 2014

ELECTIONS

Avalanches crash

into valleys crushing all

in their village dens.

LIFE GUARD

Your eyes, ebbing me

through blue endless undertow,

drown my soul with life.

US

How do your eyes show me the universe?

Your smile each constellation’s glowing crest?

Why do you appear in moonlight, traverse

vast space transparent, your psyche compressed

in my every atom? Last night I dreamed

you held my hand to your cheek, your fever

spreading through me. I welcomed it like streams

of sunlight in winter. “I’ll conceive her

greatest verse,” my silent mind confided,

yet you smiled as if you heard. Then I smiled.

Celestial dream! Lovers, we resided

by some great ocean, endless breezes mild

embraces to our skin, our fingertips

tracing soft, sacred crescents of our lips.

Roger Armbrust

November 3, 2014

MARCH 10, 1785

Mozart, at Vienna’s Burgtheater,

touches delicate keys, his andante

describing Constanze: gracious lover

and new wife, her deep eyes, delicate scent,

ebon hair flowing over his moist face

as their bare flesh rests after vast passion.

In the audience, Leopold—son’s grace

lost to him—critique’s Constanze’s fashion,

dwells on the concert’s take. He’ll later speak

of gulden rather than genius. Wolfie’s

bride caresses each note, recalls each peak

breath in bed, every gentle word. She feels

her husband’s fingers unfold each layer,

sensing his dream phrases as joyous prayer.

Roger Armbrust

October 28, 2014

POEMS WHILE WE DREAM

“If only we could write poems while we

dream!!!” she laments. That night, caressed in sleep’s

sacred universe, her dreameyes can see

beyond sight, subconscious sensing what keeps

body, soul and cosmos within her cell’s

endless center, light beyond reason yet

entire insight. Her dreamhand starts to tell

all stories (even those the gods forget)

through her dreamquill’s strokes, its transparent ink

streaming great words on pearl cloud, her phrases

flashing to acrylic portraits—not think-

ing, only knowing as she writes. Traces

of angels jetstream past, chorus glory

of her rhymes: their neverending story.

Roger Armbrust

October 25, 2014

MYSTERY

The fragile feather

fluttering through the light breeze

transforms to a bird.

WAR ON TERROR

The mouse’s shadow

magnifies, covers the wall.

We scream, nuke the room.

COSMOS

Fly with me now through our cosmic ocean.

Swirl among galaxies of molten suns,

imploding stars, planets with no notion

of our existence till now. “The New Ones”

they’ll call us, minds magnetized by our smiles,

bowing to our gentle hands raised in peace.

Spiral with me beyond concept of miles

through visions of light years: dreams to release

us from fears and doubt, grasp time’s connection

and more: melding of our psyches and cells

with all we call matter, soul’s reflection

beyond our universe’s center. Tell

me of your hopes for life and I’ll tell mine

as we hurl like comets toward the divine.

Roger Armbrust

October 20, 2014

CHICAGO

It rained all week, she said. Still it proved fun

spending love time with her sister, senior

soon to graduate college. With no sun

to rely on, imagining their tour

of Grant Park, Adler Planetarium

(though understand I’ve no proof they strolled there)

I see them laughing in rain to ghost strum

of Carl Sandburg’s guitar, droning meter

of his voice reciting his stark poem

“Chicago”, milking those long syllables

at phrases’ end, mixing sharp nouns for stems

of stories—proud to capture sounds, to tell

of common people, of stormy big shoulders,  

and now two sisters in mist of fall colors.

Roger Armbrust

October 16, 2014

YOUR YES THAT I KNOW

Your yes that I know always means no when

you say it. Why you keep doing that I

know, and why you don’t know. You say it then

run away, not your body, just your eyes.

I lived with fear so long I held it dear,

resigned to its invisible rack. This

is why I know. I study your eyes, clear

as that mountain pond beside us, your kiss

warm as our afternoon sun. Every day

I look back at your words, your eyes, actions

so opposite to what I’ve heard you say,

so far from what we both desire. Your ear’s

piercing jewels glow like Eos's tears.

Roger Armbrust

October 12, 2014

YOU FEEL IT DON’T YOU

You feel it don’t you in the mute quaking

of the thin tulip petal’s opening

to sunlight. In the eternal aching

of fiery air searing through lungs to sting

the heart. I seem to feel it most I guess

when the autumn oak leaf senses caress

of sunset—that melding of peace and stress

when chill air and heat collide, coalesce

in those dying veins. I feel it brings home

to the oak something like a pulse, like some

subtle massage reminding how life comes

and goes briefly as breath: body’s ransom

shared with each cell. I feel it deep with your

presence I guess. But I’m not really sure.

