i could have
perhaps should have
thought about or even
maybe considered
the possibility of
invoking the yin and yang
the dichotomous yes and no
good and bad up and down
left and right hot and cold
oneness of it all
i really could have
just too cliched
your happysad was
in the end or the beginning
simply better or worse
imperfectly perfect
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Sunday, November 1, 2009
the stones of ani
the stones speak loudly
and clearly through your words
they speak through the pathos
just a photo of them evokes
a half a dome, a crumbled stone,
a faded fresco, and old words
all cry out to imagine
what once was and
will never be again
and clearly through your words
they speak through the pathos
just a photo of them evokes
a half a dome, a crumbled stone,
a faded fresco, and old words
all cry out to imagine
what once was and
will never be again
Friday, August 14, 2009
Retro Armo Poem
There is a mountain
I have seen it
There is a mountain
I have not touched
Nor stepped foot upon
There is a mountain
Looming o'er our hearts and heads
In our very livers
At least I think that's what
They used to say
There is a mountain
But really two
There is a mountain
Beckoning, a beacon
Jermak kakat and all
Fueling our anxious souls
There is a mountain
Noah other one like it
I have seen it
There is a mountain
I have not touched
Nor stepped foot upon
There is a mountain
Looming o'er our hearts and heads
In our very livers
At least I think that's what
They used to say
There is a mountain
But really two
There is a mountain
Beckoning, a beacon
Jermak kakat and all
Fueling our anxious souls
There is a mountain
Noah other one like it
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Who Am I?
You always ask me this.
As if I had an answer
And if any answer given
Would not be enough…
Or would it?
I would tell you, lying naked,
Between kisses, half sleepy,
If I could…
If I seduced you into
Seducing me.
If I knew who I was…
May 7, 2009
As if I had an answer
And if any answer given
Would not be enough…
Or would it?
I would tell you, lying naked,
Between kisses, half sleepy,
If I could…
If I seduced you into
Seducing me.
If I knew who I was…
May 7, 2009
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Not the Poem I wanted to write
Contemplating the very me
The essential innermost I
The defining core root of
What it means to be so
Very superficial, so very
Self-indulgent, so very
Consumed with the nothing
That I cannot sleep
That I cannot think or write
Dream or plan a way out
Thank God for television…
April 25, 2009
The essential innermost I
The defining core root of
What it means to be so
Very superficial, so very
Self-indulgent, so very
Consumed with the nothing
That I cannot sleep
That I cannot think or write
Dream or plan a way out
Thank God for television…
April 25, 2009
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Central Standard Time
Our biological clocks
Tick out of sync
But our hearts seek
To beat as one
Fast and faster
And then... slower
Falling asleep
Entwined
March 27, 2009
Tick out of sync
But our hearts seek
To beat as one
Fast and faster
And then... slower
Falling asleep
Entwined
March 27, 2009
In Honor of The 3rd Anniversary Armenian Poetry Project & it's Founder Lola Koundakjian
Armenians always hear the voices
Echoing from the past
The long gone past, the recent past
The voices of what once were
And live still in the hearts of readers
Of both west 'irs' or east 'oums'
Uz'old words only heard in church
Or even our new native tongues
We hear the echoes of the past
Reflected in the mirror you hold
Speaking the past into bits and bytes
Echoing across the internet globe
Podcast into the Armenian ears
Shushan in Tehran
In Boston, Melbourne, Paris
Garnig in Gumri
In Vienna, Sao Paulo too
We see the white cap of our mountain
Drink from the untainted springs
Laugh in villages that are... no more
March 19, 2009
Echoing from the past
The long gone past, the recent past
The voices of what once were
And live still in the hearts of readers
Of both west 'irs' or east 'oums'
Uz'old words only heard in church
Or even our new native tongues
We hear the echoes of the past
Reflected in the mirror you hold
Speaking the past into bits and bytes
Echoing across the internet globe
Podcast into the Armenian ears
Shushan in Tehran
In Boston, Melbourne, Paris
Garnig in Gumri
In Vienna, Sao Paulo too
We see the white cap of our mountain
Drink from the untainted springs
Laugh in villages that are... no more
March 19, 2009
pure cristal
i was texting you
on autopilot
dreaming through my fingers
caressing your face
through the keyboard
in a mystic almost
mythic reverie
that ended up as
this kind of almost
poor excuse for a poem
the first poem i wrote you
February 17, 2009
on autopilot
dreaming through my fingers
caressing your face
through the keyboard
in a mystic almost
mythic reverie
that ended up as
this kind of almost
poor excuse for a poem
the first poem i wrote you
February 17, 2009
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Book III
American Şukru
for John Vosbikian
On the many roads from Malatya,
To Konya, Harput, Adana,
Your music’s heard
In birds and brooks and breeze,
In rain and thunder
In the creek of trees
The growing wheat whispers your drone
And you,
With the breath of life,
Bleat and wail and mourn
To the eagle and the crane.
