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.

EDUCATION

Shut up. Fall in line.

Do what you’re told. Listen. Learn

what to think, not how.

PEACEFUL REVOLUTION

Beat us with clubs, debt

and endless war. We will rise,

our Constitution

in hand, come en masse

to call on you, clarify

who runs this country.

ROCOCO

for Catherine, my daughter,

on her birthday

What better way to live life: tongue in cheek,

draped in flowers and fabric, waltzing through

each day with grace, each glance a wondrous peek

at our vast universe, its endless view

of color and light, form and energy’s

boundless dance. What better use of blessed hands

than knitting a river’s blue synergy,

clothing a mannequin with vibrant strands

of bright personality and mission.

How shall we love if not this? If not care

as we extend our hands in precision:

honest caress of all we see and dare

experience? Those we love most know how

we love: sharing our souls so all may grow.

Roger Armbrust

August 21, 2014

KIND AND GENTLE HEART

My kind and gentle heart wants to share your

kind and gentle heart. My lost and fearful

psyche wants to share its vast self-censure

with your lost and fearful psyche, hopeful

our tender souls somehow may wade toward faith.

Tell me, when we gaze through our microscopes

at each cell’s endomembrane, do thin shape

and color of Golgi apparatus

remind you of sliced avacado? You laugh.

Good. Why not link senses of humor

and irony to our world’s simplest life?

Recognize how nucleus and tumor

share our kind and gentle hearts, fearful souls.

Our whispered sunset walks along the shoals.

Roger Armbrust

August 21, 2014

JAMES MERRILL AT THE SMALL PRESS CENTER

Cold rain all December day

and damp air from cracked-open windows

shivering through thick heat

from old radiators

in the large glaring room

on West 44^th Street

where yesterday David Ignatow

ignited flecks of life

and today Grace Schulman

recalls Marianne Moore.

As Ted Weiss thanks

the dripdried handful

honoring QRL’s 50^th year

he doesn’t hear

the heavy door creak

or see you enter

gaunt face cocked high

like a bird that’s heard

some distant call.

Your drab olive slicker

drapes over your arm

revealing a grey cardigan

and royal blue shirt

with large open collar

surrounding an ascot

the color of orange sherbet.

Your light brown pants

lump over laces of cordovan shoes.

Slipping into a one-armed

classroom desk

you cross a leg

and flip through

the Small Press program

with thin tan hands:

the posture of a patient prince

who knows his turn will come.

And soon Renee Weiss

discovers you

halting Ted’s monologue

with a gentle nudge and laughing

“Look who’s here. It’s James.”

Ted’s face glows as if he were canonized.

His soft, high voice calls out

“James! We thought we had missed you.”

You rise like a calm dancer

float to the front

your cool baritone responding

“I read my name in the New Yorker

and thought I’d better show up.”

From unwrinkled typed paper

you read two new poems

one about your dog

the other your computer.

Rhythms and images

and priest-like peace

of your resonant voice

somehow connote

all in the world’s mad scene is forgiven.

I whisper to Tom Tolnay

how your bony face

stabbed by sharp nose

crowned with horn-rimmed glasses

creates an image of Eliot.

Tom’s salt-blond eyebrows rise

as he smiles a soft “Yes.”

Later he says, “You should go meet him.

He’s one of the great ones.”

But I am too shy

with no new words for you to hear.

Now a year later

I push through icy February streets

to the courtyard office

where Howard tells me

you have died.

A heart attack in Tucson.

He read it in The New York Times.

Roger Armbrust

February 1996

(Published in the New York Small Press Center’s program for its annual book fair and readings.)

LIGHT

Dawn light finding us,

noon light blinding us, with last

light reminding us:

Love your higher light,

love your inner light, and you’ll

love your lover’s light.

KNOW

You don’t know what I know, so I’ll tell you.

I don’t know what you know, so please tell me.

I don’t know much really. Only how through

caressing rocks, mountain waters gently

sing, then rage in storms, only to sing once

more in sun. How water on my scarred tongue

tastes like nothing else on earth. Your presence

soothes me like water bathing wounds. When young,

I’d dive into pools as you do now. Arms

curl through water’s resistance, muscles bask

in water’s caress. Your mute, gazing charms

let me know you do this. One day I’ll ask

you how you know. How humans can forget

water and real life. I’ll ask. But not yet.

Roger Armbrust

August 17, 2014

PREYING MANTIS

Drooling predator

devours pension victims, then

crawls back to Wall Street.

FIRST AMENDMENT

Protesters carry

flowers while police hover

with armor and clubs.

SUPER MOON

Judy sings how you’re a harsh mistress, words

given her by Jimmy Webb. How you can

be so cold. Not tonight. Something’s absurd.

No stars ignite—clouds a vast clumped curtain.

Yet you burst through laughing, marbled pearl face

burning with insight of our global plight,

refusing to dramatize our brief place

on earth. Laughing, I suppose, because night’s

like yawning dawn, high noon and sunset—all

an instant designed for laughter and dance,

for soft whispers and sighs, for spirit’s call

to cells to meld as one. Call it romance.

Call it being human. You laugh. Ask why

with hazy glow we let it pass us by.

Roger Armbrust

August 10, 2014

MANDATE

I must write haiku
before midnight. Don't ask me
why. I'm not the Muse.

FINGERTIPS

By day I reach out and touch fingertips

of trees and plants, thank them for vital air.

By night I reach up and touch fingertips

of stars, praise their silent songs. I compare

them to candlelight, their sacred vespers

of spirit. Always within day and night

I touch your fingertips, utter whispers

of thanks for you. If I find you in sight

or not, I do this. Your fingertips pressed

soft to mine seem to define existence,

express through our universe all that’s blessed.

Our fingertips preparing food, presence

of life’s continuum, feel earth’s command

to love all through flexing our gentle hands.

Roger Armbrust

August 3, 2014

SOAP BUBBLE

Its sphere an atmosphere of clarity

perhaps like seeing God’s eye envision

each creation’s birth—sight a rarity

for us humans, don’t you think? Precision

in geometry. Transparent skin’s curve

a screen of reflection for whatever

light encounters and conveys, its sleek swerve

reducing and distorting with such clever

focus, we’re forced to question every view.

I even wonder about you—clear orb

landing on your eye lash, like residue

from a god’s tear, his captured gaze absorbed

with your azure iris forcing his hand

to flash lightning bolts at your mute command.

Roger Armbrust

August 1, 2014