MOON AND VENUS

Lately at night I’ve danced with a ghost. No,
not in dreams as I often do, but on
my living room’s soft carpet where she flows
and waits after midnight, sometimes crimson
mist, sometimes sky blue striped by gleaming streaks
of moonlight streaming through closed blinds. I hold
her, and she smiles, whispers, What do you seek
in life? How should I answer her? I’m told
to fear ghosts, yet she seems to have enclosed
me long before I was born. What is peace
if not our mystic caress, souls exposed
to the universe’s music? At ease
in this cosmic glow, we sway until dawn.
My arms enfold her long after she’s gone.

Roger Armbrust
August 31, 2009

TAHOE

Lake a smoke-blue ceramic glaze as Pete’s
power boat etches cleanly, Frank and Kay
and I at ease as our captain, replete
with knowledge, cites landmarks along shoreway
massed with fir, pine, and rising peaks still tipped
with snow reflecting August morning sun.
We’re bound for Emerald Bay, where rippled
cerulean suddenly glows green. One
cedar on a near limestone cliff towers
over us, its crown a vast eagle’s nest.
Love, were you here, you’d rejoice at showers
of diamond tiaras flashing in crests
from our bow’s wake, its rainbow’s dipping sway
like schools of celestial dolphins at play.

Roger Armbrust
August 31, 2009

ENDGAME

I keep hearing this muffled voice. Can’t sleep
for a week. Coming through thin bedroom walls,
this thing like a kidnapper’s phone threat, creep
snarling haunting notes—digital owl’s call
hooted through a spy’s keychain voice changer:
You…you in your sin and shame…must face your
endgame…Some nights it sounds like a stranger,
cantor of bitter loss. Some nights I’m sure
it’s her, sneaking to disguise her bitch howl.
Last night I lost it. Nearly shot my fist
through my neighbor’s wall. Slipped out in a cowl,
prowling streets, feeling demons slash my wrists
with talons. Gallons of booze I’ve swallowed
can’t deaden this sense I’m being followed.

Roger Armbrust
August 10, 2009

SOWING CIRCLE

Al tells Bill, “I’m powerless.” Bill tells Chad,
“I’m crazy.” Chad tells Dean, “I let go and
let God.” Dean tells Edward, “I soul search.” Ed
tells Ferdinand, “I confess.” Ferdinand
tells George, “I’m ready.” George tells Henry, “I’m
released.” Henry tells Ira, “I review.”
Ira tells Jack, “I amend.” Jack tells Kim,
“I take stock.” Kim tells Len, “I continue
contemplation.” Len tells me, “I try to
carry on.” I tell Al, “I’m powerless.”
That’s how it goes with our small retinue.
Then we scatter, remember how we’re blessed.
Pay attention as we move and speak. Hope,
if asked, we can help a sufferer cope.

Roger Armbrust
August 10, 2009
.

SONNETITIS

I keep saying I’ll write that tomorrow,
no time now to pour words out like dry caked
powder, grind them with pestles I borrowed
from teachers, seal them in capsules I take
once a day to keep my silent terror
from exploding. Funny how we avoid
medicine we need, quickly blame errors
on our lovers, hiding from change. Annoyed
by reality poking at my gut,
my sneaky self leans into me, rasping,
“You ought to drink again. Have a snort.” But
my trusty pal steps between us, grasping
ol’ sneak by the throat, applying abuse.
So I grab the keyboard. Await the Muse.

Roger Armbrust
August 6, 2009

CRACKS IN WALLS

I lose myself in between people’s heads
sometimes. Find fissures of wisdom, despair,
clarity, confusion together bled
into one slender organ of space where
energy might spur dreams, maybe even
an eyeblink of peace. At ballgames and rock
concerts when sunset or spotlight leavens
curled hairs of couples flanked in tightened blocks
before me. Or city sidewalks after
a rain when they come at you, battalions
of blurred faces, their angry shouts, laughter,
but mostly stark silence, like lost stallions
roaming deep canyons, when you realize
their stampeding camouflages their eyes.

