Sdepan Keshishian: AyA

I am sanding down the jagged contour of my ankle
Which the architect neglected or could not reach.

No one could possibly underestimate the steadfast;
The irrepressibility of nature in the act. carved out

As She shines her finger down, each morning
From the top of the Mountain where, gaining speed

All particles of life stumble among and upon one another,
Crumble from her will and, collect in the fertile valley.

With a sheared foot in a westward pose, detached
I shift to the other, contemplating in Lost tongues;

"Perhaps", I say, "it is the inevitability of conditioning."

I hear the steady stream of the morning highway
beneath the current.


Boston, 2008.

Sdepan Keshishian: Feast of Sweat

speak, now, on the fundamentals of civil policy
as the withered banzai gasps of plastic.

the retractable awning of reform,
as in a penal code abolishing the mouth with

which to read, worn, of wind and rain,
the sky-blue muslin crawling across

the shifting desert, retracing–as children
in aimless perpetuity. The beating sun,

bleaching, what remaining essence.

Boston, 2009.

Sdepan Keshishian: The Winter Dragon

I.
Instances of stand-still time:
the bus-stop or a cashier line,
at all of which the winter dra-
gon lurks.

II.
I walked into the sun this evening... and global warming
seeped back through the contours of my eye
sockets. until Spring, I will blow out the contempt
into a tissue. For all of eternity.

III.
At an undisclosed left-hand turn,
my face barrels along gusts of wind,
its shell cracking and peeling off at the finer points.
Such is life in the ventilation system.

IV.
voyeuristic third-story pixelated vistas
above electric roller discos
-captured a tail, a trail of spines
while supermarket security reported flaming toehairs.

I crept through the stainless kitchen ceiling
and hung point five stories up and around
the brick corner, off the fire escape-
just out of range from rolling breath.

keshishian sdepan
Boston 2008

Sdepan Keshishian: Swan Song

This pond is a picture
perfect of sludge
and litter.

In fact...
concrete,
its base slopes
in at angled filters
preserving what has never existed.

This poem is a picture
framed in a temperate breeze
of tax dollars.

I could hover along the glass ripples,
Resting under the shade of the willow.

I could hollow out my essence,
Folding back unto the seeping edges.

I could drain along the wall,
Flowing with the bottom current.

and as the filters approach,
I could slip out my purse,
Filling it with coins.

and after extracting
the zinc and copper,
I could harvest the wishes

While the pigeons work for more.

keshishian sdepan
Boston 2008

Sdepan Keshishian: untitled

It must have been the saddest man
in the world;
with the elegance of a cowboy
naked in defeat.

I sketched his silhouette in chalk
As a relief
of the pity from persons passing

I trapped him as an image
somewhat near the Louvre

Guilt free is a
glare upon a shadow.
The dogs here,
they wear berets
and turn a passing jaw
to the street
and its tragedy.
as the chalk drips
black
off my elbows.

keshishian sdepan
Boston 2008

Sdepan Keshishian: wind

the canvas bleeds like
wind through my neck,
becoming of age in
insatiable pulsing, indulging in
air and poetic license.

prison sentences for
convicts and proverbs,
and proper nouns in
solitary confinement

there is music in the air! and
treble clefs caught dangling in
branches and sheet music.

and so I despise the air I
walk on and Earth is a
flowing river of paint and paper and
Jesus drowns in the deep end and
birds are bad and bees sing and
trees sting and fall.

Sdepan Keshishian
2008

Sdepan Keshishian: fringe diction

Camel-back gallop blistered side view ride rough Toss
Epidermal air, dry rash itch and hair, plus fare4
Reverent; resent. intent-lessness meant not
finger-toil and oil_tobacco searing foil through frozen soil.
irre: poseable, sponsible, proachable valiance,
 oh but that smile...

Sdepan Keshishian, Boston, 2008

Sdepan Keshishian: Contortionary

 I go there, also. searching through framed seashores Bent, 
 digging through rubble under bare heels and dust

 faints buzz like faints 
 buzz fuzz light fixtures

 I can't recall an instance, displaced six thousand miles-
 a six hundred millimeter dash to the closet wall,

 where the sun shines more content Bent,
 at right angles.

 Words leak and falter, alter
 like borders. hoards of tight corners.

I felt a woman - made of earth, sword and skirt,
dead and mapped, giving birth. We carved out a piece of the sun 

 to carry a long
 forever






Sdepan Keshishian, Boston, 2008

Sdepan Keshishian: Here again, now: Then

I've gone and come.
An aerial view
of paths intersecting
In fast-paced sequential patterns
of excess dust,
Amidst the rise and fall
of thoughts 
that never quite settle.

When I close my eyes,
Sea and Mountain
Sand and Song,
 feeling_skin 
   -kin to its mountains dis-
   tant wars and seashores
 indivisible truth_fact
    -dispersible ash black
    Camel pack cigarettes
  Inexorable
 by the transfiguration
  of Virtue.

eyes  
  re-
treat 
  to 
 their 
own 
 sha
dows 
 on 
the 
  Face 
   of 
Earth.

Sdepan Keshishian, Boston, 2008

Sdepan Keshishian: Rooted Nonetheless

for Clarksdale
        Stemming from the root of all truth,
The pillars ascend towards the porch ceiling
        alluding to a roof.
  And so . . .
                grounded in this truth,
        I gaze over and beyond your bodies
               and Deep into the springy turf
the fertile blanket. I hear 
            its loose threads
a mile off
playing in the Mississippi.

I state Salvation; a mental assembly,
prolonging Destiny; a solid White 
Cloud atop a silent plateau,
where medication works 
        in negatives, 
making its absence known;

the Sartrean non-being in the cafe of my consciousness.

Sdepan Keshishian, Boston, 2008

Sdepan Keshishian: Your Self-Assuredness Flaps in the Wind

I lost my shoes among bandits. A gang of ferrets.
I wore them out and back as they waited.
I wore them out as one would a chew-toy
As two would a battle-
land three would a duo.

See my shoes sea salt hues
foggy and brown all over town
Shiny black shoes mourn under church pews.

Shoes hung from a ladder as sun and paint splatter
Suspended in symmetry, the harvest of rubber.
rung-rhyme dung odor

You keep pace with the world
yet spoil my character
As it hops across creeks
and back again to its owner.
My solitude comes in pairs
you Passive, symmetric bastards

Sdepan Keshishian, Boston, 2008