ALL-WET WEATHER WARNINGS

Please don’t let the sleet street dislodge your feet

or mar your car by sliding it too far.

Keep gray skies from your eyes with sunny smiles.

Make rain yield to your windshield with wipers

made of diapers. A slick coat (not of paint)

helps you cope when you feel you cain’t. Sidewalks

turn to moats? Take a boat and float for miles!

If a huge deluge should smear your rouge, tell

jerks you’re a work of modern art! Take heart!

Reach a stream? Don’t scream. Like following dreams,

just follow it. (Maybe you’ll catch a bream!)

Note well: If ya huddle in a puddle,

the mud’ll befuddle ya. And most of all:

Should a waterfall fall on y’all…don’t call.

Roger Armbrust

February 21, 2013

LOL

Oh, lovely lady who loves to laugh (lol)

think of ten bow ties on a giraffe (lol)       

poor elephant with post nasal drip (lol)

Poo’s bouncy Tigger with a sore hip (lol)

yet he’ll happily bounce with a cane (lol)

laugh out and shout in storms Hurry, cane! (lol)

Consider old owls who question Who? (lol)

and who might answer when Who? is through! (lol)

Imagine a dachshund in a bun (lol)

runs in stockings that make women run (lol)

ice cream being milked from chilly cows (lol)

folks who bow when their dogs bark Bow wow! (lol)

I hope my musings don’t cramp your style (lol)

and pray they prompt your fav'rite word: Smiles! (lol)

Roger Armbrust

February 20, 2013

SKILLFUL PICKER

Watching Antique Roadshow with you, nearly

spewing my buffalo chicken sub when

hearing appraisal for Joseph Henry

Sharp’s Taos oil painting, I quickly begin

to lyric Sondheim’s Art Isn’t Easy,

and you glisten with your deep sad-glad smile,

flow it to a tearful laugh, and please me

with your comic applause. You strut your style

with Market Warriors, stress your status: I’m

a skillful picker. I study luster

of your diamond gaze tracing Bruno’s climb

down in price, his bargaining for cluster

of small chairs, toy horse. I bid you, Skilled one,

pick me. You study me, then speak, your tone

a sweet, slow whisper: Going…going…gone.

Roger Armbrust

February 18, 2013

THE SMALL VOID

It’s the small void between the heart and gut

where our consciousness bleeds without ceasing,

that single invisible slight wound cut

by desire, healed by one voice so pleasing

we can hear the heavens sing, feel the choice

of angels’ eternal decisions. Fold

me in warm chords and rhythms of that voice.

Hold my memory of histories told

to Homer and Dante, Shakespeare and Frost.

Oh, welcome my muse with tender laughter

soft as wind through willow trees. When I’m lost

in confused corridors of fear after

I’ve obsessed too long, let her whisper words

as she always does: sounds the soul has heard.

Roger Armbrust

February 17, 2013

THE NIGHT COULD SMOTHER YOU

The night could smother you if Natalie

Dessay weren’t sprinting and leaping bright stars,

her soprano enthralling satellites

and asteroids; if Pavarotti’s par

excellence of Nessun Dorma wasn’t

blessing the universe, Makarova’s

lyric flow weren’t caught on film, pressed against

our breasts as we’re filled with grace. Take over

our psyches, Burton, with your recorded

monologue, Hamlet brooding alone—each

of us is with you. Bear us accorded

with our too, too solid flesh, with our reach

into delicate memory, our sum

of visions: who we are, what we’ll become.

Roger Armbrust

February 16, 2013