Roger Armbrust
August 6, 2009

“WITCHCRAFT”

When Sinatra sang it, I doubt he or
Coleman and Leigh knew about Susannah
Martin hanging there, falsely condemned for
“sundry acts,” turd bits falling like manna
from under her skirt to the Salem ground
when her neck broke, unnerving all muscles
two hundred-sixty years earlier, bound
hands twitching briefly, as in a tussle
with air over some last thought. Ol’ Blue Eyes
was probably seeing Ava’s soft smile
rather than Susannah’s gallows grin. Wise
men knew to slip poppets in her home while
she strolled in the woods, used as evidence,
with claims she’d also raised a ghost’s presence.

Roger Armbrust
June 16, 2001

“HOW YOU, OH ATHENIANS, HAVE BEEN AFFECTED…”

Plato believed his crystals were atoms:
hedronic sides of various numbers
forming earth, air, fire, water. He fathomed
Pythagorus’ findings unencumbered
by density. His propensity for
shapes led him to see dirt instead of salt,
air instead of calcium fluoride. Poor
insight perhaps. But with no thought of fault,
Aristotle dropped the math. What mattered
to him were elements in sets of two
opposites, the kind of combo platters
we order today as we pick and choose
our meals and relationships: hot and cold,
wet and dry. Not much has changed, when all told.

Roger Armbrust
August 24, 2001

CASUAL SEX

The adjective’s
the enemy of the noun
Voltaire said
yet he used adjectives.
He must have meant
the dishonest adjective
assaulting the noun
like invading bacteria
making sweet milk go bad.
“I only have casual sex,” she said.
“I understand perfectly,” I said,
sliding out of bed
slipping on clothes.
“I once had a cat,” I said.
“I never fed it
or let it out of the apartment.
But I played with it every day
and petted it every night
'til its bony little carcass
stopped breathing.”

Roger Armbrust
February 2, 2001

REBEKAH

All those years, she had shown up at the well
not knowing the pitcher on her shoulder
one day would meet the test; no way to tell
the weary stranger—who bowed and told her
he was thirsty—had prayed to Jehovah
to send him Isaac’s future wife. No way
to reason her sudden running over
to feed him water, or what made her say,
“I’ll give your camels drink.” She felt his stare
as the animals licked her gentle hand.
Then, before she knew it, he’d moved with care,
clipping a gold ring to her ear, two bands
of heavy gold around her wrist. Above,
early stars broke through clouds: a sign of love.

Roger Armbrust
February 4, 2001

AWAY

I was gone long before I left. You know,
not even a word to my best neighbor,
so our scumlord couldn’t sneak afterglow
into our drinking water—make us sure
he grew suddenly human—Frenzied like
Pythia babbling oracles on Mount
Parnassus, we’d claim him a god and trike
behind his pied-piper ass, his pale count-
dracula slur, wade into steaming Styx
till our warped mouths and flat nostrils sucked mud.
I’ll bet that sneaky cur curls eel-like, licks
his own butt just to taste pimples and blood
as he lies in damp, dark basements, pleasing
his black heart with thick drooling and wheezing.

Roger Armbrust
August 3, 2009

PRAYER

Great Breather, reach down from your pinnacle,
blessing all you touch or pass in reaching,
and reach me, grasping with your tentacle,
claw, hand, hoof, or paw, and without preaching
simply lift me from this cave of howling
wind—its cold, dark walls hemming my body
and psyche in crushing shame, my scowling
heart palpitating no hope no shoddy
hope no hope—your merciful grip casting
out pain and memory, deeming only
instant knowing, feeling everlasting
warmth of your eyelight, no longer lonely,
no longer gashed by spirit’s whiplash (cost
of gnashing fear), no longer lost soul lost.

Roger Armbrust
August 1, 2009