☀ Today's Poem: "Distractions" Talin Tahajian

I am nothing
because I want nothing.

There is nothing I want.

When I was in love, my love
became my sadness. When I was oblique, rock cast
against rock, my two eyes hung like pistols

aflame in a boundless void. I remember a shepherd
summoning me to the cliff, a train
that left me stranded at the platform. For years, I watched,
from an empty field, an empty river rising

as an angel choked at the bank. I am the chorus
and the choir, she screamed,
the psalmist and the psalm. Though I waited

for you, bright “I,”
though I wait,

when I jumped the turnstile
Awaken!

at the gate, I could not hear you calling, I did not
know my fate. Had I known, then, that you were the rising water
and the fleeing hares, had I known

that answering your prayers
was the answer to my prayers

and that doubting it
could/would

kill me, I could have been able to stop
the flood/would I have been able to stop?—

smoke a fag, scratch the scab. I could not hear you calling,
but I know it’s you who calls. I’ll find you

Awaken!

at the end of the line, where the glass orb spins forever
and the meadows twist like dogs. To write, I must open my eyes—

To open your eyes, you must write!