You cry sonic tears
That flow into rivers
That make things grow.
You derive
From wood and air
The true meaning of life
Spanning centuries and continents
A meaning that can only be
Heard and felt
Articulated not in words.
Every time you breathe
We die and live
We yearn and love
We lose our minds and
Find our souls.
April 24, 1991
Caracas
—————— • ——————
The Gift of Intuition
(A one third haiku)
You know
I know
You know
July 1991
—————— • ——————
The Gift of Time
I steal time
In minutes,
Hours, seconds,
Days, months, years.
I steal it from me,
From you, my love.
I steal time for me
To wander off and dream.
I lie for time, my mistress,
Then cheat on her.
I scurry and scrounge
While she indifferently
Acclerates.
I steal time,
I steal yours.
I swill it,
Precious hours
Running down
My gluttonous cheeks.
July 1991
—————— • ——————
The Gift of Writer’s Block
That I cannot write is your fault.
Your spirit clogs the pores of my soul.
My addiction, obsession,
Jams the synapses,
Dulls my sensitivity,
Evaporates vocabulary,
Blurs perceptions and
Lures my energy
To the butt of my spine.
I only want to live in your bed
With my hands groping under
Your Freudian slip.
April 24, 1991
Caracas
—————— • ——————
The Gift of Inspiration
I want to run off
And write songs for you
Hidden, cocooned,
Hibernating until
Monarch poems of
Orange and black burst
Forth and dance in
Your sun and die
Before the end of day.
1990
—————— • ——————
The Gift of Left Handed Women
Your boyish femininity
Left me dyslexic
Right in the vertigo
Of your libidinal palindrome.
1990
—————— • ——————
The Gift of Hesitation
I have walked Central Park twice,
Once with you and once alone.
With you,
You talked and showed me the park.
I mumbled and stuttered pleasantries
Over and around the words I really
Wanted to say.
Alone,
I followed our path and said
Everything, eloquently, to a
Phantom you.
Our first long
Lover’s kiss
At the base of
Cleopatra’s needle.
July 1991
—————— • ——————
The Gift of Nourishment
I have digested you
I have heard your musk
And drank you with my eyes.
I have digested you
And infused you in every cell
Orienting my life in
The stream of you.
March 1991
—————— • ——————
The Gift of Dreams
Your apparition
Synchs into my thoughts
And flutters harmonic
With my dream waves.
The collage of all
Kisses are focused,
In transparent writhe,
In detached coital arch,
Sined in genetic code,
Cosined by ancestors.
June 25, 1991
Brussels
—————— • ——————
The Gift of Grace
That ether blowing
Cool springs off the
Massive slopes
Of earth’s lopsided breasts,
That ether breeze
that prolongs my sleep
In fractal puffs
Cradling my soul
Enveloping the pain
Of long centuries.
April 1990
—————— • ——————
The Gift of Addiction to You
I should e-mail you every day but
That would become twice a day and
Then hourly until it would be better if
I just hung out with you all the time.
