DIS-EASE

You understand, I know, this deep dis-ease

we suffer. It surges through our comfort

in surprise attacks, shattering our peace,

confusing us with rash, blaring retorts

from our devils’ battalion: You’re not good

enough! You’ll never amount…You’ll fuck it

up! You’re better than…If they understood

you’re above them! You must suffer! Suck it

up! I see you lying alone at night,

hearing what I hear. I want to study

your eyes, free them of our soul’s lonely fright

through soft, honest words, touch of a steady

hand. Send prayers for help. Listen for replies

to calm us, tell us demons’ screams are lies.

Roger Armbrust

August 8, 2013

TELLING YOU ABOUT MY DAY

Constantly amazed how I avoid prayer,

then surrender, experience deep peace

and oneness from contact with power there

with us, within and throughout us, release

of fear into space which must conceive grace

and faith. What else can we call energy

surging us through acts of love? When your face

appears amid soft pace of day, you free

all beings to sing. How do you free them?

Where does your vision rise from? When I rise

through air grasping image for a poem,

wanting to share it with you, will you prize

it if I do? Read it over coffee?

Smile when you’re through? Raise it like a trophy?

Roger Armbrust

August 6, 2013

THIS NIGHT

This night of our aesthetic agony,

this atmosphere which dissolves our breathing,

this distorting blackness and light we see

pouring through us with hypnotic seething

of dying stars, can we conceive its soul

somehow in our poems, in our sculptures

molded with course sands, raw silks slashed yet whole

at once—image of real lives ruptured

beyond repair yet healing through soft touch?

Can we still stand and hear our human songs—

simple lyrics like I love you so much?

Can we still caress and dance all night long

to passion’s music deep within us, our

eyes igniting all galaxies’ power?

Roger Armbrust

August 5, 2013

MY FINGERS

My fingers testing your body’s texture.

My fingers caressing your skin’s landscape.

My fingers caught in musing conjecture

of your reaction as I trace soft nape

of your neck. My strong fingers outlasting

your long sigh for affection, controlling

graceful rhythms of deep massage, casting

mild glances on your nipples, consoling

sudden shivers—flesh’s message of sweet

response. My shy fingers growing bolder

through their caring journey, nearly complete

there between your thighs, sensing your shoulder’s

slow curl, seeing growing fire in your eyes.

My fingers bowing to your gentle cries.

Roger Armbrust

August 3, 2013

DIPTYCH

You and I in two separate frames yet

still connected. You constantly running

down mountainsides seeking peaks, brief vignettes

of stumbling, even drastic falls, rising

again to run. I watching this in prayer,

recording this in sonnets, knowing this

by heart, like Orpheus, having gone there.

If we ever cross references, kiss

and hold one another—exhausted friends

and lovers in surrender—I’ll welcome

our intertwining respite, gracious end

to a beginning; welcome what’s to come

as ancient poets who, etching stone pages,

envision images lasting through ages.

Roger Armbrust                                

August 2, 2013