LAKE OF STARS

Oh, see how we’re double-blessed as night sky
and forest’s edge surround Lake Ouachita,
stars and trees holding their vast and trusty
stations while nature reflects its art far
across smooth water’s smoke-glass surface. Love,
see how Jupiter’s glow, though a dwarfed moon,
still highlights the Milky Way’s sequined gloves
both above us and along the shore. Soon
fireflies will try to match this radiance,
their colonies of pale reddish light caught
in the crickets’ rhythmic song, swirling dance
of flaming pearls sprinkling the tall pines. What
can we do to share this lustrous surprise?
Ah, yes. I see the answer in your eyes.

Roger Armbrust
July 31, 2008

GREAT PASSION

And so, Great Passion, I’m now convinced you
never rest, only play sly chameleon,
sometime eruptive prominence—flamed hue
like roiling spirit unfurling from sun—
sometime feigned crescent of peace, like Saturn’s
pale reflective surface, Rhea a black
lens occulting its center (how we yearn
to touch it but can’t), sometime galactic
distortion like this mirage of blue cloud
circling misty dot of light—a leaping
porpoise curling the moon. How we’ve all bowed,
feeling as though we’ve been roused from sleeping,
seeing Namib Desert’s towering dunes,
violent winds crowning them with lagoons.

Roger Armbrust
July 29, 2008

HERE ON MY 65TH

Even wearing glasses, I squint, flex eyes
to tell small e from c. Accept my fate:
Ask my old Dell to please increase text size
so I can read what I just wrote, or rate
The New York Times online. My knees crackle
like distant applause amidst my legwork
to care for the spine. Elbows seem shackled
as I lift light weights. My mind wants to shirk
exercise of any kind. So I pray
for guidance to simply stroll neighborhoods
near my pad. I can hear William James say
faith and action’s the key. I wish I could
relate, but feel government’s bent on thought
control. Perhaps I’m paranoid. Or not.

Roger Armbrust
July 25, 2008

CAEDMON

The cattle curled in their protective sleep,
you lie on the pasture’s rise, watching stars,
eyes slowly closing, staff by your side. Deep
dream brings a strange man to you. He implores,
Sing the beginning of created things.
You—who’d never read or written, who feared
(dull herdsman, I) at the abbey to sing
before those monks and St. Hilda—feel tears,
long to bolt. Yet you stay. Your tongue forms verse
you’ve never known, shocks you awake. Somehow
you recall all. Tell your foreman. His curse
muffled below his breath, he leads you, bows
to the abbess. She hears. Touches your face.
Turns her eyes toward heaven, praising God’s grace.

Roger Armbrust
July 20, 2008
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JUPITER OPPOSITION

There at opposition as the sun sets,
Jupiter rises, then falls with solar
ascent. And now I observe our planets—
you and I—how we lift and drop, polar
bodies rarely in sync, lodestones rolling
awry seeking drama not comedy,
war not peace, sacred temple bells tolling
our slow demise. Hear their sad melody?
I don’t ask you this aloud. Only hold
you close, monk-silent, watching Jupiter
over Ephesus this full-moon night, cold
pushed away by our caress, junipers
blocking chilling wind here at Hadrian’s
temple, its crumbling pillars our omen.

Roger Armbrust
July 17, 2008

ANAGRAMS

for Carolyn, if she likes it

Wordsmith.org’s conjured thousands of blends
for my name. I like Mortar Burgers, ‘though
Bar Terror Smug suits my past lifestyle’s sins.
Brag Err Tumors, too, sounds like days of old.
Garb Error Must fits my fashion taste, yet
Arbor Germ Ruts denies my care for earth.
Bra Tremors Rug recalls dates with Babette,
while Roars Grub Term describes my day of birth.
Gear Burr Storm reminds of driving in snow.
Star Berg Rumor reeks of gossip columns.
Rat Brr Morgues symbols fear of death, I know.
Why does Bag Errs Rum Rot make me solemn?
Is Rarer Gog Strum a guitarist’s curse?
Arts Burro Germ could cite my bad-ass verse!

Roger Armbrust
July 17, 2008

LAVENDER

You know by now Apis mellifera
has deserted you, leaving beekeepers
befuddled and honeyless. But there’s a
French chef in Provence who’ll gladly reap your
dry buds for Massialot’s Crème brûlée.
You helped Magdalene wash the carpenter’s
feet. England’s virgin queen demanded aides
display your blossoms each day of the year.
I’d say your resumé’s solid. How kind
of you to share your scent worldwide through fields
and gardens, balms and perfumes. Now we find
you in potpourris, making the moth yield
when your team’s tossed in closets. A borough
woman nurtures your shoot by the window.