Such is an addict's lot,
Such is an addict's mesmer,
An addict's tragedy and what
No one but the addict knows
His
one
real
joy
April 17, 1998
—————— • ——————
Your Birthday Poem
It is not possible
To write the poem of you,
Since the you of you
Permeates the me of me
Creating the
Coital spider of us
It is not possible
To write the poem of you,
I am too consumed
Scribbling with
My penal pen filled
With invisible ink
In the velvety vaginal
Book of you
It is not possible
To write the poem of you,
Since I get lost in the
Thought, dream, psychosis
In the reverie, image, reflection
Of loving you
It is not possible
To write the poem of you,
For no poet can capture
That which has no bounds
No definition, no limits
In the core of the brain
Base of the spine
Ventricular aortic joy
Of loving you
It is not possible
To write the poem of you,
As the words
Might spontaneously
Combust these pages
It is not possible
To write the poem of you,
Because brain functions
Cease at these
Emotional depths
It is not possible
To write the poem of you,
As it would be a waste of time
Since no one else would
Ever, no how, know way
In Heaven or hell or
Other places, possibly
Conceive of this level of passion,
From the likes of us
It is not possible
To write the poem of you,
Because good poems
Demand the loss,
Absence, erosion,
Deterioration and general
Decay of love
August 14, 2001
Miami
—————— • ——————
Poems from my Caran D’ache
In touch with
The Tao of now
Raises the soul
From the tar pit
Of the mind allowing
Poems to flow
From the whole me
Immediate, permanent
There are no errors
There can be no revisions
Caran poems d’ached
Off in real time.
February 15, 2002
Mexico City
—————— • ——————
Sweet Breath
It was only chewing gum
Spearmint
That scented your breath
Anoukh
Intoxicating my soul
Hierbabuena
It was only chewing gum
Rahan
It was only spearmint
Naneh
It was only love
It was and will be
February 19, 2002
Mexico City
—————— • ——————
Our Isle
Our Isle
not of Solitude but
a bountiful place
where we live
off the food of Love
the wine of passion
the fruit of intensity
Our Isle
of anticipation and fulfillment
of yearning and contentment
Oscintilating
Like waves, over and over
Like the tide, deeper and profound
There is no map
We washed up on shore
Embraced, entwined
Primordial
Eternal
Timeless
on our isle.
February 14, 2002
—————— • ——————
Question
Must all poems
Be profound, revealing
The mysteries of life
The structure of the universe
The wisdom of the ages
Inspired by the
Breath of God and
The soul of life?
March 5, 2002
—————— • ——————
Must poems be clear, to all who read?
Should everyone who reads understand?
Or can they be just for my own need
To trace my life, just for me and
Not caring if anyone else ever reads them
The most egocentric writing of all
My memory book, documenting my crawl
Through this lifetime of trials and joy
Convincing myself I am still the same boy
January 26, 2004
—————— • ——————
exiled...
in a darien desolation,
a noroton nether land
the train rumbles
to some unknown
some ominous dawn
the train rumbles forth
in a flat descent
to some unknown
some ominous dark
foreboding town
the train trundles forth
alone, exiled
knowing naught
not knowing if
there is any return
to the green farm
the train rumbles forth
February 12, 2004
for John Vosbikian
On the many roads from Malatya,
To Konya, Harput, Adana,
Your music’s heard
In birds and brooks and breeze,
In rain and thunder
In the creek of trees
The growing wheat whispers your drone
And you,
With the breath of life,
Bleat and wail and mourn
To the eagle and the crane.
You cry sonic tears
That flow into rivers
That make things grow.
You derive
From wood and air
The true meaning of life
Spanning centuries and continents
A meaning that can only be
Heard and felt
Articulated not in words.
Every time you breathe
We die and live
We yearn and love
We lose our minds and
Find our souls.
April 24, 1991
Caracas
—————— • ——————
The Gift of Intuition
(A one third haiku)
You know
I know
You know
July 1991
—————— • ——————
The Gift of Time
I steal time
In minutes,
Hours, seconds,
Days, months, years.
I steal it from me,
From you, my love.
I steal time for me
To wander off and dream.
I lie for time, my mistress,
Then cheat on her.
I scurry and scrounge
While she indifferently
Acclerates.
I steal time,
I steal yours.
I swill it,
Precious hours
Running down
My gluttonous cheeks.
July 1991
—————— • ——————
The Gift of Writer’s Block
That I cannot write is your fault.
