Image: Zena Assi – Bridges over the city shore, 2016

Most of Armen Abalian’s artistic endeavors have been related to music and photography. Poetry is a relatively new field for him. That said, he has already been published a couple of times, most recently in Ghost City Review in May 2017. He currently divides his time between Los Angeles, CA and Warsaw, Poland.

I know you

I know you
misread, misfired
a missile, muddy, not malevolent.

Sleepwalking, I throw daggers that convert to flowers in mid air
and land at your feet
some dead, some still alive

somnambulant in some nebula.

We are fluid and separate, fragile and failed,
Lost unkind kindred spiritless oneness and fondness
Soul fondue of grease, love, and falling into bad habits
Observing each other from different dimensions

distant, dim.

I know you
scared, scarred, scattered
your background, your laughable mysticism, your laugh, your ever so brief departures from this abusive, capricious psyche.
Whose voice is that calling you hokey, polishing that small-town badge that you wear more prominently than you might think or want?
You think to want.

I know you can cause concussions, conundrums, consternation
That you convulse gently, smiling eyes closed to the rough water,
I know you don’t want to be constantly callous

cats, catatonia.

I know that you hurt me
on the plains of Mongolia
and in the northernmost reaches of the harsh Norwegian landscape,
beyond the prayers of all the Armenian grandmothers praying in all the small town Armenian churches.

I know you
malleable
marble
and I wonder what you know,
what you really know
about me,
about someone you ultimately couldn’t understand.