AS NIGHT PRECIPITATES

	By Karine Ovsepian


	I am not I, But why? 

	Cool face, black hair, 
	An icicle of moon, 
	Holds me up above the water 
	As day passes by passions canal, 
	All nights become personal. 

	I am the ship out on the sea, 
	With a drunken heart, 
	My lips red as dried out roses, 
	Calling absent fate, 
	All so subtle, so intimate. 

	I raise my cup in an empty room, 
	In this light my heart seems transparent, 
	No sirens, no traffic lights, 
	Not even you, just I, 
	Transparent as gauze. 

	Though I am drenched in morning light, 
	Still being kissed by the moon, 
	I howl at the stars, 
	I seem to have forgotten my own name, 
	Thus I howl for extinction, not fame. 

	Within the folds of my mind, 
	A man and a woman, 
	Collecting rain in russet cups, 
	Tonight they sit across the empty benches, 
	With soundless weight of each other's name, 
	Howling at destiny, 
	At the end of time, at the end of many regrets, 
	But, 
	It all simply is not enough. 

	Still a ship out on the sea, 
	A dream, 
	Comes with the first of shadow, 
	As it kisses me with dawn, 
	Love rubs its wind, 
	With sandpapers of its branches, 
	A reverie in the bitter sea 
	Against a pail heart, 
	Trailing my face with teardrops. 

	What a naked heart, 
	With eyes of cold silver, 
	Under the gypsy moon, 
	All things are watching me 
	As I am watching time, 
	With an open wound I have. 
	>From my chest to my throat, 
	I am a precipitated lie, 
	Rolling with the crystal moon. 

	The dawn light, 
	Dressed in thousand crystal lights, 
	Wind leaving a strange taste in my mouth, 
	Eccentric taste of love, 
	Weird taste of tangibility, 
	Yet I still am not me, 
	As you are only my impartial sympathy, 
	Who are you? 
	If not my sailing - ardent and true. 

	I am a name, I am not I! 
	But who are you?


--
Karine Ovsepian was born in Yerevan, Armenia, but grew up in the city
of Soukhumi by the Black Sea, which used to be the capital of
Abkhazian ASSR. Literature has been part of her life since school
days. She writes in Armenian, English and also in Russian. She is
planning to publish her first book.  Some of her English poems have
been published by the International Society of Poets in US.  She is a
graduate of CSULA with BA in English, minor in Creative Writing &
Biology. She believes poetry is a gift, a limitless gift of expression
and imagination to the world.