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<font face="palatino"><i>to my muse: bone-talk</i>
‘must you sink into heart-filled mind sediment,
delicate bird-bones, drifting sentiment?’
fever-crossed hip-bone, i see your pride-
skin-stretched, mountainous veins interlock,
a macrocosmic web.
i run my fingers down your concave waist,
belted like an insect’s, purple galaxy-tipped finger-tips.
i know your ribs, sweet melody bones,
parched lungs feverishly gulp acidic rays,
i spend the summer drowned in cocaine-water,
winter spent stored away-
rabbit-daughter,
melted teeth, softer gaze,
no fear, infinite lashes wave
like curtains with each blink,
i see you bent over the sink,
your breaths afloat,
but sinking:
‘felt like jupiter, tempest-ocean glimmer,
aboard the sea-boat, hurricane-soul
faintly stitched with wire; birds of gentle density, and flight.’
breathless wreck, rose-gold locks,
i know your butter bones are drifting up,
but your mind is sinking.
[[Girl-Cries]]
</font>
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<font face="palatino"><i>Girl-Cries</i>
I. Dropped, quiet-eyed girl,
wasp-waisted, weatherbeaten.
Withered hands of old:
II. I wished for nights deep in bliss,
though needles pierce my skin- every sound
drowns the winter, and waifish figures
of the past, they cry out hellish wails-
I do not hear them.
III. Opium-poppies
yet not bloomed- your veins long for
Heaven, deeper sleep.
IV. You, in the opium den,
Smoke-billowed, Heaven-sent
songs of the high;
when will I see you again?
V. You in opium,
dimmed eyes break down, form no tears,
when will I see you?
VI. Swollen, knotted, cries, I do not see them,
do they escape this room?
Why dare I desire, destruct, deconstructed, woven loven-words?
Death moves slowly through the loom,
does it not disturb you?
VII. Dropped, quiet-eyed girl,
she does not see her there, yet
tastes the bitter smoke.
VIII. Winter, though longer you must be,
unleash me,
unfetter, deprive, desensitize,
I cannot hear the cries,
I know they’re there.
IX. Opium-den-house,
out on the opium couch,
put the fire out.
X. You in the opium den,
When will I see you again?
If never now, then when?
[[Robotic-Starpaint]]
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<center><font face="palatino"><i>Robotic-Starpait</i>
Blue,
wreck me
again now:
starlight honey-
combs. I draw the rain-
drops, singing clover whisp-
ers at home now, sail on, sweet
bones of bee-stings, broken and now:
flickering voices, draw me inward.
I drew the galaxies, painted green mea
dows, dandelion crossed star-bows. You knew songs of
the shadows, brightly bloomed, fertile tears, paint you blue,
but green starlight stays silent. Sobbing croaks, now blanket
venom-beds, marinate the blue now, die rolled in
portrait closer to you now. Clover-dimmed-foot
steps, forsaken foot-prints follow me in
-concrete, jaws on the table, teeth in the
plaster, wrapped up in paper plates.
Shake off the voices, deep in
walls later, stars misa-
ligned, now will again
flutter, dying;
pacified stars
bloomed too
Soon.
[[Of Fire and Christ]]
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<font face="palatino"><i>Of Fire and Christ</i>
Childish flowers turn their upturned-dune-faces toward the sun,
Train-tracks meet and they burn- no rain is cast, sunshine droplets bloom.
Smoke-drowned, power-filled, burned sun-dried cigarette I light in shame;
flowers, forsaken, forgive the damning blooming sun, it hurts.
Petal, have you no trust in me? Confess the sins done unto-
you, blameless intersection, train-tracks leading nowhere, but the sun,
you, encased in paper, my love in plaster, raindrops thumping-
millions of drums, flowers blindly drink, children of the sun.
Childish flowers, battle-cry, though blind, surely you feel sun-burns,
crushed and rolled in paper, how dare the train-smoke, and burn the sun?
And yet they burn their hopes, their eyes bright with tears of weeping clear;
What is it worth to save their souls along with mine? Burn the sun.
Smoke wraith, I hear your wretched screams, how they frighten flower-suns,
Dare you ask forgiveness? At the foot of innocence, I burn.
[[bone-talks too]]
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<font face="palatino"><i>bone-talks too</i>
rabid-rabbit-daughter,
no more fierce than the piercing rays
of a Jupiter-moon,
or the sun
from another, meeker galaxy-
they melt your bones like butter,
sweet butter-bones,
rolled like plastic dice
that always land on
the most irrational
of numbers,
they do not multiply,
yet are heavy on your mind,
they sink with it, and
your rabbit teeth sink into galaxies,
no being too great for your entropy,
you bloom in darkness- nutrient deprived,
the dark circles of your eyes
sink low,
your rabbit bones adrift in Jupiter,
you always needed to feel small –
and so you roll,
the most irrational
of numbers.