Your spirit clogs the pores of my soul.
My addiction, obsession,
Jams the synapses,
Dulls my sensitivity,
Evaporates vocabulary,
Blurs perceptions and
Lures my energy
To the butt of my spine.
I only want to live in your bed
With my hands groping under
Your Freudian slip.
April 24, 1991
Caracas
—————— • ——————
The Gift of Inspiration
I want to run off
And write songs for you
Hidden, cocooned,
Hibernating until
Monarch poems of
Orange and black burst
Forth and dance in
Your sun and die
Before the end of day.
1990
—————— • ——————
The Gift of Left Handed Women
Your boyish femininity
Left me dyslexic
Right in the vertigo
Of your libidinal palindrome.
1990
—————— • ——————
The Gift of Hesitation
I have walked Central Park twice,
Once with you and once alone.
With you,
You talked and showed me the park.
I mumbled and stuttered pleasantries
Over and around the words I really
Wanted to say.
Alone,
I followed our path and said
Everything, eloquently, to a
Phantom you.
Our first long
Lover’s kiss
At the base of
Cleopatra’s needle.
July 1991
—————— • ——————
The Gift of Nourishment
I have digested you
I have heard your musk
And drank you with my eyes.
I have digested you
And infused you in every cell
Orienting my life in
The stream of you.
March 1991
—————— • ——————
The Gift of Dreams
Your apparition
Synchs into my thoughts
And flutters harmonic
With my dream waves.
The collage of all
Kisses are focused,
In transparent writhe,
In detached coital arch,
Sined in genetic code,
Cosined by ancestors.
June 25, 1991
Brussels
—————— • ——————
The Gift of Grace
That ether blowing
Cool springs off the
Massive slopes
Of earth’s lopsided breasts,
That ether breeze
that prolongs my sleep
In fractal puffs
Cradling my soul
Enveloping the pain
Of long centuries.
April 1990
—————— • ——————
The Gift of Addiction to You
I should e-mail you every day but
That would become twice a day and
Then hourly until it would be better if
I just hung out with you all the time.
Such is an addict's lot,
Such is an addict's mesmer,
An addict's tragedy and what
No one but the addict knows
His
one
real
joy
April 17, 1998
—————— • ——————
Your Birthday Poem
It is not possible
To write the poem of you,
Since the you of you
Permeates the me of me
Creating the
Coital spider of us
It is not possible
To write the poem of you,
I am too consumed
Scribbling with
My penal pen filled
With invisible ink
In the velvety vaginal
Book of you
It is not possible
To write the poem of you,
Since I get lost in the
Thought, dream, psychosis
In the reverie, image, reflection
Of loving you
It is not possible
To write the poem of you,
For no poet can capture
That which has no bounds
No definition, no limits
In the core of the brain
Base of the spine
Ventricular aortic joy
Of loving you
It is not possible
To write the poem of you,
As the words
Might spontaneously
Combust these pages
It is not possible
To write the poem of you,
Because brain functions
Cease at these
Emotional depths
It is not possible
To write the poem of you,
As it would be a waste of time
Since no one else would
Ever, no how, know way
In Heaven or hell or
Other places, possibly
Conceive of this level of passion,
From the likes of us
It is not possible
To write the poem of you,
Because good poems
Demand the loss,
Absence, erosion,
Deterioration and general
Decay of love
August 14, 2001
Miami
—————— • ——————
Poems from my Caran D’ache
In touch with
The Tao of now
Raises the soul
From the tar pit
Of the mind allowing
Poems to flow
From the whole me
Immediate, permanent
There are no errors
There can be no revisions
Caran poems d’ached
Off in real time.
February 15, 2002
Mexico City
—————— • ——————
Sweet Breath
It was only chewing gum
Spearmint
That scented your breath
Anoukh
Intoxicating my soul
Hierbabuena
It was only chewing gum
Rahan
It was only spearmint
Naneh
It was only love
It was and will be
February 19, 2002
Mexico City
—————— • ——————
Our Isle
Our Isle
not of Solitude but
a bountiful place
where we live
off the food of Love
the wine of passion
the fruit of intensity
Our Isle
of anticipation and fulfillment
of yearning and contentment
Oscintilating
Like waves, over and over
Like the tide, deeper and profound
There is no map
We washed up on shore
Embraced, entwined
Primordial
Eternal
Timeless
on our isle.