Roger Armbrust

October 9, 2014

BLACKENED STORM AT 11 a m

Blackened storm at 11 a m Drops

sprinkling my writing windows like pellet

wounds while creek ditch gushes its cotton crops

of runoff on to North Lookout Spell it

out for me coward Sun how I brighten

this torrent blistered lightning flash thunder

crash landscape with hope while your space frightened

face dumps down beyond sight hidden under

stark dark cotton clumps stitched into sky wide

canvas Tell your strict reality how earth

trees plants and we feed from this cloud collide

grappling of nature energy our birth

continuum pelting near us on us

in us your hopeful return our bonus.

Roger Armbrust

October 8, 2014

SURPRISE GUESTS

We open closed blinds

to welcome warm autumn sun,

but in fly five wasps.

LILACS

I listen to Rachmaninoff’s “Lilacs”,

his own 1942 recording,

delicate crystal touch, and I think back

to your delicate crystal touch. Sorting

through my own notes, I wonder about his

unknown “white lilacs lady,” her bouquets

sent to his every concert—the way this

must have intrigued his heart, guided the way

his long fingers caressed those Steinway keys,

how his rhythmic patterns inspire my long

fingers to caress your lilac skin. Please

listen to him listening to his song—

as I listen to myself when I write

poems to you these crystal lilac nights.

Roger Armbrust

September 30, 2014

FEELING SO DEEPLY

Feeling so deeply, so terribly deeply,

so ultimately terribly deeply,

everything in life but you seems wrong;

yet feeling so deeply, joyfully deeply,

so majestically joyfully deeply

my body craves to explode in song.

No wonder I gaze in wonder at you,

no wonder my eyes at once praise you,

yet glance away as though gazing too long

at blazing sun’s exploding body. It’s true

when I see you our world seems at peace,

when you smile, our world seems healed;

and I smile, all fears seeming released

from fear, your mystery no longer concealed.

I feel so deeply, so terribly deeply,

so majestically, joyfully deeply.

Roger Armbrust

September 27, 2014

JOY FARM

for e e cummings

In black & white photo

at Midtown Library

you sit in grass

near ivied arch

of your dark-wood house

on Joy Farm

your mother

rising behind you

your sister Elizabeth

smiling beside you

her arm ribboned over

Rex’s broad brown chest

his spiked collar

bordering stout white head.

Your sweatered arms

embrace shrugged knees

of your knickers

your eyes cast down

as if you see

what lies ahead

one day that summer

on Silver Lake

when Rex snaps at hornets

and your canoe rolls over

boat and life preservers

sinking like corpses.

You and Elizabeth

grab at floating boxes

as panicked Rex

pulls Elizabeth under

her blond curls

dark as lake bottom

darting back up into air

then down

and up.

Your screams

gagged by water

you grab dog collar

and spikes rip your palms

as Rex’s weight clamps to you

like squid’s arms

his claws carving

your face throat shoulders.

Noose of your hands

spews with crazed adrenalin

as you strangle this life you love

your swim-strong legs

kicking you on top

your body weight

pushing him down

drowning

this sudden insane enemy

his claws gnawing your chest

bloody vein of bubbles

sizzling up from his nostrils

from his gurgling mouth

and brown-white water

fuming with breath

then less

and less

then only ripples

as white-red paws

slide limp to your waist

and dead weight forces

you to let go.

Holding your sister’s

tear-eyed face

you find two floating boxes.

Your swollen tongues

find no words

as you gnarl through water

toward shore.

You are 12 years old.

You will live to 67

but never keep another dog.

Roger Armbrust

1998

IMPRESSION

How you depict changing light. How your face

reflects it, accentuates day fading,

returning with light. How your eyes can trace

starlight, entrancing all, then evading

other eyes. How motion of your raised head,

your flexed bare arms create crucial tension,

lessons of your mood. Hours ago, I read

how brief brush strokes create light’s suspension

on canvas, allow its grace evolving

as day moves to night. Moves like your graceful

hand combing your hair, fingers resolving

each shining strand’s place. How my mind’s space full

of your impression alters like light, sway

of your smile like morning sun to Monet.

Roger Armbrust

September 23, 2014

SOMETIMES THE NIGHT’S TOO MUCH

Sometimes the night’s too much. Prayer won’t even

deliver relief to my body/mind’s

pulsing tension. Petitions to heaven

seem stamped received then crumpled, dropped behind

some careless cloud, left for eternity

to ignore: love’s definition of hell.

Then Her deep, silent voice of certainty

flowing from gut to heart rises to tell

each cell to rise and write of you—your eyes

locked behind sunglasses, not to protect

you from light, but me from your pure iris

dreaming us too soon to cosmos. Lyrics

of reality suddenly appear,

revealing your song I never could hear.

Roger Armbrust

September 22, 2014

THIS DISTANCE HOLDS SO CLOSE

This distance holds so close. Mouths not touching

yet engulfing each other’s blazing breath.

