PARDON ME, PLEASE

Pardon me, please. I seem to write sonnets
each time I see you. This inspiration,
I suppose, springs forth as with most poets
confronted by beauty. Hesitation’s
unhealthy for us. We respond with ease
to the appearing Muse, just as viewers
in museums praise Van Gogh’s masterpiece
displayed before them, recognize its pure
and rare essence, like miners for gold who
suddenly stumble on a lone diamond,
or mountain-cave explorers finding blue
sky, and at cliff’s edge uncharted ocean.
Poets don’t seek out such amazing tides.
Truth is, the Muse flows forth when she decides.

Roger Armbrust

ONLY CHILD

for Julie

You got lucky, I guess: loving parents
who must have recognized beauty, keen mind,
the need for books and loose leashes, content
to let you try and fail, hoping you’d find
the right, rugged, unmarked rocks on that path
we somehow stumble with faith, fall surprised,
then rise, grit, and press on, sometimes with wrath
or sorrow, sometimes laughter, always prized
love, though often hidden as some treasure
we fear revealing will mean losing. I
don’t know this for sure, just sense it in your
deep eyes, the way they watch me, watch all. My
daughter’s an only child. I got lucky,
I know. She took me back. Sober’s the key.


Roger Armbrust
November 30, 2008

HOMECOMING

If you were here, I’d point to the night sky,
cite how the three-quarter moon, lopsided
as some ancient Roman coin, must have spied
you waving last year from that high, crowded
row in War Memorial Stadium,
and returned this evening for your encore.
But you’re not here, are you? Among loud drums,
Go Rockets! shouts, crowd currents flowing forth
and back like conscience, I glance from time to
time, thinking I see you between pass plays,
waving down to me as I wave up. Though
I know that’s not how life goes, it can’t sway
me from past moments composing my tune
of memory. Or so I tell the moon.

Roger Armbrust
November 30, 2008

KEEP DANCING, LOVE

Keep dancing, love, keep dancing. Don’t let your
bitter wonder hold you back. Reward flows
from chancing motion—so soothsayers, pure
in their vision through crystal, seem to know,
predict as if decision and passion
both erupt from soul’s one subduction zone,
pouring forth through blood, muscle, skeleton,
igniting graceful leaps, closed position
marrying us to great music. Oh, hold
me as I hold you, welcoming our waltz,
lost in our embrace, inspired to risk bold
whirls and dips, mouths near gasping as we pause.
Your shy eyes glance away, and I recall
past lives in Renoir’s Bal à Bougival.

Roger Armbrust
November 27, 2009

MOUNTAIN THANKSGIVING

We’ve turkey on our table, love. Dressing
and trimmings. Witness lantern light dimming
as we hold hands, bow our heads in blessing,
share the meal. But this keeps my head swimming:
How you glow in lantern light, eyes dancing
fireflies of delight, celebrating guests’
every move, it seems, even my glancing
a glass off our wood floor. I should have guessed
it, your love flame swirling to bonfire through
our years. I see it in simplest ways: your
skilled fingers tending our garden—jeweler
etching diamonds. Then your easy smile, sure
I’ll glow like moonlight, or blaze like dusk’s sun,
when we lay as one after guests are gone.

Roger Armbrust
November 24, 2009

CHILDSONG

The small girl across the street is screaming.
Not painful cry, but caught in her childsong,
discovering sharp tones beyond dreaming,
delighted in their shrill, startling height, long
as breath will allow, intense with spirit
Ulysses must have known, bound to ship’s mast,
craving wisdom beyond death. Love, hear it
in her voice, joy longing to kiss our vast
universe? Can we match it with our mute
choices, sharing life’s passion through glances,
smiles, hands and arms latching our resolute
bodies, braving what we see? Faith dances
through us, stirred to heal deep fractures from pain,
leads us to sharing our childsong again.

Roger Armbrust
November 23, 2009

GLAZE

Not speckles on your sweet holiday ham,
sintered oxide covering metal door,
reflective lens of your digital cam
nor transparent surface of marble floor.
Not vitreous coating on ceramic
vase holding my passion-red rosebud gift,
nor glossy gleam of your blouse’s fabric,
but your thin-iced face, love, after our rift:
smooth and lustrous, yet refusing to melt
to my apology, or crack a smile
at my amending joke. I know you felt
my excuse a lie, my intentions vile.
I could tell when your eyes lost their soft glow,
their frost-glistened gaze like frozen windows.

Roger Armbrust
November 22, 2009

SENNELIER

This morning, he’d concentrate on whites, place
them by his window, view of Quai Voltaire
there before the Louvre, revel in pure grace
of pigment bathed in light, lisp softest prayer—
thanks for de Romanange’s lithopone,
Courtois’s zinc oxide, the Romans’ ceruse.
By noon Cézanne would show, always alone,
wild-eyed, scowling about Gustave’s poor use
of celestial blue, never right for Paul’s
skies. Patience marks how we love our artists,
he’d later counsel son Henri, recall
Gauguin’s fight outside their shop, Mars-stained fists
pounding another drunk. That night, he’d dream
of lakes, fluorescents, barite-flowing streams.

