Four Poems by Raffi Wartanian

Birth Quake

Earth danced today
And all we had was our feet,
And all we could do was
Freeze
Wait
Wait
For however long it took
For her to decide
If she would stomp her feet
And shake her hips
To turn the dance floor into
A heap of ashen fingers, unfulfilled promises, and wisdom teeth
Or
If she would bow gracefully
Like the ballerina we know
And leave us with a fleeting impression
Of her might
Her majesty
That soaks our eyes every day
And leaves us breathless
Of the stage she has crafted for us
And which she can control at any moment.

Earth danced today
And we had to face the facts of Earth:
Her power
Her control
Her mercy
And go on like she wasn’t even real,
Like she hadn’t enchanted us
With a glimpse into her divinity,
As if we were unable to grasp
What it meant,
How we were moved,
Why we kept shaking even after she stopped,
Organs catching the tremor fever,
Informing our veins, GI tract, palatine uvula,
Even the piss,
For hours, days, weeks, years;
We won’t forget,
But we’ll sure as hell act like we did.

Earth danced today
And left us a pile of bricks and a sunken roof
To swoon over
To admire
To laugh
To cry
To pose before
As cameras and choppers and citizens
Salivate over rubble
And journalists build careers and fashion histories
and sew together communities with flickering narratives.

Earth danced today
And we recalled where we live,
We recalled our faults
Our space
Our holes
Our pillars
Our stitches.

Earth danced today
And like it or not,
We danced along,
Millions of us,
Across thousands of miles,
United in our vulnerability,
Our awe
Our hypnosis
Our bliss
To feel
The jolt
The rhythm
The call
To shake.

* * *

Dizzy in Dreams

Dreams -
Imagery pure and vivid
Intoxicating
     - Not even breathing,
     Can’t call it that –
On another plane.

Imagery -
Inexplicable:
Two tour eiffel’-s
Facing opposite directions
Wrangled together by an earthquake
Outside the window of four stoic nudes
Who insist that
Lust
Is more than skin deep;
Or the writing instructor
Who tells ya’ to,
“Peck!
     Peck!
          Peck!”
Like trumpets
Popping through a revived cotton mill;
Like a bouncing New Orleans rhythm.

Dreams -
A glimpse into
What sits
Beyond the horizon,
Under our breaths,
Between sand bits,
     Rays of color,
     Air pockets in the spine;
A taste from
The divine menu of secrets
Spilling into the streets of our imagination,
     Streets
     Gated by routines, molds,
     Duties to our fallen brothers,
     Like a tsunami, a hurricane, a category 2 tropical storm
     That will fill the freeways and alleys
     Of our neuroinfrastructure
     To arrest its function
     For an entirely
     New, inexplicable
     Utility
     Birthed
     Brimming for breath,
     Sustenance,
     The chance to showcase the magic.

          If only the rooster did not crow,
          The sun sat still,
               And the moon swallowed us whole
               Up to the heavens
                    To swim
                    To dance
                    To start anew
                    Dizzy in dreams.

* * *

The Susquehanna Bridge

The leaves are red
Like the ghost rivers in your
Eyes – transfixed on stillness
Digging for motion
With arms
Mechanized
By schemas
That only you can comprehend
Only you

Not for me
On the bus
By my own will
Over the Susquehanna
Spotting the distant water tower
Like a ceramic moon
Behind the drawbridge.

If we spot the water tower
Simultaneously,
You from inside the government’s walls of mind control
And I from inside the government’s borders of mind control,
Do we see each other?

If we look into
Each other’s eyes
Long enough,
Will I really see you?

Can you count
The layers of clutter
Between your eyes and your soul
So that I might know
Where and how long to look?

You’re swinging fast
Through memories and inventions
Intermixed
With nané and processed tomato sauce and swiss
And I’m holding this fluffy parachute
To catch you
Waiting until you decide to let go
Of that moon walk
On the border between eccentricity and chaos –

The chaos of your nation
Shrouded in soaring rhetoric
And exaggerated promises
To unite this land
To repay our debts
To close the poverty gap
To make this nation great again
To make you great again
To care for you,
To lead you to the promised land,
To heal you,
At the expense
Of your teetering էութիւն
Swinging in a sinking submarine
On a one-way current.

* * *

Mama’s Dream

My mother told my grandmother and I
About a dream she had
Last night.

Her deceased father
Visited
And said,
“Have you forgotten me?”

“No, I didn’t,”
My mother protested,
In her dream.

My mother is silent.

“What happened next,” I ask.
“That’s it,” she says with a shrug.

Then my grandmother inquires,
“Did he ask about me?”