SHADOW STORIES

 

On this day Napoleon’s soldiers found

the Rosetta Stone, Emile Zola fled

France, Edgar Degas was born, and the first

women’s rights conference opened. Different

years, of course. But, god, such brilliant history.

Yet all shadow stories now to our later

generations mired in TV and fascism.

Shadow stories flashing quickly on our walls

at night with each passing headlight. Yet we’re

all asleep in our dark present. We don’t

see them. Or if we’re catatonic with

insomnia, we sense but don’t sight their

sudden dark linking forms. And to assure

we don’t connect, some passing voice calls it myth.

 

Roger Armbrust

July 19, 2023

 

23 RUE VANEAU

Karl Marx, living with wife Jenny and child

in Paris now, at last begins to see how

humans’ scourge is deeper than religion.

How our history of economics, always based

on landowner/ruler and slave, crushes man’s essence

as creator, now condemned to technology’s

assembly line and its soul-numbing repetitions,

the proletariat always barely

surviving, intelligence stifled. His

answer would be always the written word:

educating the masses to their plight.

Authority’s response: forever to chase him

out of one city to another, one country to another,

this power struggle never ending through today.

Roger Armbrust

June 11, 2023

AUDEN IN ARKANSAS

I mainly remember two things

about your reading that summer 1970

at State Teachers College in Conway:

 

1.

Standing alone at the podium

of Snow Auditorium’s vast stage

you lifted folded paper

crumpled like a soiled map

from your dark-grey coat pocket

crackled it open close to microphone

and mumbled, “Here’s a poem I just finished:

Talking to Dogs

        In memorium Rolf Strobl

        Run over June 9^th, 1970

You read with the distant drone

of a power line stretched across prairie.

Months later I would see your poem

printed on a crisp white page of Harper’s Magazine.

 

2.

As you stepped to us backstage

Lee Rogers and I shuffled nervous soft shoe.

Neither of us knowing what to say to a legend

Lee warbled, “What brings you to Arkansas?”

Your face

with more crevices and character

than an Ozark mountain

encircled by scarves of smoke

rising from unfiltered cigarette stuffed

between two fingertips the color of jaundice

seemed to fade from us.

Your tired bloodhound eyes

curdled by old skin

studied our shoes

as your diaphragm-deep answer

crawled toward us:

“My agent.”

 

Roger Armbrust

1990s

 

OVATION FOR OVID

Ovid’s birthday today, that crafty Roman

poet mainly known for “Metamorphoses”,

tracing world history from creation

to Julius Caesar. But let me praise, please,

his “Ars Amatoria” – The Art of Love --

showing me how to find a woman, or

woman how to win a man. Gods above!

His simple guide still in play for lovers!

Don’t forget her birthday. Never ask your date

her age. Let her miss you…but not too long. Then

after you fight, “making up, but in private”.

Simultaneous orgasm. Hey, man!

Who needs Kinsey or Alex Comfort? Give

me an ancient Roman to learn how to live!

 

Roger Armbrust

March 20, 2023

 

TULIPS

You want to cup them in your hands, don’t you,

their layered petals inviting caress.

Their colors rainbow-varied, rich, as if viewed

only by royalty, fabric to dress

a queen. Their name derives, it seems, from

a Persian word for “turban”. You see it,

don’t you, how it wraps the stem’s head. How red

ones respond to sun like an open heart.

There in the garden, your open heart and

arms caress your daughter like a bouquet

of flowers. I recall a distant land

long ago, embracing my daughter that way.

She was younger then than your Grace, our smiles

at ease, unaware what precious memories.

 

Roger Armbrust

March 18, 2023

CRITICAL RACE THEORY

Victors write the history we’re told

which has been a fact

which doesn’t make the history a fact.

Now victims are writing history

thanks to laws and technology

and victors are yelling that it’s not fact.

Critical Race Theory they call it:

Marketing term so far from fact

they feel they’re safe.

But feelings aren’t facts.

The fact is they feel

if they’re not victors they’re victims.

And that’s not fact.

The fact is they fear

Integration:

an action so natural

to evolution

of civilizations

like two parts hydrogen

to one part oxygen

creating water.

Roger Armbrust

November 4, 2021

THE REAL KEY

Been arranging poetry manuscripts.

Thought I had four to send Ted, my old friend

and publisher. I have seven. See, it’s

the Muse, not me. She’s the angel who sends

inspiration, rhythms, imagery. She’s

the one who turns the grand woman I see

into muse or memory. When she’s pleased

she smiles. Sometimes I see it. Sometimes we

just sit in silence. She lets me decide.

Those are the toughest moments. Yet splendid.

Chet Baker’s singing on Pandora. “I

get along without you very well.” Shit.

We all know that’s a lie. Ah. Here comes the real key:

Tony’s crooning, “They can’t take that away from me.”

Roger Armbrust

May 4, 2021