[[Robotic Deconstructed: Cheated with Honey]]
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<font face="palatino"><i>Fish Blood</i>
And we flow like fish blood.
Tempting tearful streams, our eyes trace along the edges of our collarbones.
Tense vocal cords like thin guitar strings: silent mermaid song,
the murdered whisper, washed out from the storm, we flow like fish blood,
Murmur barely heard, necks pulled taut, backbone curved.
Our eyes trace the edges of our spines: arched, harp-like,
we flow like fish blood, out to mars; red footprints littered like scales,
scalloped patterns in the sand, collapsed, breathless depths.
We flow like fish blood.
Endless nondisjunction, what blame do we possess? Infinitely coiled,
subdued voices, the snakes of women’s touch flows through us like fish blood.
Never-ending braid of bodies; our eyes trace the edges of our hips,
we intertwine, serpentine, we plunge into the Martian surface-tension,
at the intersection of our legs, we bathe in suffocation,
And we flew by like fish blood.
<i>For Gustav Klimt: Fish Blood</i>
[[I Float in Violets]]
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<font face="palatino"><i>I Float in Violets</i>
The hand that held a weeping face to bless,
did not conceive that prayer is a wreck.
He birthed me of this soil, and yet - I crossed
the ocean, I bathed in Saturn’s blooms;
of the waves, I was reborn, a serpent:
cold-veined, my blood forgot to clot and rush;
how deeply can a sinner’s soul be crushed?
Departure of this spent womb – a blessing,
how dare the father ask me to repent?
Tidal-blue-clouds again, I’m left a wreck,
afloat like thread, I am wound through a loom,
wound tightly, womb-blessed woman on a cross
Oh, how many oceans he has to cross,
yet cocooned in a sea-wave tidal-rush,
as I bask in a flower-petal bloom,
and never think to ask his greyed blessing-
must find some other maidens to infect,
face of flowers, girlish lust, heaven-spent.
We afloat in Saturn, water-serpents,
and our galaxy eyes can peer across,
and across galaxies we intersect,
to her arched back and collarbones, I rush,
and from there, a woman gets her blessings,
there where her purest flowers tend to bloom,
I bathe in petal-sin, and smoke the blooms,
fire-filled lungs, my refusal to repent:
as a star, here is where I feel most blessed,
I meant to burn, yet father, he is lost,
I pray he never comes to cross this lush,
surely the sea-tides have his ark a wreck.
All the while, my pierced hands caress her neck,
oh, how I in his image cause him gloom,
his clear weeping and glazed glare cause a rush,
that his hands would leave me, he never dreamt,
so there he stayed, cocooned to a cross,
and we left him none to forgive or bless.
[[sober pluto]]
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<font face="palatino"><i>Fire Call</i>
These nights have been milky,
they are blurred
with white,
the colors run to pierce
my surface ten-
sion,
this collection
of stars, does not form
a
constellation.
These milky nights, they
crumble,
I cannot close
the circuit,
like breath I sink
with the
electricity:
my fire makes
the planets weep
<i>(no fire is static)</i>
My surface ten-
sion will not
br
eak,
I will never see another
patch of rain,
I exist as fever
Fraud:
the quiet place
of
entropy.
Electric-fire-petals,
the gentle body
of their
smoke:
I don’t recall,
but I can call:
<i>(do not let him closer)</i>
[[Fish Blood]]
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<font face="palatino"><i>
sober pluto
tonight, gliding across the skin of your
gentle thighs, my palms and the smooth taste of
spilled wine, and i think of how light bends a-
round black holes, the curve of the universe
and how there is nothing more beautiful
than when you turn plastiline at my touch
and i feel like you - you are all light and
i - i am the black hole who once had the
privilege of engulfing you whole, like
a thigh of red wine, spilling from my lips.
[[I Fly Too Close]]
</i></font><font face="palatino"><i>So We Will Create a New Armenia</i>
Petal-Smoke is a space for healing the queer Armenian soul, worn from generational trauma of the genocide, and from the conservatism it was burdened with since its contact with Christianity. The poems explore how I view Christianity, how I decry it, and how my identity as an Armenian is not rooted in our often touted "first Christian nation" rhetoric, but rather as someone from the Middle East, someone who loves and whose people make great khashlama, someone who is a product of Soviet history, of revolution. Someone whose art is sad, but people happy and warm.
We are happy and warm as Armenians because we express our sadness together, there is no shame in our elegies and laments, there is no shame when we chain smoke like trains, there is no shame when we are loud and boisterous until three AM because we know fun, and we know fun because we know pain.
As William Saroyan famously said: “Go ahead, destroy Armenia . See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia.”
