POST POST: POETRY BY ARMEN ABALIAN

POST POST

 

DARTS

 

Music

Magical muddled muck

Masticating melodies move slow like mucous

Make me miss

 

I’ve never been very good at darts or hearts

 

 

POST

 

At home feeling homeless

Between pillow screams and post-drought streams

I harness energy

Or lack thereof

Like outlines of horses

Running through torn landscapes

Silent, determined galloping

 

 

IOWA

 

Some people remind me of trees in autumn

Outside a town long forgotten

By those whose cradles were in bigger, better places

Maybe someday the town’s name will pop up in their mind

Like a surprise relapse

And then maybe they’ll recall

That you were my radar

 

 

TOAST

 

Here’s to the mundane

Metered

Mess

Ticking so perfectly

The universe in control

Always burning toast

The right amount

Every time

 

 

ON THE PLUS SIDE

 

Positivity

Sporadically sensed

Lost in the increasingly impenetrable wilderness of my experience

Stuck behind the iceberg that’s lodged in my throat

 

There it is now, wincing

 

 

ACCESS

 

In this train bathroom

With its window, faded, though

Easily mistaken for dirty

Moving

Landscapes shifting and haphazard

Graffiti, trees, unfinished construction

Posturing, reaching, interacting

Out there

All access to this world denied by the window

Firm enough to relegate

Any passenger to the role of spectator

 

 

 

BEAUTY

 

My hand in yours

With you behind me

Briefly invisible

Warm energy mixed with alcohol, clumsy

Dance moves and plastic disguises

Your beauty expands and

Pops out of its container

Uncontrollable

I have my net out but I prefer to just observe

Admire

 

 

PULL

 

Morning

Refreshed and ready

Some time ago

The rally cut short

The buzzard-beater bested without

Even trying

By silence

Looking back only when an echo of a voice is heard

Briefly, and then on to

Another day when I feel the season

And then another morning

How alike are they?

How alike are we?

 

 

DUD

 

Words said feel like denotations

Underlined but underwhelming

Faraway and forever forming something formless

Dreaming

Of the time when they

Shoot out of our hearts to inspire our mouths, eyes, fingers

Then each word would become

A precursor to something beautiful

Or even its substitute

Not just a dud

 

 

 

MIRACLES

 

There are moments when I believe in miracles

Before mundane molecules muffle my mirth

And take things down a level

Down to the ground

Fingers in the earth

Feeling it out

Searching for the eternal

Stuck with the suddenness of soil

 

 

ANOTHER DUD

 

How do you overcome

The similarities that lead you to the differences

The diffusion that intensifies the dullness

The drab copies that feed the dissonance

The smiles slingshotting you

Into walls

Into a field

Into a flood

 

In this flat land

Yelling at the distance

Dreaming of cliffs

 

 

POST POST POST

 

Up, up

But your horizon is not my horizon

The faded orange sunrise or sunset

Somewhere in the distance

To one side

Up, down

Stuck in this machine

Fatigue brings on a memory of mist

I close my eyes

Down, down

My landing is not your landing

You are still up there somewhere

Holding hands against your will

A sonic boom that the atmosphere will remember

Long after it has settled back into silence

 

 

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