LILACS

I listen to Rachmaninoff’s “Lilacs”,

his own 1942 recording,

delicate crystal touch, and I think back

to your delicate crystal touch. Sorting

through my own notes, I wonder about his

unknown “white lilacs lady,” her bouquets

sent to his every concert—the way this

must have intrigued his heart, guided the way

his long fingers caressed those Steinway keys,

how his rhythmic patterns inspire my long

fingers to caress your lilac skin. Please

listen to him listening to his song—

as I listen to myself when I write

poems to you these crystal lilac nights.

Roger Armbrust

September 30, 2014

FEELING SO DEEPLY

Feeling so deeply, so terribly deeply,

so ultimately terribly deeply,

everything in life but you seems wrong;

yet feeling so deeply, joyfully deeply,

so majestically joyfully deeply

my body craves to explode in song.

No wonder I gaze in wonder at you,

no wonder my eyes at once praise you,

yet glance away as though gazing too long

at blazing sun’s exploding body. It’s true

when I see you our world seems at peace,

when you smile, our world seems healed;

and I smile, all fears seeming released

from fear, your mystery no longer concealed.

I feel so deeply, so terribly deeply,

so majestically, joyfully deeply.

Roger Armbrust

September 27, 2014

JOY FARM

for e e cummings

In black & white photo

at Midtown Library

you sit in grass

near ivied arch

of your dark-wood house

on Joy Farm

your mother

rising behind you

your sister Elizabeth

smiling beside you

her arm ribboned over

Rex’s broad brown chest

his spiked collar

bordering stout white head.

Your sweatered arms

embrace shrugged knees

of your knickers

your eyes cast down

as if you see

what lies ahead

one day that summer

on Silver Lake

when Rex snaps at hornets

and your canoe rolls over

boat and life preservers

sinking like corpses.

You and Elizabeth

grab at floating boxes

as panicked Rex

pulls Elizabeth under

her blond curls

dark as lake bottom

darting back up into air

then down

and up.

Your screams

gagged by water

you grab dog collar

and spikes rip your palms

as Rex’s weight clamps to you

like squid’s arms

his claws carving

your face throat shoulders.

Noose of your hands

spews with crazed adrenalin

as you strangle this life you love

your swim-strong legs

kicking you on top

your body weight

pushing him down

drowning

this sudden insane enemy

his claws gnawing your chest

bloody vein of bubbles

sizzling up from his nostrils

from his gurgling mouth

and brown-white water

fuming with breath

then less

and less

then only ripples

as white-red paws

slide limp to your waist

and dead weight forces

you to let go.

Holding your sister’s

tear-eyed face

you find two floating boxes.

Your swollen tongues

find no words

as you gnarl through water

toward shore.

You are 12 years old.

You will live to 67

but never keep another dog.

Roger Armbrust

1998

IMPRESSION

How you depict changing light. How your face

reflects it, accentuates day fading,

returning with light. How your eyes can trace

starlight, entrancing all, then evading

other eyes. How motion of your raised head,

your flexed bare arms create crucial tension,

lessons of your mood. Hours ago, I read

how brief brush strokes create light’s suspension

on canvas, allow its grace evolving

as day moves to night. Moves like your graceful

hand combing your hair, fingers resolving

each shining strand’s place. How my mind’s space full

of your impression alters like light, sway

of your smile like morning sun to Monet.

Roger Armbrust

September 23, 2014

SOMETIMES THE NIGHT’S TOO MUCH

Sometimes the night’s too much. Prayer won’t even

deliver relief to my body/mind’s

pulsing tension. Petitions to heaven

seem stamped received then crumpled, dropped behind

some careless cloud, left for eternity

to ignore: love’s definition of hell.

Then Her deep, silent voice of certainty

flowing from gut to heart rises to tell

each cell to rise and write of you—your eyes

locked behind sunglasses, not to protect

you from light, but me from your pure iris

dreaming us too soon to cosmos. Lyrics

of reality suddenly appear,

revealing your song I never could hear.

