KEEP YOUR BEAUTY GROWING

for my friend Nicole Mayer

Keep your beauty growing like Frost’s poem

splitting far star into spectra of light

among infinities. Keep beauty’s theme

waltzing through your heart within our plain sight

as you laugh at Caden’s clowning faces.

Keep your beauty flowing like Caitlin’s flow

of crayon over paper, her spaces

of color balanced as artist allows

faith and instinct to prosper, your soft smile

and intense eyes tracing her intense eyes.

Keep your beauty enthralling as Keath’s style

of wit, grace and memory enthralls, wise

and exact as Solon. Keep your beauty

nurtured deep inside you, fearless and free.

Roger Armbrust

July 30, 2013

I WANT TO SHARE SO MUCH

I want to share so much with you I don’t

know where to begin. Not knowing where to

begin, I stand and stare, afraid you won’t

understand my frozen state, or just who

I really am. Who I really am now

defines my poetry—when body, soul

and mind assimilate in sacred vow

with our universe—not my stated goal,

of course. I simply strive for accurate

imagery—to find your form in slender

sculptures, your velvet face among Cassatt’s

delicate women, your caress in dear

lyrics from Sinatra’s ballads. Let’s say,

perhaps I fear you’ll smile and walk away.

Roger Armbrust

July 27, 2013

STOKOWSKI AT 90

Your graceful pale hands control this London

orchestra with focused care as if each

note breathed to forge Debussy’s legend.

Surely those soft hands, their delicate reach

and touch, conceived your three wives’ devotion

those years earlier, intrigued Garbo’s hands

during your affair. Do you sense motion

of Nijinsky’s faun or ardent command

of composer’s notes as your left fingers

seem to glide over ghost violin strings?

Your right hand sweeps through air, pauses, lingers

in point at flautist in solo. Who sings

to the Muse if not you? Your hands propose

life, lift musicians to accept bravos.

Roger Armbrust

July 25, 2013

GETS ANY LONELIER HERE

Gets any lonelier here I’ll invite

cockroaches blanketing yard in for feast

of lettuce rot and bread mold. Spent lost night

again watching ghosts hump like storm clouds; beasts

with old lovers’ bodies screaming vile oaths

outside stained windows, cursing my organ’s

penetrating stare. My scarred senses loathe

dark, empty rooms. I whisper sad slogans

to every chained cell of my brief system.

Gets any darker here I’ll fade through night’s

void, sight evil angels…I resist them

with sudden prayer, shudder in frigid fright

of lost possibilities. I lance pain…

click on dim light…hear walls creak…then the rain…

Roger Armbrust

July 22, 2013

SECOND CHANCE

for Ashley Dixon

That tinge of light pressing against mist cloud’s

fading silk gown until peeled clean of it—

bare now as reason circled by dark doubt,

reflecting our faces’ glance to covet

hope—is our mystic moon: symbol of our

second chance. How clearly we see compared

to past nights groveling in caves, power

of faith lost in their damp, cramped veins. We’ll spare

details of lies and agony. Suffice

to say we’d hide eyes, terrified of stars,

too weak to even envision moon’s wise

revelation. What guides us now through far

journeys of our own psyches without trace

of fear’s jagged scars? Surely call it grace.

                                       

Roger Armbrust

July 21, 2013