EVER ASCENDING (HEATHER'S SONG)

My love was a mystery

But not anymore

I knocked with my fist, you see

He’s opened the door

And now stars surround us

A sacred clear sky

The blessed night has found us

I can’t explain why

This love’s like a meteor

Propelling through space

This love swirls my soul’s core

With passion and grace

We’re ever ascending

Our love ever glowing

Our love with no ending

Our love ever growing

We’re ever ascending

We’re ever ascending

We’re ever ascending

Roger Armbrust
July 4, 2018

https://www.amazon.com/Pressing-Freedom-Novel-Roger-Armbrust/dp/1624911250

TORTURE

Cloth covers bruised mouth.

Water floods cloth. Mouth gurgles,

spews. He’s sure he’ll die.

WHAT WILL YOU DO?

What will you do when you read this sonnet?

Will you smile and think of “Shakespeare in Love”?

Will you moan how I shouldn’t have done it,

frowning like a spurned date suddenly shoved

from the dark car? I think of Keats in his

wild surmise, dreaming deep of Fanny Brawne,

waking in his oppressive wheeze, his bliss

lost to his consumptive cough at stark dawn,

knowing he nears the end. He used to fear

he’d never become a poet. Now he’s

legend. But he knew of loss, how to tear

up parchment when image failed. How to please

the Muse also. I hear voices outside

my window. Feel distant planets collide.

Roger Armbrust

March 15, 2018

JEWELED GALLERY

Sunny mornings that disco ball atop

my daughter’s large living-room rock fireplace

captures light through double windows stretching

from floor to high-beam ceiling, turning cream

walls to a jeweled gallery: glowing

flecks morphing to flakes of geometries

varied as universe. Flower blossoms

and spheres the size of golf balls, rectangles,

diamonds, shining slits like distant UFOs.

Blossoms transfiguring to angels’ heads

and wings. This happens just after 8 am.

Sitting, sipping herbal tea, we contemplate.

She considers moving the Moser lithograph

from the mantle’s aesthetic clutter.

By 9 am our wall gallery is gone, narrowed

to a bright path stretching across tan-colored

carpet and soft-striped throw rug.

Roger Armbrust

December 21, 2017

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THE MAN IN THE RAINCOAT

slump-shouldered and silent, collar upturned,

hiding his face except for lightning eyes,

Irish country hat’s bill pressed down, glare burned

into your psyche, not because he tries

but due to memory of rain-shattered

day in October when she left like blood

gushing from a chest wound, when what mattered

were her lightning eyes striking little good

left within your tattered, scattered being,

your limp arm rising slow as summer, stiff

hand failing to urge her back to pity

you, failing to force her from the far cliff,

from leaping lost to all toward the city

below, leaving your self ever seeing…

Roger Armbrust

October 19, 2017

ECLIPSE

for Catherine, my daughter,

on her birthday

In ancient times they all marveled, keeping

records of first sightings in Ireland, Greece,

Syria, China. Greek poets would sing,

giving it a name which never would cease

throughout time: from the verb we translate as

“to abandon”, “darken”, “fall down”. Perhaps

they wished to warn their children how days pass

like flashes of light; how their gods could lapse

into ego trips, crush humans’ hopes like stones

into dust. No matter. Their myths, their art

speak most to us. Tell of their flesh and bones,

logic, their sense of the universe, hearts

and minds connecting to all. You, artist,

teacher, move this forward: inspire, persist.

Roger Armbrust

August 21, 2017