February 14, 2002
—————— • ——————
Question
Must all poems
Be profound, revealing
The mysteries of life
The structure of the universe
The wisdom of the ages
Inspired by the
Breath of God and
The soul of life?
March 5, 2002
—————— • ——————
Must poems be clear, to all who read?
Should everyone who reads understand?
Or can they be just for my own need
To trace my life, just for me and
Not caring if anyone else ever reads them
The most egocentric writing of all
My memory book, documenting my crawl
Through this lifetime of trials and joy
Convincing myself I am still the same boy
January 26, 2004
—————— • ——————
exiled...
in a darien desolation,
a noroton nether land
the train rumbles
to some unknown
some ominous dawn
the train rumbles forth
in a flat descent
to some unknown
some ominous dark
foreboding town
the train trundles forth
alone, exiled
knowing naught
not knowing if
there is any return
to the green farm
the train rumbles forth
February 12, 2004
Book II
Looking for Alice James
(but if we saw her sister
that would be cool)
The summer hung like
Misted raspberries
On the humid vine and
We went out tasting
The harvest of her spirit
The Claret of her mystique
The evolution of her being
She who changed us so
Gently in the moonight
Soon we shall bask in the
Memory of this pleasent search.
June 1983/April 1986
—————— • ——————
Airplane Gallorie
like a bird in a zoo
i adore the fashion molt
of the school girl violet
in her shy meld of blush
on a beach georgia tan
that bleached her sleeping
lip crown blond upon
an impish pout
while
mizz m-b-a
all sculpted malloy
with oxblood
cordovan attache
maroon designer
burgandy purse
crimson carry
on the go beams
with travel weary
forbes ability
July 1985
—————— • ——————
Charmonie
I.
You came to haunt me,
Make me pay, for the
Ugly way I played with
Purer hearts then mine.
You came not for revenge,
To gore my deserving soul,
But to kiss me back
To retrack your healing path.
II.
I have missed you,
All along, before
We ever met and
Shall ever miss
You more knowing
That you indeed
Exist in parallax.
Our fate is sealed
In your moral way
That allows not for
A change with time
And only accept as
Destiny that I would
Not have pained you
As did your younger he.
I care no more
For my lovers sad,
But for you, the one
I'll never have.
October 1985
—————— • ——————
jills
i.
you
the simian
dark with hair
and oils of
your rain
forest past
you
pure animal
dishevelled
waif queen
scream black
night panther
passions
ii
you
my first poem
rose poem
personified
genteel so
pure white
that would have
heated to red
you
almost
thought about
wanting to love
me
october 1985
—————— • ——————
Marie
She was the ripest
Thing I'd ever seen
With pierce blue
Steelest eyes that
Sparkled so you
Assumed her blind,
Superior to anything
But passion.
She was the ripest
Thing I'd ever seen
Bikinied emerging
From the pool, a dream
No commercial's ever been.
Her skin so taunt so
Smooth so plump so ripe
So tan and tight that
Water streaked and rolled,
It just beaded on her
Surface tension.
Such perfection could
Never last.
october 1985
—————— • ——————
cause
love child
golden nymph
translucent
milk vein
membrane
tenacious
love clinging
leeching kisses
and couplings
that drained
and sapped
incessantly
writhing
mucus beings
pink dark
warm ooze
slurping
ameiosis
november 1985
—————— • ——————
kriss
generic boygirl
grown teenage fresh
and clean scrubbed
youth woman
soft clear eyed
skin brown hair
of sand and
fulvous beige
lithe pleasent
blossom sylph
beatific sprite
of humanesse
too pure to
feel the pangs
of life and
love i know
you never felt
the pain of
your neck
snapping in the
metal crashing
on your quick
trip to godhead
november 1985
—————— • ——————
mydonna
six or seven lives
you've led and left:
a continuum of growth
and development to
this middle age
confection that
eyes crave.
though you would
be my writer's lover
in plaid winter maine
isolation of keyboard
clicks, fire cracks
and bear rug mouthy
smacks of fantasy,
that psychic fuel
that pulls me
through the day
november 1985
—————— • ——————
Pink Linen Winter Dream
With fair summer but a memory
And spirits bridled nice and tight,
Adrift this cold raging sea
Consumed in a windsnow blight.
