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

HECKATON

At last, the boy reached the rock outcropping.
He’d followed the river for miles to find
this natural crossing. And there, stopping
at water’s edge, the white-tailed buck—eyes blind
to his breechclothed frame among bushes—stepped
into the shallow current. Soon the herd
appeared. The young Quapaw’s tattooed arm swept
sweat from his shaved head. He whispered the word
t’a. Steadied his bow, and let go. Soon he
would mount fur carcass on his dog travois.
Build a fire, pray for the deer’s soul, his plea
to Wakontah for balance in life. Joy
would rush through him when his father shouted
Hawé! Praised a son he never doubted.

Roger Armbrust
June 22, 2008

SOLSTICE MOONRISE

Temple of Poseidon’s pillars clinch wide
in gnarled columns, those silhouetted teeth
some whale skull’s only remains. Say it died
when the sea’s harsh father rose from beneath
Aegean’s waves in rage, lashed the mammoth
mammal against Cape Sounion’s vast crest,
leaving it to parch and decay. The mouth
of glowing moon yawns behind these darkest
of ruins, visible only to us
as villagers sleep, and to that sailor
guiding his craft through shimmering stardust
below, his midnight song a drunken prayer:
Artemis, send a new love to adore
me like a god, there on Patroklou’s shore.

Roger Armbrust
June 20, 2008

MIKE IN MONTANA

for Mike Felton

Somewhere in nature’s rich molecules, my
old frat bro breathes air clear as those daydreams
at dawn floating optic nerves of monks’ eyes,
flowing like my old frat bro on a stream
or river, I don’t know quite where. The Milk
maybe, north of Bearpaw Mountains and south
of Canada, or Musselshell, its silk
swirls slipping him past Roundup. The trout’s mouth
tests high, muddy currents—recent offspring
of this cold, rainy season—awaits line
and my old frat bro’s lure, with Mike glancing
at sun winking through Ponderosa pines.
At night, crackling campfire’s smoke rises far
past trees, signals love songs to glowing stars.

Roger Armbrust
June 11, 2008