Raffi Wartanian: Eye Contact

Eye contact

Our eyes
Contacting
Each Other


They’re making out
They’re licking each other’s tongues
They’re making love like rabbits on the branchy forest earth

And we’re watching
The Eye Contact
With our other eyes.

Eye Contact
Is part of how we communicate
            Effectively
To make the point that:
- After you
or
- I want the last French frie
or
- It was a pleasure to meet you
or
- I loved you in a past life
or
- I need more time
or
- I don’t think I love you anymore
or
- I just can’t give you the answers you need
or
- I’m not who you think I am
or
- I can’t be who you want me to be
or
- I would destroy you
or
- I don’t know why I’m pushing you away, but I feel that I must
or
- You just weren’t good enough. You weren’t a man
or
- Remember all those times I told you I loved you and enthralled you with stories of our shared future and transcendental past? Those are just memories now
or
- Gravity dampens by small shocks of light.
or
- Your face is an enlarged cockroach defacating on itself as its’ shit sings – in castratti falsettos – arias by a 17th century German composer named Mikel Shpiel whose name may or may not have been invented just this moment and might induce among the .000001% of this poem’s tiny readership to potentially consider investigation if this Shpiel character actually exists


In conclusion,
Eye Contact
Would not be as effective
If everybody
Always made
Eye Contact.






By Raffi Wartanian
4/2010 NYC

Raffi Wartanian: Fireplace Talk

A smile can only stretch so far

Before the cheeks tire

And recall time

Submitted to circumstance

Hovering

Over my shoulder

Whispering in my ear

Petting my heart

With razor hands

Cajoling me that peace is but foolhardy

Misunderstanding rampant

Separated by unity (unified by separation)

Unified by separation (separated by unity)

Caught in comparative understandings

Ingrained

To allow oceans to flow

Into seas,

To flow into hearts,

Judging

Needing
Feeding greed

To be a former fantasy

Of a past self

Because there must be some sort of continuity

If one is to make sense of this existential narrative

That’s more fractured than glued together

More bewildering than comprehensible

So much so that we can sit cross-legged by a fire and pretend the warmth is real.

Bring the piano tuner.

Whispers have deafened my ears.

Flames have drowned my eyes.

Waves have shriveled my nose.

Blizzards have ignited my mouth.

By Raffi Wartanian

Amherst, New Hampshire, 12/2009

Raffi Wartanian: Departure

Click here for the audio segment Departure read by the author, Raffi Wartanian.

departure
from definition,
malnutrition,
inquisition.

departure from games,
masks,
falsehoods and platitudes.

departure from odors,
lies,
smog, haze,
from incongruencies
hidden in parallels
where trains chug coal
and blood
and automobiles
to Rio and Brisbon and Detroit,
past squatter villages
and colonies of rats and ships and planes,
and army bases where
ants
march and build and
destroy
and mate,
then cry and cut themselves,
and see the flow of blood
as the only modicum
of control
they might ever know.

departure from departures,
from the meaningfully meaningless,
an empty jug of water
heavier than the quantification of your soul
in pounds, kilos, or smiles.

departure from arrivals,
from hello’s and goodbye’s,
from first and last kisses,
from forced hugs
and routine insincerities,
from an irreversible scouring of
meta-generoisty,
the raping and pillaging of love.

departure from resentment,
envy,
from routines.

departure from fear,
uncertainty,
linear conceptions and categorizations,
from truth hidden so well
that the denial of lies is labeled
sociopathic.

departure from division,
from the difference between me and you,
from unfounded senses of entitlement, ownership, and
responsibility over that which never truly belongs to us,
but to -

departure from signatures
and belongings
and comparisons
and vocabulary
and judgment
and confrontation
and temporary peace and solitude.

departure from
false joys,
and needing wants
and shunning needs.

by raffi wartanianq
hollywood, ca, 08/2009


Quitter les significations

La mauvaise nutrition
L’inquisition

Quitter les jeux
Les masques
Les fourberies
et mesquineries

Quitter les odeurs
Le mensonge,
La brume, le flou
Les contre sens
Qui côte à côte
avec les trains
véhiculent le charbon
le sang
les automobiles
jusqu’à Détroit,
Brisbonne, Rio
En passant par des hameaux
Pris d’assaut par
Des indigents

Et les colonies de rats, et les bateaux et les avions
Et les bases militaires où défilent des fourmis
qui bâtissent

Détruisent, s’accouplent
Qui crient
se coupent
et voient le sang
couler
comme s’il était
à jamais
leur seul moyen de contrôler

quitter les départs
les moments qui sciemment n’ont pas de sens
et qui pèsent plus en livres, en kilogrammes, en sourires
que la richesse de l’âme


quitter les arrivées,

depuis les bonjours jusqu’aux adieux
les baisers d’avant,
d’après,
les prétendues embrassades
les faux-semblants routiniers
la bienveillance étudiée
immuablement fixée
la violence faite au vol
quitter l’amour

quitter rancune
convoitise
habitudes
incertitudes
les conceptions ratifiées,
et les classifications,
les vérités si bien cachées
que ceux qui disent la vérité
sont libellés des sociopathes

quitter la séparation,
l’écart entre toi et moi
les conceptions sans fondation du dévolu,
la possession
la responsabilité de ce qui ne fut jamais
à nous
vraiment
mais à --

quitter signatures
effets
comparaisons
mots, jugements,
confrontations
quitter la paix,
la solitude
temporaire

quitter
les joies qui n’en sont pas
les besoins de désirer
les désirs qui ne restent pas

texte de raffi wartanian
hollywood, ca, 08/2009
Traduit par Sylvie M. Miller

Raffi Wartanian: This Isn’t A World For Soft Hearts

This isn’t a world for soft hearts
It’ a world for full metal jackets

Cracked back fits
Lacking tack bits

Not a bountiful sunrise
But a diminishing sunset,
A mirage where ambition blends sanctity and opportunism

A meadow of severed smiles,
Charred

Freshly bloomed sunflowers cut by the stem
And its seeds picked out one by one
Split open with a rusted knife
Boasting
Spots of dried blood
Taken from the septic pipe it was hidden in
By the biological daughterson of
Santa Claus, The Easter Bunny, and Jesus H. Nevermind

And the insides
Bootsmashed -
Even an ant’s ant couldn’t touch it –

So that all you’re left with
Is a lost meadow
Suggesting a faint smell of something divine that you’d have to be
One-one millionth your size to catch

So that all you’re left with
Is a stiffening of the back
Squinting of the eyes
Toiling under the black sun to acquire the seventh layer of metal –

Metal made of the scents of opportunism, raw sex, loving self-deception, and
conditional love (tit for tat; this for that; yours for mine; something to show for;
something to show for; innocence, justice, love, released like a frivolous
ejaculation to better tune into cacophonies and simultaneous prayer songs
booming from amplified amplifiers microphoned then megaphoned into a single
channel of the master PA processing the sound and touch of everything’s nothing
with a dash of reverb), sunny storm clouds, and that black sun.

To further encase the soft heart.

February, 2010
New York City