DANTE AND VIRGIL

for Elizabeth Weber


Call your painting what you will, I can’t help
but see these two cloaked poets, hooded to
protect their faces from fire, cringe at yelps
and screams of those suffering lusters who
hover in shadows, that second plateau
a broiling trail of bright lava leading
down to scarred, futile levels, Inferno
so intense its descending fiery rings
appear encased in jagged ice. Warn me
with your vision, artist. Point out my soul
among that huddled mass, framed misery
of faceless creatures, hopeless far below.
Guide me with your brilliant strokes. Lead me from
vast sight of hell to life beyond my tomb.

Roger Armbrust
January 31, 2010

LIGHT FREEZING DRIZZLE

swirling, transformed by orange-powder glow
of streetlights to fading fireflies, coveys
transmuting to frost piles in grass. They show
how swiftly all presence alters. We freeze
here with them, love, yet choose our place outside
beneath broad oaks of night, forsaking blaze
of fireplaces for our cloaked bodies, side
by side, gazing as flood of flakes form glaze
across our sleeves, thin heat of our clasped hands
somehow rising to transcend all cold. Tell
me with a flaming glance how we’ll withstand
spirit’s winter, grasp horror of its spell
and crush it in our bold embrace. We’re told
as lips touch we’ll glow long after we’re old.

Roger Armbrust
January 29, 2010

SILENCE

Like Preault’s Le Silence, I place finger
to lips. Not to quiet you, love, but let
you know I’m tired of our quarrel, linger
in shadows to hear you rant. You forget
how, when I drank, my rage sent you hiding,
made you wonder if you’d survive the night.
Now you suffer your first dry days, fighting
it all the way, vowing you’ll never sight
a meeting, will conquer your beast on your
own, not follow me just to please me, not
let me control your life, not play some pure
virgin to seduce. Accuse me of plots
to get you sober. I’m mute as a monk,
since I carry the message, not the drunk.

Roger Armbrust
January 27, 2010

POWERLESS

Sober for a little while, I long to
join Einstein’s cosmological constant,
then learn about dark energy’s milieu,
theory of some scientists insistent
we’ve an ever-expanding universe.
Yet again, I lose possession before
I’ve gained it, find once more my hopes reversed.
Call my sponsor. He laughs. Recalls our core
values. Notes even doctors pray for faith.
Quotes William James’ line on courageous leaps.
“Dreams altered reality in The Lathe
Of Heaven,” I retort. Still, my guide keeps
me honest: “Our heaven’s here, if you think
so or not, where angels guard us from drink.”

Roger Armbrust
January 25, 2010

TO MAKE EACH HOUR HOLY

I will walk among my fellows, hold their
hands and study their eyes. That’s all I need
to do. If God exists, surely it’s where
touch and sight meld within us, spirit’s seed
nourished by heat and light flowing from nerves
to brain, to heart, to gut and groin. We
know our universe through senses, deserve
our sixth sense leading us to faith. We’re free
to choose whether to live, to recognize
heartbeat and breath as gifts opening our minds
to all that’s possible. Free to despise
and despair should we choose fear, even find
insanity safer than love. But I
find you, love, by seeking with hand and eye.

Roger Armbrust
January 18, 2010

POLAR BEARS

Author on “Book TV” relates how male
polar bears avoid monogamy, eat
females and cubs when unearthing their trails.
Sounds like active alcoholics, replete
with ego-centered fear, caring only
to quench endless craving, devouring flesh
of any who fall in their sight, lonely
in constantly stalking vast tundra, fresh
blood turned to lip scabs, mushy snow melting
to muddy wasteland beneath their paws. I’ll
tell you this, buddy: When I drank, pelting
hail and flooding streets couldn’t stop me while
I struggled to reach a bar. Step in my
way, I’d scream and punch you…or slump and cry.

Roger Armbrust
January 17, 2010

YOU’RE CRYING, LOVE

You’re crying, love. I can only listen
over my cell phone, feeling your stuttered
breath capture my breath, see your tears glisten
in imagined candlelight. You uttered
something about cherishing my poems,
words swirling around my head like ether,
too enshrined within your pain to see them
beyond you. Your eyes dance through odd-metered
lines, welcoming their window-framed shadows
each time like ghosts they appear before you,
slender spirits of script lying in snow.
You hang up, yet I feel soft residue
of your tears in my tears, fear somehow you’ll
call me fool for crying. But I’m no fool.

