MIDNIGHT APPROACHING

Midnight approaching and I study your

photograph, your eyes reflecting blue dress,

your eyes gazing through lens at a world sure

of your rare beauty if gazing back. Blessed

smile hints at something the world may not know

or does not see beyond camera’s eye.

I’m listening to Nina Simone show

the world  seven minutes of passion, sly

lilting piano and smooth guttural

voice praising the wild wind…for we’re creatures

of the wind and wild is the wind…Through all

our wild nights, we’ve somehow found calm, treasures

of solitude sometimes. You got your hair

cut, you said. Good way to start the New Year.

Roger Armbrust

January 5, 2013

SCHUBERT

Throughout your vast, short life (vast in music

and little else), you seem to fail: too poor

to marry Therese, sterile artist

circles and pro jobs tossing their heads, your

musicals kicked out every stage door. Still,

Salieri’s lessons stick. You compose

with fire and gentle wind, creative will

amassing scripts to billow a warehouse.

Just months before death, you perform that lone

concert of your own works. Syphilis and

mercury clawing away, you postpone

study of counterpoint, your brother’s hand

holding yours as you ask to be buried

next to Beethoven. At last you succeed.

Roger Armbrust

January 5, 2013

SOCRATES AFTER

So, did you abandon your three small sons?

Since I would not escape execution?

Didn’t your friends bribe guards at the prison?

Should flight from death be my contribution

to history, to this city I fought

in battles to save? Yet didn’t your words

critique democracy? Does man’s free thought

and speech forbid truth, no clear voices heard

to challenge power? Then do you deny

stinging the wise with your public insults?

Isn’t stinging the nature of gadflies?

But don’t their stings offer deadly results?

For the fly or the horse? The fly in fact.

So: I didn’t break my social contract.

Roger Armbrust

January 4, 2013

YOUR ANTIQUE LAMPS

Empedocles revealed Aphrodite’s

forming mankind’s eye from four elements.

When she lit the fire within, deities

surely sang her praises, called commandments

for the Muses: Empower artists through

all eras to honor light with sculpted

shrines ranging from bare-breasted nymphs round to

slag glass and flowing filigree. Instead

of reigning darkness, teach humans value

of light within light, embraced by vast art

of civilization and spirit. You

see vital images nature comparts:

antlers, angels, visual symphony

of cypress forms and melting Tiffany.  

Roger Armbrust

January 2, 2013

HOXNE HOARD

Thousands of Roman coins—bronze, silver, gold—

and tableware boast most of this treasure

housed in the British Museum. My bold

choice, though: presents for your smiling pleasure—

two pierced-work gold bracelets, and body chain

of gold with amethyst and four garnets

still intact these centuries later. Pains

me to say four pearls are missing, and yet

we can replace those shelled gifts from the sea.

We’ll fly to Manhattan by private jet,

hop a sleek limousine to Tiffany’s.

I’ll even buy you an antique lorgnette

and matched set of ancient Greek pottery

(all this after I win the lottery).

Roger Armbrust

January 1, 2013