YOU DID FLY ME TO THE MOON

Gravity lost its power and I sailed

through sky of your iris, through pupil’s dark

space to reflective center light. I hailed

its playground of stars. Found spring a soft spark

on Jupiter, a blaze on Mars, cherished

your hand in mine, worshipped your laughing snorts

as signs of overwhelming joy, perished

sometimes in your tears, sometimes in all sorts

of small, revered breaths and sighs. When you left

me floating through void, I tried to grow wings,

tried to swim, tried prayer, tried to dictate drift,

tried soaring yoga, tried to breathe and sing

without air, tried to wish my body slack,

grow my heart still. I never could get back.  

Roger Armbrust

November 14, 2012

DON’T YOU WANT TO LIVE FREE?

Pray, why do you let them drone you daily?

Don’t you want to live free? Why do you let

them record your brief walks through parks, your play

in fields, driving streets, running rivulet’s

paths? Don’t you want to live free? Why do you

let them tap your phones, turn you to clones with

ad-stuffed TV, censor Internet’s view?

Why do you let them infuse you with myth:

how their endless war will lead us to good;

how mounting debt will cure your ills? How come

you let them patent your wheat seeds? Your blood

cells? Trade your water and air for vast sums

of mammon? What canon bans history’s

lessons? Don’t you want your child to live free?

Roger Armbrust

November 6, 2012

CONFIDENCES

You were a strange child, my mom once told me.

You loved playing alone in the back yard,

and when a kid joined in, you would coldly

ignore him, or throw a fit. Always hard

to figure you out. Truth is, I’ve never

found a human who’ll listen like the oak

when I sit close and speak of fear, clever

in its silence. Who will surround and soak

me with truths as rain does on summer nights,

soft, caressing rhythms revealing all.

Who defines life’s plight like the hawk in flight,

squirming squirrel trapped in talons. Or fall

of distant star, brandishing from above

ancient signals listing dire costs of love.

Roger Armbrust

November 4, 2012

WHAT MYSTIC NIGHT KNOWS

What mystic night knows it reveals to steel

silos buried deep as oil wells. You thought

it only whispered through open air, feel

words that soft couldn’t penetrate far vaults

of ancient rock thick as Alps or Andes,

layered crusts so vast they form a solid

galaxy, crystal patterns like candies

melted and blended in boiling liquid

then hardened in a petrified sea. You

dream of stars blazing, ghost horses trotting

over rainbows, sense yourself falling through

infinite void in panic, then plotting

your course through this frantic ionosphere,

praying you’ll land on some angel’s light tear.

Roger Armbrust

November 2, 2012

SURREAL ESTATE PETS

The doghead with human body (or should

we say human body with doghead) shows

how snooping through lost foggy boneyards could

double for digging up dark graveyard rows

of corporate types left for dead. How nice

for dogheads (snazzed in three-piece suits) to paw

at earth as if searching for souls on ice

or bond thugs drowned in underwater awe

of empty houses no one can market.

Watchdogheads (like Buddhists) pay attention

to praise what’s surreal, then sniffling bark it

to anyone in earshot (or vision

called eyeshot) on point toward that empty lot

like it’s a subdivision (but it’s not).

Roger Armbrust

October 30, 2012