Roger Armbrust
July 17, 2008

HENRY BESTON

for Bill Asti

Here, near the outer elbow of Cape Cod’s
flexing arm, seated in his director’s
chair on Fo’castle’s tight porch, fishing rod
asleep at his feet, he gazes toward shore
of Nauset Marsh, listens to Atlantic
breath creak clapboard surrounding him. Glances
west to catch last rays of sun as it flicks
brief glare through dune’s sea grass. New light dances
due north in the Coast Guard station’s windows.
He feels phrases stirring, soon to be snatched
from him like gulls at dawn seizing minnows
as he watched on the beach. Now he’ll unlatch
the door, feed the starved fireplace, kerosene
lamp, ink pen; record voices of the sea.

Roger Armbrust
July 14, 2008

DARK SKY OVER DEATH VALLEY

We drove all scorching day up 190
from near Shoshone to Valley Junction,
rumbled south to Badwater—our country’s
lowest point—and now lie here, our unction
this night sky pouring over Panamint
Range, Racetrack Playa’s dry basin flowing
beneath us like colonies of veined slits
in an ancient temple’s floor, stars glowing…
no…exploding around us. Love, we may
not see this dark night again, the Milky
Way’s arch like a blazing bridge to Yahweh.
The world falls prey to civilized light. See
how that distant strip of horizon’s bright:
man’s torch burning angels’ eyes from our sight.

Roger Armbrust
July 13, 2008

FITZGERALD

He envisions a pyramid: pulpless
halves of oranges and lemons glazing
to rippling pale liquid as enormous
power’s in him now. Are gunshots grazing
then piercing his frame? Limbs melt like hot wax
in flame. Lumped in rumpled tweed on Sheila’s
Indian rug, he shudders, now sees cracks
in dark, desolate asphalt where he lies
near Wilson’s garage. He could use a drink,
but the TB…all’s black now. No other
sound but the endless hissing. Yet he thinks
it’s Max whispering to him, his brother
in the art lisping truth of Gatsby’s fate:
a rescued pauper at long last crowned great.

Roger Armbrust
July 9, 2008

PENIS ENVY

What’s with you? Old days, you played the perfect
gentleman, rising at once when ladies
entered the room, stayed stately and erect
throughout conversation and beyond. Yes,
I recall those special times some fair lass
kept you leaping like Flipper beneath jeans’
zippered surface. One night you showed no class,
eked out your mouse in the movie house. Scenes
of such thrive in our archives. Why can’t you
shape up now? Show some control. Cash in on
your stint at the late show. You act like flu’s
left you noodle limp. Bring back that passion,
like nights barreling over Niagara.
I hate these fake days, reaching for Viagra.

Roger Armbrust
July 5, 2008

VAGINA

I touch your vagina, like an iris
unfolding, labia menora’s petals
sensing caress of my soft fingertips.
Its tongue awaits my tongue. As I settle,
I taste your vagina, thick moisture from
a hidden spring secreting with each flex
and flinch. Did this nectar help gods become
immortal, its divine flow heaven’s text
of revelation? Did Bartholin know
what I now know? Drop his microscope, don
this wet sheath? And so my penis sheathes now,
diving through your vagina, Poseidon
recalling his first great surge as a boy,
swimming in ocean’s universal joy.

Roger Armbrust
July 3, 2008

HOW DEEP IS SADNESS?

Far as earth’s core-mantle boundary, its
4,000 degrees Celsius flaming
limit to our agony? Can limits
exist in core’s iron-dominated ring,
springing magnetic fields to protect us
from solar storms? Do our solid center,
liquid outer crux somehow reflect us?
Can our reason ever hope to enter
feeling, route its uncharted boundaries
of mountainous wars and low-valleyed peace?
Fair Psyche, confused by the mystery
of her night-veiled lover, made Cupid flee
by lighting the oil lamp. Oh, how she yearned,
walked into hell, not knowing he’d return.

Roger Armbrust
July 2, 2008

VISIONS, I SEE VISIONS

Sandy Denny, dressed as in tintype, steps
off the album cover and kisses me.
I reach out, softly touch her stretched triceps,
our bodies glowing, pastel comets free
and flowing through Trifid Nebula, dawn
mountains of opaque dust coating us, pale
as angels. Now night here in Washington
Square Park, William Packard leaning on rail
next to me. We watch walkers pass. Poems
brief as breath slip through his lips, their spirits
singing. He grasps the small book, potent rim
of his hand raising it toward the moon, its
pages burning like stars. Art never ends,
he whispers. I watch his great form ascend.

Roger Armbrust
July 2, 2008