Roger Armbrust

September 22, 2014

THIS DISTANCE HOLDS SO CLOSE

This distance holds so close. Mouths not touching

yet engulfing each other’s blazing breath.

Eyes closed. Fingers not touching yet clutching

each other’s heart to our own heart. Should death

stumble on us, surely she’d stall, retreat

to report awe of such amazing life.

Sing how your jewel-pierced ear blesses sweet

air of our deep breathing. How tense motif

of our breathing holds our bodies at bay

all these eternal seconds until our

existence collides our trillion cells way

beyond where we are now, where all power

resides, explodes and regenerates art.

Where every experience ends and starts.

Roger Armbrust

September 19, 2014

BLESSING FOR BEKKAH

I envisioned you

blowing out candles, grateful

for your poet’s gift.

THE ART OF PRINTMAKING

A birthday sonnet

for my son-in-law Eric Sweet

The art of printmaking, they say, centers

on originality. That just fits

you: a true original. Consider

yourself a monotype, a composite

of man called artist—melded by the Muse

from the best who’ve come before. When Rembrandt

etched his amazed selfie, or Goya fused

his “Disasters of War,” or Vallotton

kissed his “Cogent Reason,” surely they sensed

something in your waiting soul, your mustached

mouth pressing your wife’s loving cheek—presence

of all that’s human. When Dürer’s eye flashed

upon St. Jerome in his study, surely

he sensed your wit in the great scholar’s psyche.

Roger Armbrust

September 15, 2014

WHAT IS THE WHOLE WE HOLD HERE

What is the whole we hold here? What concept

flows from your eyeglow? How will it save us,

do you know? What can connect us except

honesty—its gnawing through fear, focus

on light, opening caves to vital air?

When you smile, I smile. What’s that fact supposed

to mean for our purpose, our precious care

for Earth, ourselves? The first time I proposed

a kiss, did this change our eternity?

Why did it feel so? The first time I pressed

my timid mouth to yours, what entity

thrust us through some star’s explosion?  Who blessed

our energies to magnetize as souls?

What power holds us here, our psyches whole?

Roger Armbrust

September 12, 2014

WHEN THE SONORAN DESERT

When the Sonoran Desert reminds me

of you, I praise goldpoppies igniting

low rolling hills with blazing memory

of your goldpoppy braids, dunes inviting

images of your bronze curves smooth flowing.

I pace thick mesquite forest, recall your

eyes when you wear dark green, the wind blowing

echoes of your laughter. That time we toured

Santa Rita Range, you quipped and mimicked

Elephant Head. I cherished your dancing.

Now the sun glows saguaro to rose, tricks

me to see blackbirds with yellow heads, sing

your favorite sad ballad. I gaze deep

at the far range, bless your profile in sleep.

Roger Armbrust

September 9, 2014

THAT DAY

In Greenwich Village

I gazed down Sullivan Street

to towerless sky.

City of silence,

even those glazed-eyed loved ones

taping up photos.

FINAL COMMITMENT

The Trident missile

rises through air, flaming tail

predicting globe’s blaze.

DICTATOR

The tongue depressor

manipulates the machine,

sewing your mouth shut.

3...2...1...

The mushroom clouds rise.

The radiation descends.

Winds breathe our Amen.

TEAMWORK

Each cell a conscious

entity, they link like hands

lifting us toward light.

POWER

The dead weight, unwilling to rise, still does.

Grasp of hand, flex of arm are all it takes.

The great boulder, unwilling to move, blows

apart, scatters over mountainside, makes

lightning strike’s brutal purpose a success.

Find in that mix my will and heart, hoping

you won’t move me, won’t shatter my helpless

heart’s mass, its vast rhythm enveloping

nucleus of every cell (so it seems).

Hoping you won’t infiltrate my psyche,

control through slight motion my nightly dreams,

my daily actions classifying me.

Hoping your blazing gaze won’t burn through

my mask. Hoping you don’t see. But you do.

Roger Armbrust

September 2, 2014