Grand Parents by Hovhannes Mkhitaryan

Coffee grounds elevate her ever dropping

blood pressure.

My grandmother asks me to join her

in the addictive culture play

of turned cups

and

fate spilling remarks,

but not because she cares for the

caffeine levels in my blood

or how hyper I become after –

no.

 

An independent woman:

strong, active, sharp,

lively qualities that are

fading with time.

 

Life decays,

dreams wither and unrealized futures

become dreaded realities,

tangents built on the circles

left on yesterday’s hopeful, empty cups.

Muscles attached to lenses let go of their grasp,

out of focus, her daily regiment breaks down

as the fourth dimension becomes

the only one she can traverse and endure.

 

She speaks of

pills that extend her deadline

but do not promise life, only time.

 

I decide to listen for once,

and discover a world richer than mine,

an unseen film with a longer running time

than mine.

She brings me folded pages containing her favorite poems,

copied in her unique handwriting:

pieces of enlightened thought, anthologized.

 

Tumanyan, Aramais Sahakyan,

Siamanto, Sayat-Nova,

she has copied their painful words,

word by word in an ever-fading,

permanent pen,

pains semi-permanently stained.

 

Despite the poetic copies in her

sugar carrying purse,

her infinite thoughts and reflections

of the grand mystery remain unwritten

and soon are to be forgotten

when they leave unsaid inside her brain,

grounded.

 

I can’t tell her “I’m sorry” on behalf of life,

but I’m sorry anyway,

for if I survive the amount of years that she has –

I might be regretfully empty as well.

 

That’s if I don’t get enough of these down,

(an endless endeavor admittedly,)

in order to survive postmortem

as words in purses

or bits in machine cold to the touch

that have warmed containments

accessible

by a disc reading head,

wired up motherboard,

processor and volatile memory,

north and south bridge, ahh

you’re bored already…

but science is beauty.

 

I hope my children understand,

and sit down for coffee someday.

 

Hovhannes Mkhitaryan debuted on The Armenite with “Demolition Made.”  He is a poet from Los Angeles, CA and the founder of Lines With Rhymes which recently published its first book. You can reach him here.