Amid the slush and grime
Of this intemperate time
And the fiercest cold
That weakens the bold,
Amid the sleeting snow
And that incessant flow
Of whipping wind sones
That brittles the bones,
Enters our apparition of
Spring and love and flowers
The fertile warmth of life
renewed, the hope of all
mankind. The librarian
Of our flaxen souls tends
Us with purific care and
Frees us from solstistic bonds.
December 1985
—————— • ——————
Mack
I can only guess,
Your life today,
A late model shuttle
Of grocery carted
Unkempt children
Milk sweatshirted
Mustaches of your
Deer hunting beau.
We sensed your fate
In each tart kiss
Berried tongued
Tuesday afternoon.
January 1986
—————— • ——————
phright
You scared them all,
You brash and hard
Spirited Dietrich,
You carnivore.
They thought
You ate us all
And Hanselled us
In your Gretal
Witchy snare
They thought...
How wrong they thought,
Not knowing your
Adoptive fear and love
Of illegitimate passion
That made you grasp
And hold and made us
Hate to push you into
Your candy house oven
And run.
January 1986
—————— • ——————
Hoonvar Bergman
I went to bleed
Those Ullman tears,
To eat those
Wild Strawberries
To be depressed
Did you come
For encounter,
To meet a man
Of literary upperclass
`Twas only one night
And PG, your roomate,
Who knew where. Your
Freshman room of pink
And frilly scents of
Sandalwood in the air
Why I came and
How we got there,
Rolling clinging,
Mouth mated as if
I'd always missed you
And finally asleep
Embraced as a steamy
One that I've never
Seen since that night
I went to bleed
January 1986
—————— • ——————
lynny dearest
anglicatory grace
motherless genteel
basic decor of fifties
idyllic televised peace
scrubbed pale clean
frail plain presentation
with a much broader
scope and loving breadth
a quiet nymph‑calm sapphotic
with a passion depth
i never knew was there
february 1986
—————— • ——————
carole summer gails
in my early
first waking hours
swaddled newborn
circumsized world
I
cried in infant
harmony to you
whose lips i didn't
Feel
until in that
freshman heat of
exploring the
transformations
since last laying
side by side in
The
hospital bright
lanolized sterile
cribbed death dumb
unawareness of why
we never kissed
in passion drenched
darkness but in
daylight joy of
sun warmed
Earth
and july sky that
would never have
been so special had
we never had to
Move
away
February 1986
—————— • ——————
sketches of the byrd expedition
the olive skin burma‑shaved timbre
of our powerfull statured shy warrior
queen encasing a sweet soul trampled
tender mother burning at the stake
named for the moon luminescent goddess
of clear nights and summer cool wind
blown phantaseas defined in that climb
of your pure amber soft eyed stares
march 1986
—————— • ——————
one track mind haiku
tracks nailed
to loin bloody
thighs towards
the birth end
of the tunnel
march 1986
—————— • ——————
Anti‑Adonis and the Librarian
you'll never get that
gentle rape from me
whose tenement heart
burns hot engulfed
in your arsonist gait
oh
that i were a warrior
thundering the steppes
on noble steed sweeping
you up over my shoulder
screaming and kicking in
the misty breath morning
back to camp to ravage
so savage i hope i
weren't hurt
too bad
april 1986
—————— • ——————
april 24, 1986
play me that hard
riding music
partner
hard ridin' jams
play me that hard
driving music
baby
help me understand
i don't know
where i come from or
where i want to be
i never felt so lonely
honey
i just wanna be me
i got them genocide blues
momma
got them low down massacre blues
rapin' killin' maimin'
what's a poor boy to do
momma was so pretty
loved me like rock
the man he came in
and kilt her with his cock
my brother him so cool
the best in his school
they took his whole class
and made `em all suck gas
gives me them genocidal blues
baby
every april 24
i got those sick killin' blues
oh it just
tears my hear out
they did it for ol'allah
they did it for the bread
they took all the chillen'
and smashed in their head
they grab my little baby
raise her for they own
she don't know she armainian
she probly a turkish whore
i feel all genocidal blue
sweethang
down right holocaust blue
without you lawdy homelan'
i mays well up and die
—————— • ——————
virginia patti
alarific petals expand
contraltic tranquilities
carrying the echoed must
of ancient tufa stones in
the vocal wafting towards
the wheat field carpet
weaving vine ripened sheep
herding mountained past
the sinewous counterpoint
of kanun tendril pecks
reveals a love of life, you
and country that sparks
the reveral trance to flame
in your wide eyed attempt
to kiss the sky
april 1986
—————— • ——————
Ms. B
For all your inner
Beauty and fragile
Loving soul,
All I picture is
Your shuddertastic
Ovulicious tidal
Pleasure wincing at
Each different touch.