Roger Armbrust
January 15, 2010

QUESTIONS

How do I not drink on a night like this
when news has shattered my heart? How do I
not lock my door and taste poison’s last kiss
from some glass’s moist lips when my body’s
memory lurches, suddenly startled
awake, craving surging through every pore?
What process of blind faith has even led
me to ask you this? Who will dare keep score
once I start my fatal marathon? Why
should I even care? My dark soul falls lost,
doesn’t it, hopeless in alcohol’s wry
abyss, twisting through endless void? What cost
to you if I grow numb? (What power’s there
still, leading me to kneel, whisper a prayer?)

Roger Armbrust
January 14, 2010

TO FREE WHAT WAITS WITHIN

I must welcome my senses, no longer
pretend I’m a lone brain floating in space,
acting as though isolation’s stronger
than honest contact. Love, I’ve made my case
for avoiding life based on evidence
now dissolved to dust. Now my being must
welcome my whole body’s startling movements,
your body’s every reflex. It’s not lust
I speak of, but facing realities
marking us as human, opening our
heat and light to join loving deities
who formed us, placing us this sacred hour
right here in our universe, facing each
other like stunned saints, heaven in our reach.

Roger Armbrust
January 14, 2010

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

for Cecelia

Tell Beethoven to mirror Vivaldi!
Oh, play a happy piano duet!
Fill this Wednesday with music so lively
even professors will never forget
great experiences of the past year
leading to lively, memorable tales:
lounging on lush Florida beaches, near
panic on steep, torrid Grand Canyon trails.
A bountiful year for a beauty with
verve, blessed with amazing, classical gifts:
loving daughters and husband, a Greek myth
in the works, where all life flows like a swift,
perfumed wind, a symphony to seal a
soul’s grand fate. Happy birthday, Cecelia!



Roger
January 13, 2010

A GREAT PRESENCE STIRS

With darkness surrounding us, love, we hold
one another like life preservers, drift
in ebony air as angels must, bold
as angels in our blessed mission. Now lift
each other, weightless in our altered state,
with such fragile care you’d think we’d shatter
if dropped or grasped with slightest force. We wait,
feel each other’s breathing. Does it matter
how, years before, we warped treasured senses,
tossing each other’s hearts in damp dungeons
only to watch our spirits escape? Yes.
Actions define our continuum. Once
we’ve returned, clawed, starved as our bodies are,
we see why angels once fought a great war.

Roger Armbrust
January 12, 2010

LOVE IS QUIET

We lie here together, nothing to see
really but our ceiling, a texture May
Swenson called the sea…of tranquility…
in her poem “Your Room.” Belovéd, say
with your fingertips sailing slow across
my chest how you’ll stay until dawn, ever
staying even when gone. We share no loss
of words; prefer silence for its power.
In this muted meditation I now
recall my first sight of you: smiling, still
as a photograph, studying Renoir’s
“Nude in the Sun,” your shoulders draped with quill-
skinned bomber jacket (Christmas present from
your ex), brash butt pressed against a Bontemps.

Roger Armbrust
January 11, 2010

NIGHT OFFERS ITSELF

Night offers itself to us, love, and we
welcome it—dark comforter covering
our bodies and psyches, process to free
us from day’s splinters, from fears hovering
like Hitchcock’s birds, bunched on wires awaiting
our moments of lost focus. But now I
focus on you, choosing music to fling
out our minds’ gabbing committees, rely
on Vivaldi to lift us back, his lush
strings leading us to each other’s tired eyes,
finding light within our near tears, a hush
embracing lips as if we realize
we need never speak again. Your fingers
touch mine. Deep velvet peace lingers.

Roger Armbrust
January 10, 2010

RIO

Flow with me, dear, along Calder’s sidewalk
mosaic. Its undulating stone tiles
of blue-gray and white almost make us balk,
ribboned waves seeming to rise and fall, miles
of ocean in only one block. Perhaps
it’s sea breeze engulfing us, Atlantic’s
call only yards away, how art can trap
us in nature when senses least expect
it. So it was with Christo Redento.
There atop Corcavado, you ignored
our viewing platform’s panorama to
gaze at the carpenter. How you implored
me to grasp what you saw there high above:
his arms, not soapstone, but opened in love.