Eyes closed. Fingers not touching yet clutching

each other’s heart to our own heart. Should death

stumble on us, surely she’d stall, retreat

to report awe of such amazing life.

Sing how your jewel-pierced ear blesses sweet

air of our deep breathing. How tense motif

of our breathing holds our bodies at bay

all these eternal seconds until our

existence collides our trillion cells way

beyond where we are now, where all power

resides, explodes and regenerates art.

Where every experience ends and starts.

Roger Armbrust

September 19, 2014

BLESSING FOR BEKKAH

I envisioned you

blowing out candles, grateful

for your poet’s gift.

THE ART OF PRINTMAKING

A birthday sonnet

for my son-in-law Eric Sweet

The art of printmaking, they say, centers

on originality. That just fits

you: a true original. Consider

yourself a monotype, a composite

of man called artist—melded by the Muse

from the best who’ve come before. When Rembrandt

etched his amazed selfie, or Goya fused

his “Disasters of War,” or Vallotton

kissed his “Cogent Reason,” surely they sensed

something in your waiting soul, your mustached

mouth pressing your wife’s loving cheek—presence

of all that’s human. When Dürer’s eye flashed

upon St. Jerome in his study, surely

he sensed your wit in the great scholar’s psyche.

Roger Armbrust

September 15, 2014

WHAT IS THE WHOLE WE HOLD HERE

What is the whole we hold here? What concept

flows from your eyeglow? How will it save us,

do you know? What can connect us except

honesty—its gnawing through fear, focus

on light, opening caves to vital air?

When you smile, I smile. What’s that fact supposed

to mean for our purpose, our precious care

for Earth, ourselves? The first time I proposed

a kiss, did this change our eternity?

Why did it feel so? The first time I pressed

my timid mouth to yours, what entity

thrust us through some star’s explosion?  Who blessed

our energies to magnetize as souls?

What power holds us here, our psyches whole?

Roger Armbrust

September 12, 2014

WHEN THE SONORAN DESERT

When the Sonoran Desert reminds me

of you, I praise goldpoppies igniting

low rolling hills with blazing memory

of your goldpoppy braids, dunes inviting

images of your bronze curves smooth flowing.

I pace thick mesquite forest, recall your

eyes when you wear dark green, the wind blowing

echoes of your laughter. That time we toured

Santa Rita Range, you quipped and mimicked

Elephant Head. I cherished your dancing.

Now the sun glows saguaro to rose, tricks

me to see blackbirds with yellow heads, sing

your favorite sad ballad. I gaze deep

at the far range, bless your profile in sleep.

Roger Armbrust

September 9, 2014

THAT DAY

In Greenwich Village

I gazed down Sullivan Street

to towerless sky.

City of silence,

even those glazed-eyed loved ones

taping up photos.

FINAL COMMITMENT

The Trident missile

rises through air, flaming tail

predicting globe’s blaze.

DICTATOR

The tongue depressor

manipulates the machine,

sewing your mouth shut.

3...2...1...

The mushroom clouds rise.

The radiation descends.

Winds breathe our Amen.

TEAMWORK

Each cell a conscious

entity, they link like hands

lifting us toward light.

POWER

The dead weight, unwilling to rise, still does.

Grasp of hand, flex of arm are all it takes.

The great boulder, unwilling to move, blows

apart, scatters over mountainside, makes

lightning strike’s brutal purpose a success.

Find in that mix my will and heart, hoping

you won’t move me, won’t shatter my helpless

heart’s mass, its vast rhythm enveloping

nucleus of every cell (so it seems).

Hoping you won’t infiltrate my psyche,

control through slight motion my nightly dreams,

my daily actions classifying me.

Hoping your blazing gaze won’t burn through

my mask. Hoping you don’t see. But you do.

Roger Armbrust

September 2, 2014

THE CONTENT OF YOUR EYES

The content of your eyes. The galaxy

glowing in your eyes. Lost in deepest space

of your eyes I flow in soft rhapsody,

in eternal gazing, rapt in each trace

of light, of history and knowing your

eyes reveal in their clear telling, each note

of past caress, kiss, breath of loss, so sure

in your heart where my heart lies. I devote

my eyes to your eyes. Piano lifts “Clair

de Lune” to us. In your eyes I see moon

Verlaine and Debussy must have felt there:

still, sad and beautiful. You come too soon

and go too soon, leave shining of your eyes

like moonlight in our room: soul’s memories.

Roger Armbrust

August 31, 2014

TORU TAKEMITSU SAID

“My music is like

walks through Japanese gardens—

circles of karma.”

REINCARNATION

Do you choose to come

back as a giant oak tree

or Mercedes Benz?

CIVILIZATION

Poison your air, earth,

water. Ignore history.

Meh. Count your money.