April 1986
—————— • ——————
devon
with a name like all england
and an american freckled face
fresh from the ohio farm in
my televised dreams of sunday
presbydinners and grandmaw's
rhubarb pie
and i could no
longer nap as my thoughts
would drift to my kinder-
garden love...you
may 1986
—————— • ——————
we all know one like her
sweet soul that pools
in greyfast eyes that
lures men serpentine
slithering for your
musky bitter taste
your structure primed
for childbirth so much
that you probably lick
them clean in lionest
but it's still the steel
you forge in loin furnace
red hot molten bloody
crest of aching burning
incredible itching fusions
that firebrands genetic
clots in bloodless brains
june 1986
—————— • ——————
the last hour
i.
you will be gone
and i remain alone
with foundation
eroded by your chocolate
mist and effervesce
continuing on
like the sole
survivor of your
nuclear war
aimlessly i wander
this barren planet
living in a bad
movie searching
for a plot
ii.
effluent in the
tongues of gods
a living carved
sculpture afrique
moved into my life
(they dared to call
her temporary)
evicting other visions
to the streets
as i give in
succumb to
matriarchal
servitude like
an old veldted
rain king
dancing for
a mate
june 1986
—————— • ——————
pure heart
doctors say
your heart ripples
irregular banter
threatening beats
though we
know it's a
clear running
mountain brook
that nurtures
all it love
washes over
spawning life
in its warm
bubbly flow
july 1986
—————— • ——————
there she goes just...
it was her
you were her
you were you
what why and
who were you
i was blitzed
and stumbled
dizzied and
twisted in the
gale of you
the cyclone
hurricane of you
the oz bound
house lifting
kansas apparition
twister of
my thoughts
and love lost
dreams served
back to me on
a dish of wind
of you
july 1986
—————— • ——————
the tortured artist ploy
my librarian to me
as beatrice to dante
as helga to wyeth
as kukla to ollie to fran
as bullwinkle to rocky
and natasha to boris
as markee to desade
and boys to ol'rock
and isolde to tristram
as i just met a girl named...
as perversion to errol
as you to the flynn of
your sweetest dreams
as me in my minds i
august 1986
—————— • ——————
generic white trash
in your ol'black faded
rock n'roll tee shirt
anemic pallored beige
colored hair unmade-up
po'white sleaze queen
emptian' my office trash
while sad lips advertise
world class mentholated
fellations for free
august 1986
—————— • ——————
A Dozen Long Stemmed Metaphors
from almost the moment
we met I've felt...