Roger Armbrust
January 9, 2010

FRAGMENTS OF YOU

I form vowels and consonants, calling
you Great Breather, calling on you always
to take from me or give me or please bring
me or deliver me and rarely praise
and thank you for breath and heartbeat, for brain
waves and enzymes, for senses and psyche,
for air, water, fire, and earth, for great pain
that always leads me back to honesty,
facing my power void, my reliance
on whispering fragments of your ancient
name. Every syllable within my chants
is you, every sound I confess, relent,
rely on to form bonds with your great soul
forming our souls, fragments of you, yet whole.

Roger Armbrust
January 9, 2010

WHERE EVERYTHING YET CAN HAPPEN

I will don Mercury’s talaria
here, rise above earth, speed to hold loved ones.
My prayers will end humans’ hysteria,
clear air, detoxify land. I’ve begun
to purify water, it seems, stepping
into Atlantic surf. The homeless all
own condos now. Hear cancer patients sing,
free of disease. Our nuclear missiles
morph to giant chocolate rockets. Greed
stumbles and falls off the World Bank’s gold roof.
Dear children, once abused, no longer bleed.
Old folks don’t forget, offer facts as proof.
Poor folks now dress in exquisite houndstooth
while presidents and Congress tell the truth.

Roger Armbrust
January 7, 2010

THE FATES STAY SILENT

Clotho, blond hair flowing down her shoulders,
stares at me, smiling as she spins blue thread.
What future for me? I ask her, bolder
now I’ve touched her silk face. She nods instead
of speaking, urging me to recognize
Lachesis, lying on her nearby couch,
her measuring rod allotting flax, eyes
intent on each exact inch. I turn, crouch
beside her, repeat my line with purposed
respect. Without a word or glance, reaching
out her clinched hand, she offers Atropos
a lengthy strand. I quip, Now no preaching,
maiden. But please answer for your sisters.
She glares, studies me, and lifts her scissors.

Roger Armbrust
January 5, 2010

THE FERMENT I GROW FROM

Soil and slough pool where spirit draws its long
deep breath and our cell splits to two cells, this
exploding first encounter with passion
evolving to us in art’s catharsis
this very moment. Once I realize
it all relates, I’m forever sharing,
arousing the universe itself. Eyes
cannot ignore energy’s great daring
feat in every intelligent ounce of earth.
Years ago, riding home from Manhattan
to the Jersey Shore, questioning all worth
in life, through my bus window I caught glance
of a creek’s swirling water: lithe dancer
recalling all birth. I’d found my answer.

Roger Armbrust
January 4, 2010

YOUR FACEBOOK PHOTOS

I keep returning to them, feeling you
near me, though they’re only brilliant icons
recalling your smile—forced yet magic—true
to your desire to please all. A second
ago, I thought your eyes moved, their crystal
blue glowing at seeing me, your soft lips
suddenly pursing—silent way you’d call
for my kiss. Why do I repeat these trips
of insane longing, my mind and pained heart
kneeling before your staring image? Once,
your hand gently stroking my beard, you’d start
humming Nowhere Man, kidding me for stunts
only stumbling, shy lovers perform, lost
in your tender power, fearing its cost.

Roger Armbrust
January 4, 2010

MY LOOKING RIPENS THINGS

When I pay attention, glimpsing honey
bees assures me of apple trees, blossoms
and fruit, russeting’s sweet scent, uncanny
security of warm pie. Glancing some
SUV speeding past, I envision
our world without oil, parking lots piled high
with frames like rusted locusts’ husks, fission
of particles gorging our air. Your thigh
pressed against mine, I understand power
of mellow, gaze at your russet tone, soft
miracle of sun and body oil. Stir
me with your texture, love. Take me aloft.
Let your odor and flavor help create
an age where every move’s appropriate.

Roger Armbrust
January 3, 2010

SUICIDE WATCH

It’s one of those days. Walking through Greenwich
Village, I must stop every block, check store
windows for my reflection, feel slight twitch
in my cheek, heartbeat’s pace, deep breathe before
I realize I’m still here. Old demons
have sneaked back in, whisper need for relief,
recall favorite bars’ sweet lights and fun,
ignore past patterns as liar and thief
who’ll crush friends' and lovers’ hearts for drink’s sake.
I watch my face in McEerie’s pane glass,
hear some nice guy within me: A mistake
to go in there. Death knell. This too shall pass.
I move away. Yet a voice like Barney
the barkeep keeps calling, What’ll it be?

Roger Armbrust
January 2, 2010