By Silva Zanoyan Merjanian
I thought I had you by frilled hem of a metaphor,
but streetlight’s flood of yellow fog
hushes me again to a mere doubt in your hands.
We are diverging.
Your flare escapes fingertips,
turns corners and crosses streets,
collides with slippery notes of Blue Café
playing in a city that echoes back,
Take all you know, and say goodbye,
your innocence, inexperience
mean nothing now.
There’s a poem dying on the sidewalk,
we will bury it with the rest.
It starts to rain.
What’s a poem without rain?
I lose you in the downpour of words
slit and gutted to this city’s taste.
You say, write the streets
after they flatten you against a wall,
see the gutter fill with regret.
Write the river
until you drown in the rising water.
You let go of the wind,
it's taken you high and dropped you
when you least expect,
a poem like that is road- kill at best.
I've seen your white collarbone at 3 am
and you've seen my hysteria when alone,
our footsteps swept from the streets
appear again in verses, wander in alleys
picking shame with the trash.
A city does not forget shame.
Some poets never make it home.
Write, write the homeless till you are one yourself,
let an alley cradle your ribcage.
With the smell of an animal in my hair,
I write your lust till it is dry semen
stuck to a sole after the train’s departed.
But a city never forgets heave of a moment
that cut like a butcher's blade.
Write! Damn you, write the longing!
It burns, it burns where a scar runs on edge of a poem
to a heart and back,
to between-lines, only a night drunk on a full –moon’s light
grasps.
And when a poem takes you home,
puts you to bed alone,
you hear the city turn to its side,
face the wall where the street- light
doesn't reach at all,
and crows flutter in your throat,
looking for a way out,
they die on a line clenched between molars.
A dream wakes up in a dream on your tongue,
and you swallow your raw words.
Call it writer’s block, when dawn
tells you of all this, while sober and free
of the night’s spell.
Originally published in Peacock Journal & Anthology
The Importance of Arts, Culture & The Creative Process
Art and the creative process is muted in many of us, due to the distractions of life. One has to stop, shed the thick armor formed on our skin, and tap into a vulnerability that revives our humanity. Art and the process of creating it opens dimensions of thought and emotion otherwise not available to us. It is as important for quality of life as good health for the artist and for those who have access to his or her work.
What are your thoughts on the kind of world we are leaving for the next generation? : Environmental pollution is very important for me because I would like to think my granddaughter will grow up into a healthy young woman without the risks of toxins in the air. We can do better, we should do better with climate change, with pesticides, with landfills and polluted oceans.