Roger Armbrust
November 20, 2009

PARTICLES

Since we are all particles of godlife,
since we all exercise within godbreath,
find our way and simply grow in godlight,
share intelligent energy past death,
since our collected cells can only see
our single cells flow through microscopic
invention we ourselves envision, we
ourselves create from other cells—topics
of our every thought, decision, action
and reaction—discover particles
smaller than our cells, great dancing fractions
as if life within life, and yet ourselves,
since all our cells share power through a kiss,
and kiss shares many forms, I write you this.

Roger Armbrust
November 20, 2009

AIX-EN-PROVENCE

Look there to the east, love, how we still see
Montagne Sainte-Victoire as Cézanne saw
her, the way sunlit tinges of blue bleed
with pink and gray, pastel mask over raw
limestone. Let’s sit under aqua awnings
of Les Deux Garçons, sip red Bandol as
he and Zola did till misty dawnings
long before their parting, lift each wine glass
and swear we two will last, solid as that
distant mountain, balanced as his bowing
bathers, at peace in our fluid abstract
setting, anonymous in our flowing
forms to any voyeur but God—artist
whose graceful brush allows us to exist.

Roger Armbrust
November 19, 2009

I REALLY LIKE HOLDING YOU

I really like holding you, those precious
seconds. I really like how your soft eyes
glow on seeing me, how we’re not cautious
moving to each other, as though our wise
angels have guided us through centuries
of renewed lives, always expecting brief
meetings, knowing our arms spread open, free
as sunflowers caressing light. Time, thief
of normal days, doesn’t seem to count here
with you. Where shall we end up, do you feel?
I envision simple space, free from fear,
gazing at life’s ageless art. A place real
as my bright couch, caressing, we alone
with old songs, like teens with the parents gone.


Roger Armbrust
November 17, 2009

SOMETIMES LOVING YOU

turns a prickly burr under the saddle;
sometimes sweat soaking your mane, my hands swept
up in its lather; sometimes my prattle
as you whinny to it, honest thoughts kept
deep beneath your forelock; your stifle flexed
sometimes, tensely awaiting slightest touch;
your loin wincing, rising as if perplexed
when I pat your back; sometimes your gait’s such
I must whisper “whoa,” or sometimes yell it;
pay attention to your superior
eyes, read their gaze, gauge the reins and tell it’s
our exact moment to let go, no spur
or request required as you gallop, thrill
filling us both as we charge the far hill.

Roger Armbrust
November 17, 2009

EVIDENCE

Each morning I stand before my full-length
mirror, study my naked skin covered
by your fingerprints, recall gentle strength
in their impressions, how you as lover
alone can cleave them, each shaped like a heart.
These friction ridges of your fingertips,
these engrained tattoos of grace you impart
through passion and care, curve like smiling lips,
or fertile rows of tear trails, mystic maze
of memory inviting my clear eyes
to travel their minute paths, stop and gaze
at their collection, how they fall and rise
throughout me. I sigh, trace their endless rims
of secrets, know only I can see them.

Roger Armbrust
November 15, 2009

THESIS

Lowering my voice and laying down my
body unstressed beside you—accented
measure of your sigh, your warm, flexing thigh
shivering to my conductor’s stroke—head
to foot our pores feel music flow through us,
beyond us. Love, are we not advancing
our species’ ageless proposition? Does
our soul’s guardian share spirit’s dancing,
need more proof than our eyes glancing, glowing?
Could Plato argue with our synthesis:
provocative positions bestowing
such contentious energy, only this—
our earth’s ultimate metaphysical
dialectic—could foil death, after all?

Roger Armbrust
November 9, 2009

SOLDIERS OF LIGHT

Grasping white-cylinder weapons between
forefinger and thumb, they trace slate green fields
with pearl curves and points, each mark creating
letter, word and phrase, while shrill scratches yield
formulae or designs guiding us free
from dense fog toward traces of gleaming wisps
we one day will call grace of clarity.
Wielding book shields like mirrors, their lips lisp
great lines, echoes of warriors—distant, wise—
who braved constant skirmishes carrying
our flank forward, showing how to survive,
keep fearful pretenders from burying
us alive, love as humans—not to win—
but laugh, embrace till our next fight begins.

Roger Armbrust
November 7, 2009

COSMIC LATTE

And what shall we conceive of cosmos, love,
now scientists have erased azure from
our sky, finding arrays of beige above
tinged with white like some swirling liquid sum
of espresso and foamed milk? Shall we fear,
lying at night, gazing out at angels’
eyes glistening beyond our atmosphere,
it’s illusion? Do asteroids dangle
in self-igniting only to dissolve
as neutral light, their ancient bright cycles
from blue to yellow to flamed red resolved
as pale cosmetic? Let’s trade such trifles
as physics for bed—our glowing bodies wed
with spirit, blazing heaven as stars once did.

Roger Armbrust
November 3, 2009