FOGBOW

Out from Ocean Beach, that white, mystic arc
spanning sea like a melting fluorescent
tube appears a rainbow’s lost ghost, its stark
absence of color making me repent
failed loves, spent fortunes, selfish wasted hours
lying to people I didn’t even
know, diverting sunlight away—not towards
them—like that fogbow’s fine mist must prevent
prismic hues from reaching artists’ eyes as
they stand on the cliff above us. Tell me,
last night when we said we loved—whispers passed
through darkness in passion and hope—did we
speak the truth or commit a sacrilege,
our vows soon dissolving like that pale bridge?

Roger Armbrust
May 29, 2008

HOUNDS OF HEAVEN

Carina Nebula’s pastel mists clog
with molecular gas and dust forming
globs of brown watercolor stretched like dogs
pursuing a fleeing man, their storming
chase seeming to ford a fog-drenched freeway,
distant stars flashing like headlights of cars,
lost but crawling steadily forward. Say
that human silhouette so light-years far
from us is Francis Thompson’s spirit. Once
more he lives his poem, dashing through space,
his tremendous Lover joined by dark clones
renewing the race, faithful rhythmic pace
and vision required of all art. His fate
assured, one arm points toward a glowing gate.

Roger Armbrust
May 28, 2008

ANTIHYMN FROM FAR AWAY

And still she rises with you, Great Breather,
within subconscious response of spirit
through lungs and heart’s contraction. Like ether,
flammable anesthetic, I fear it
yet welcome it: memory a sleeping
lion dreaming of some future assault.
Good of you, walking with me through weeping,
into brief ravines of peace. Not your fault
or hers. Your haunting words resound within,
a decade’s echoed lyric. Can’t you let
up on me now? Forgive and cast off sin
from our human condition? End regret?
Humbly I bow, one among the faithful.
Shall I lie in prayer, and say I’m grateful?

Roger Armbrust
May 24, 2008

APOLOGY TO BACTEROIDES

Yes, I know the Diet Doc scalds my gut’s
lining, cheesecake’s sugar courts infection,
and red meat makes you moan. But this sonnet’s
my amends for wasting hefty sections
of your brood with Amoxicillin. You
know, don’t you, how strep throat might have inscribed
my cold gravestone? I’m grateful you choose to
colonize quicker than I breathe, your tribes
of microbiota defending my
canal to the end, so to speak. Let’s make
a deal, shall we? Or should I simply try
to treat your family as mine? I’ll take
a vow to live better: Rather than hurt
you again, I’ll help by eating yogurt.

Roger Armbrust
May 24, 2008

GROIN

See how its curve captures grains, expanding
beach along this Coronado hotel
front. Its bent length of dark rocks, commanding
every pebble’s fate, starves neighbors’ portals
ranging south. Better to view Tedesko’s
design at St. Louis Airport, groin
vaults like pale arches awaiting frescoes
on a cathedral’s cylindrical wings.
Yet without it, we could not lie here, tide
able only to lick our feet, bodies
aroused by warm sand at midnight. You cried
softly when I touched you there, then long sighs
as I caressed your moist curls so lightly,
our muscles wrapped in rhythm with the sea.

Roger Armbrust
May 22, 2008

LOGARITHMIC SPIRAL

Descartes first described it. Bernoulli called
it a miracle, amazed how it grows
with each curve, but never alters shape. All
you have to do: study nature. You’ll know
by soft swirls in sunflowers, nautilus
shells. The moth approaches flame the same way
the hawk falls toward prey. The Coriolis
force affects the cyclone’s gyre, doesn’t sway
its form. The Milky Way’s arms enfold space,
mirror the charming curves of broccoli.
Subatomic particles seem to race
on similar paths of geometry
in bubble chambers. Eye’s iris contracts
in quick curls (like toes) when humans climax.

Roger Armbrust
May 18, 2008

SOUL

The smallest particle of a thing. No.
The only thing. Realizing so much
love, it glows. Seethes white hot. Explodes into
every thing. Cells of reason, heat, must touch
and unite. Some form fluid. Some light. Earth.
Us. Within our magnetic fields, when did
fear form, stall rhythm, reverse flow? Pained birth?
Learning of death? Walk through the forest. Sit
by the stream. Gaze out at the canyon. Does
the silent rock know? The rippling water?
Surely that great oak—as endless leaves grow,
the ancient bark having sensed faith, slaughter,
peace, laughter rise from ages of heathen
madness—knows. Shares essence of our breathing.

