isotopes
an element decays
by giving off sub-atomic particles
that just may happen to penetrate
living cells.
DNA unravels like an old slinky
hung from a 2nd – story window.
existence
to the end
will be what we can endure,
only.
and, for as long as our teeth
remain in place,
we can chew.
as long as we blot
our bleeding gums
we can lick each other’s love
cold as the horsemeat that lies on the
floor of the lion’s cage.
I touch your back,
right there,
where the boil erupts
and I don’t want to count protons
anymore,
I don’t want
the slow decay
to take us both.
someone plays the harpsichord
and I look at the untied strings
of your gown.
statues in the square
some crackling dawn will see
them under overcast skies:
monuments to children;
despots.
stone vibrates like lingering cobwebs.
stone spitting stone words on
the ground.
so many words
buried between sentences
under tongues and in graves,
bearing the trimmed nails of oppression,
timeless and lacerating.
and i wait for the
enlightenment.
for the man and woman
to crawl
again in awkwardness and strip the
blood of infection,
bending laughter over -isms
while laughter
itself
becomes silent.
from fallen leaves to biomass
i see them as holograms
amplified-
sanity,
ink stains,
writer’s cramp
becoming obsolete,
replaced by mis-keyed images
and carpel tunnel syndrome.
oceans i haven’t tasted
evaporate
and then the air is new,
watering and unbroken-
the bowl of fruit
on a table with
one vacant chair is
a still life, an artist’s left and right eye, a cold
capsule with red and blue halves
existing together-
neither one a parasite,
the air full of water.
coral beds are uncovered bread
left out overnight.
seaweed is hay
bundled for cows.
my tongue does not know salt.
oceans are dry
and they are passenger pigeons,
and i will hold a mirror to the ground
and measure the sanity of the face of the earth.
and if it sees itself eating grapes while
mountains form,
then plain does not
recognize wheat and
i dangle these –
fully clothed –
from a watch chain.
if you will,
undress them with your teeth
and
go
slow.
space is forever but there will never be
enough room.
the promises of powerful men
waiting for thoughts to turn to memory,
you swallow the coldness that bubbles up
to the surface in dense dense
forests of bloody mucous,
while
dry faucets
squeak and gasp and clutch their chest
like the old lady finding a corpse in the root cellar.
not even the mice are content
as they fall off the television
which last flickered clearly
during the watergate hearings.
waiting for speeches to emerge from candlelight
is waiting for death.
diabetic eyes
nearly blind,
are still
rainmakers,
and seven toes gone.
the others,
black and waiting.
feet
understand the situation.
shoes are
put out for the cat.
one fine day
i find a refrigerator
in the alley
and crawl in,
empty in my own arms,
inexperienced in death
like all of us.
here
we become
masters on the first try.
© Christine Karapetian: Social Studies 8
goodbye somebody, i think i still love you
your image drops from memory
and i throw down my hands
to catch it
because i won’t be able to
see it again
once it shatters.
and i should remember,
at least
for one more night,
the face that drank
orange juice only from california
and the hair filled with breeze
when you stood on that buckled road
in the texas panhandle.
but my collection of memories is growing smaller.
i don’t feel the pleasure in eating anymore
and i’m not even sure why we do it.
tonight everything seems clear
and i know my way upstairs.
but tomorrow may pass
and i’ll not have visited
the bathroom at all.
i’ll clean myself up
but the time will come
when i won’t even do that.
this is a terrible thing
that pulls the leaves off of me
and strips the bark from what’s left.
the nurses remind me it’s like that in winter.
but
regardless of the season,
icebergs
spin and tumble
below the surface.