ALAN SEMERDJIAN: THE POLITICS
So many voices in the room
all missing each other
like a laser beam circus
or the part in the movie
where the thief needs
to infiltrate the stash’s safe
or get the remaining pearls
but the zig zag of red
lines is in the way (he mustn’t
touch the line in his routine
or else all hell will break
loose in the form of sirens
and bells, cutaways and fades
to possibly a sprinkler
system about to go off as well);
we are those obliqued lines
in hot pursuit of anything
but each other, too electric
to touch or embrace for long
or extend the figure of a
shoulder out for a head to lay
on, to cry on, and/or while
the thief steps over us—too
easily, now that we think about
it—and gets to what he must,
inevitably, get to, which is,
of course, whatever is behind
that goddamn unforsaken door.
From As It Ought to Be online magazine
About the Author: Award-winning writer, musician, and educator Alan Semerdjian’s writing has appeared in several notable print and online publications and anthologies over the years including Adbusters, The Brooklyn Rail, and Diagram. He released a chapbook of poems called An Improvised Device (Lock n Load Press) in 2005 and his first full-length book In the Architecture of Bone (GenPop Books) in 2009, which Pulitzer Prize winner Peter Balakian called “well worth your reading.” His most recent work, The Serpent and the Crane, which is a collaboration of poetry and music focused on The Armenian Genocide with guitarist/composer Aram Bajakian, was released this past April.