Roger Armbrust
May 17, 2008

HAARP AND SURA

What are their militaries doing there,
really? These Americans and Russians,
some say, research atmospheric warfare
within their shortwave farms, secretly scan
earth, silently harming all despite this
solitary stillness. HAARP’s grids of steel
rise like shining, columned crucifixes
looking toward Mount Sanford. Sura’s parched field
seems lined with barren birches, aftermath
of forest fire just outside Vasilsursk.
Larry sees plots in their megawatts: paths
of radiation lathing China’s crust,
crushing its fault line. Soon Three Gorges Dam
will give way, he says. The rest is bedlam.

Roger Armbrust
May 15, 2008

GONE

A park guard found his two-door Mercedes
locked in the lot near Deerhead Nature Trail.
Just washed, navy-blue 2008, keys
left on the hood. He’d call her without fail
when coming home late, but not this night, dark
and stifling silence outside, as if birds
and crickets had disappeared with him, stark
room surrounding her. She hears his last words
over and over, a kiss and simple
“See ya.” The lone light shines on his picture.
She holds it, gazes, touches his dimple,
returns frame to the desk. Recites scripture
under her breath. Sees women by the damp
tomb. She lies down. Breathes deep. Turns off the lamp.

Roger Armbrust
May 12, 2008

ARISTOTLE

He saw the universe as concentric
spheres, crystalline, all fifty-five of them
termed deferents. Then, turning eccentric
(the man, not the spheres), he swore (not a whim)
each orb was linked to an epicycle—
circling at constant angular velo-
city—linking to planet. Manaical,
you might say. Hit the Greek with a pillow!
you yell. But give Alexander’s tutor
a break. He viewed all—Earth at the center,
Sun stuffed twixt Venus and Mars—just like your
pastor, rabbi, Muslim cleric enter
into each prayer, believing souls hover
within the great Sphere of the Prime Mover.

Roger Armbrust
May 11, 2008

PALM

I’ve just left Damgoode Pies after lunching
on salad, stroll Kavanaugh’s curve just past
Beechwood when a young guy, slender, munching
on a chaw, approaches tired and slow, last
mile it seems. He glances, nods, open palm
raised without a word, ancient sign of peace.
Cro-Magnons, proving clubless that way, calmed
a stranger’s fear. Le Loi, when war ceased,
announced Ming army driven from Vietnam
by lifting a hand. His men cheered. Bob would
recall his Detroit gang days, how he’d scam
a foe, hide a switchblade in his palm, could
slit a throat before the guy blinked. I think
of all this, open my palm, wave and wink.

Roger Armbrust
May 10, 2008

JANE OLIVOR

Sometimes, as I lie in dark listening
to your passion and control surge from heart
and gut, I fear you might explode, taking
me with you. Then suddenly you soothe, smart
and smooth, making me smile, then tears, laughter,
wishing I could hold you; feeling I do.
Back in my Greenwich Village days, after
workweek’s slash brought weekend’s salve, I’d talk to
Dave who’d interviewed you. He’d smile at loose,
rambling praise, my metaphors of you as
lark, volcano, wounded fawn, phantom muse
guiding to lands I’d never dreamed or passed
in this life. There at Quantum Leap, we two,
at meal’s end, always agreed we loved you.

Roger Armbrust
May 3, 2008

MAKING LOVE TO A GALAXY

Hold me in your spiral arms, massage me
through your hot young stars, their open clusters
searing my tense pores, hydrogen and he-
lium enfolding my skin in luster
of your disk opaque, swimming in halo’s
age-old stars, humming their vibrant soulsongs,
their random elliptical orbits slow
as sea’s ebb as my body floats along
toward your nucleus, my being absorbed
in magnetic field of invisible
you: dark matter I may never know, orb
of endless gravitation, forceful pull
passing all I can conceive, conceiving
me in your missing mass, coming, leaving.

Roger Armbrust
May 1, 2008