from your 1-3-6

we do retreat, both of us
fold into ourselves
seek solitude and just
    'vant to be alone'
to escape, perhaps,
in small part but...
more for introspection
taking stock of life
actions taken, not taken,
slaloming over 
around and through
events that just
happenstanced

where are we?
        (as we take ask in
        a most royal tone) 
what happened?
what might have been?
what should have been?

and, oh my, don't,
please no, don't,
bring that up again...

our lives, briefly intertwined,
the unfinished warp and weft
of souls and hearts
longings and other...
'complications'

a divine gift
our lives as 
something holistic
is pure poetry

kisher pari

enough of the deep stuff
'tis the end of the day
time to write some whimsy 
some fluffy, airy, bit of
possible poesical pablum
amazingly alliterative 
a lexiconic litany 
of almost meaningless
meanderings from a mind
closer to slumber than
expressing anything near 
an insight...

and yet, it is,
delightfully and definitely
still about you...
kisher pari 

your white city

i came upon a city
in a dreamy sleep
an ancient town of 
of white homes
of fragrant gardens 
on a river that flowed
through the city and
into the city and homes
via ducts built to cool
in the hot summers

i came upon that city
that city of white
that city you loved 
and always spoke of 
the city where we
might have met and
talked on my exile 
on my trek to find... life
and hope and meaning
and purpose and...

i felt foreign and at
home in your white city.
i looked for you and looked
for the magic you were
just born into rooted
deeply in that white town
and found neither until...

i sat by the river and
let it all go in a moment
and finally found you all around
in every yogic breath
in every water babble
in the wind and sun
in the warble of birds 

i felt your wisdom 
beyond your years 
steeped in centuries of history
in that city named for you
 

olives and grapes

i. palestine
afraid?
afraid to go
afraid to go to the own trees

to?
to harvest
to harvest their olives
to harvest their olives... their livlihood

avoiding?
avoiding bullets
avoiding bullets and beatings

from?
from colonizers
from colonizers who believe
from colonizers who believe in a new form
from colonizers who believe in a new form of manifest destiny

unsettling?
unsettling indiginous people
unsettling indiginous people from their homes
unsettling indiginous people from their homes and lands

ii. artsakh
devastated?
devastated and exiled
devastated and exiled from their homes
devastated and exiled from their homes and lands?

their lands?
their lands where they lived for centuries

their lands?
enver tried to pan-turan away

their lands?
that stalin gave away 

their lands?
that the world believes is not theirs

their lands?
where they can no longer pick grapes
from what were their vines...

november 2025
Read this article on NPR before reading the poem

 

endings

i. an enlightened end
it just ended... quietly
not with a bang
nor a whimper
that i ever heard
just a fade awaying
a gentle unraveling
wisped gently to 
the entropics

ii. a bit grittier finish
our thirty seconds
of fame or love
or whatever the fuck it was
just done gone
like a shawshanked
fart in the wind

iii. dylanesque
the way of the world
the code of life 
"don't think twice, it's alright..."

Veteran's Day 2025
Broken Heart, Dakota Territory

 

Մախամ Չունիմ

if...
i could only imagine it
i can't even

an ideal, a concept,
a perfection i want
to improvise for you
better than any poem
better than any letter
better than any 
mere words or melody

a taksim, a chant,
an older than old school lament,
the good kind, that bring us to
a peace you so need and deserve

it's there, etched in our souls
coded in our dna
i am not good enough
or worthy enough, not able,
to extract it and even less able
to play it...

it is there, i feel it
it is sweet
    but not too sweet
it is sad
    but not too sad
it is joyful
    but not very happy

in a maqam no one
    has ever heard or played
but sounding so very
    familiar

so very familiar 

sitting

whattya write when
there's nothing to say
kinda like that fella 
sitting on the dock
of that famous bay

instead...
i am sitting near
the washing machine
watching the tide 
clean the clothes 
listenin'  to the 
swishy waves 
pulsing along 
humming to their
rhythm...

wastin' time? or just 
thinkin,' you know,
contemplatin' stuff,
stuff that have no 
answers...

i don't have to go
nowhere
to be far away