So, here is my New Armenia. And this New Armenia is one where we talk of bisexuality, where we talk of Atheism, and where we can come together despite the diaspora that so desperately tries to keep us apart. It does so with such futility; after all, all it does is spread us, and coats the world with our rich flavor and culture.
I hope you find a healing space here, and enjoy my story.
To start the story of Body Image, Sexuality, and Religion: [[to my muse: bone-talk]]
If you want to browse by theme/subject: [[Directory]]
<i>Please go to the Directory for the whole collection of poems on Armenia</i>
</font><font face="palatino"><h1>Directory</h1>
<i>On Armenia:</i>
<ol><li>[[Of Fire and Christ]]</li>
<li>[[1915]]</li>
<li>[[No Title]]</li></ol>
<i>On Body Image:</i>
<ol><li>[[to my muse: bone-talk]]</li>
<li>[[Girl Cries]]</li>
<li>[[bone-talks too]]</li></ol>
<i>On Bisexuality:</i>
<ol><li>[[I Float in Violets]]</li>
<li>[[Fish Blood]]</li>
<li>[[Sober Pluto]]</li></ol>
<i>On Relationships and Human Nature:</i>
<ol><li>[[Fire Call]]</li>
<li>[[I Float in Violets]]</li>
<li>[[Fish Blood]]</li>
<li>[[sober pluto]]</li>
<li>[[Robotic-Starpaint]]</li>
<li>[[I Fly Too Close]]</li>
<li>[[Robotic Deconstructed: Cheated with Honey]]</li>
<li>[[//snail]]</li></ol>
<i>On Christianity</i>
<ol><li>[[Of Fire and Christ]]</li>
<li>[[I Float in Violets]]</li></ol>
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<font face="palatino"><i>1915</i>
Your world was cut out on the backs of my people,
Quiet, beautiful, and pure
From the earth raised like apricots, sun-kissed;
Uprooted.
Taken from the mountaintops, our tears revived (y)our land
Our ancestors fertilized (y)our soil
We carry the scars on our back, deep-cut, raised, and red.
You refuse to see them,
(Yet from them my people bloom.)
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<font face="palatino"><i>I Fly Too Close</i>
If door hinges were acid, where would all-time go-
Crumbled stars on tightropes, rope burns,
Burns turned gears away, folded up like paper
Airplanes, vapor trails leave me breathless from before.
Crumbling wheels, wherever they may bind the soul,
I cannot lock these melting doors at the doorstep
Of supernovas,
I fly too close.
You need these flower tears, petals, fertile fruit,
And yet those gears are turning, artificial, sickly-sweet,
Sweetly boiling – my lungs are filling to the brim,
Can you escape this endless pirouette – ballerina with
A broken neck, at the core of our lonesome star,
Blooming, beautiful?
I fly too close.
If acid could not corrode the chains that held my wheels,
I would not fly so close, melted-metal-encased, petal
But rather I would take all-time from these cellar-doors,
And floating far away, my wheels would take me
Further home.
[[//snail]]
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<font face="palatino">When I bathed in a sea of forget-me-nots,
I thought of how my blood clots
on a
page after an episode of picking and
how two genocides run through my veins.
My ancestors beg to forget-them-not,
married through pain,
it is all we can talk about,
yet no one
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<font face="palatino"><i>Robotic Deconstructed: Cheated with Honey</i>
Petal-smoke-blue, you wreck me again;
now in the starlight honey-combs.
I drew raindrops, I sang clover-whispers at home,
And now we sail on: sweet bones of bee-stings,
we broke off at Jupiter, and I painted galaxies green.
Petal-voice-flicker-blue, you: drop of paint in the meadow,
Dandelion crossed star-bow,
Memorizing melodies of the shadow.
You drew blue,
Drew blood, drew venom, you follow me, pacify me,
Our stars have bloomed too soon,
Melting into the cheating plaster-touch,
I loved you, blue, the stars you touched, painted green.
(We were misaligned, heavy boots leave footprints,
and in my Saturn-mind, we missed Jupiter,
cannon-fired green clovers, gun powder: regret the blue color)
[[Fire Call]]
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<font face="palatino"><i>//snail</i>
you,
were a perfect tremble between the star-leaves,
sprinkled among the universe-trees,
and i,
found you, shell-spiral thing,
there; you recurred,
and i,
infinitely found you, recurring.
what did you dream of, bound with the tide?
surely even a cracked shell holds dreams,
of martian soils, jupiter rains, of petal-smoke,
though once occurring,
you hide,
a spiral, folded mirrors of atoms.
with you,
the universe knows endless retention,
engages the spectacle of constant repetition,
and i
found you here, though <i>I</i> once occurring.
[[Petal-Smoke: Why This is Here]]
</font>