like one of us has cancer
like I have no right to sing
this song
like it's too early or too late
like you ought to be happier
but I'm not the guy
like I could be happier and
you're probably the girl
like why you are working for
a corporation instead of
modeling the finest fashions
to complement your beauty
which to me is
like nothing I have ever known
like something that addicted
every man you've ever met
like a clear skied golden sunned
autumn warm breeze knocking
the leaves off trees in giddy
swirls of harvest ripe fustration
like walking across our favorite
campus and dining in that
ivy league country inn
like it all took place in a movie
that I hoped would never end
like having the happiest of birthdays
which is what I wish for you
september 1986
—————— • ——————
forms
you were my
first awkward
quixotic charge
stopped by your
windmill majesty
perfect shadowed
cream sihlouettes
drenched in pure
august moonlight
what school girl
clothes did hide
you a real woman
and i a mere boy
october 1986
—————— • ——————
Visitation
to the poet's home
across harvard yard
anticipation meeting
with the daughter of
my grandfathers friend,
a pilgrimage to see
to learn, absorb the
aura of her way
to the poet's home
a tea august afternoon
of melon and madeleines
(bought just for me)
discussing words
and ironies of
working in our
new native tongue
to the poet's home
that ordered clutter
of books and words
in stacks and shelves
a stark and rich
canonical equilibrium
of perfect entropy
balance and awe
to the poet's home...
october 1986
—————— • ——————
rho-momma
percussive woman dance
and love percussive
woman dance that log
beat deep log beat and
dance my baby dance
sweet my lover dance
sweet percussive beat
that pleasure squirm
afro cascade beat
prim
so improper
became a proper
paradox of natural
rhythm logging
micro controlled
convulsions of
a style never
known to me
love that
woman percussive
fear that hot
woman dance so cool
to rub the belly
succumb to slightly
fecund matriarchal
synchopated servitude
all animal-woman
all woman-animal
define and redefine
make me feel
all scholar stupid
make me feel inadequate
make me feel a child
make me not feel at all
make me...
percussive woman dance
and love percussive
woman dance that log
beat deep log beat and
dance my baby dance
sweet my lover dance
sweet percussive beat
that pleasure squirm
and hold my triumvirate
in the nefertiti palm
of you hand
october 1986
—————— • ——————
she kilt me dead
all scott aloof
sculpted head on
neck long pedestal
that beacons ET
beauty eyes in
cock defiant glare
november 1986
—————— • ——————
she kilt me again
you dachau
punky doo
unshaven leg
attraction
that magnets
blood to posied
appendage
the lowest
spiral step
of soul
lost chaos
january 1987
—————— • ——————
Pepi
All swollen head
Rape queen strangled,
What promise of life
They lied to you.
Young willow fibre
Raped in two
Raped to the jagged
Edge where carnevors
Gorged on the marrow
Of your sweet terror.
M. Eby
What awful death
(hacked bloody)
Stalked you to
That horrored end
Where there is no hell
Vengeful enough
To house it.
Who could not learn
Any of the art you shared,
Moved to such hate?
Why was the drink
You offered not enough?
january 1987
—————— • ——————
a lament straight-up
with a chauvinist twist
a good lie
a half truth
no one knows
but you and i
a sad day
for a new truce
no one knows
but still we pay
a silent scream
for a good sleep
no one knows
our vivid dream
another time
a different place
no one knows
you could've been mine
january 1987
—————— • ——————
wrong word
if you be not languid
for you are not weak,
but i of shallow
thesauric mind who
did not delve to seek
that perfect pearly
adjective to grace
your abalone neck
if you be not languid
but move more in the
grace of soft laugh
light and auburn curled
bounce of a langur sirene
but seriously,
if you be languid,
you are languid as a lute
that rings so sweet
it moves a mind as
languid as mine to
alliterate homonymic life
february 1987
—————— • ——————
M. E. D.
so irish proper
non-stop hurling
of our spirits
in your breath
damp night when
i blew across
the warm moor
of your mind
the body
of your soul
as leviathan's
army lies fallow
in your ararat
valley plain
february 1987
—————— • ——————
April 24, 1987
Does it matter,
One point five two
Point six, the counting
The million thousand dead
Bleached Der-Zor skulls,
The thousand million four
Point three raped cleaved
Pelvic remains buried
In Tigris silt?
Does it matter,
That we the first
Twentieth century genocide?
Does that dim the brutality
Of the fifth or sixth
Genocide of the century
Genocide of the century?
The only number I know
Is that it was the
First genocide those
Armenians died in.
The first genocide my
Grandparents escaped or
Saw their parents killed in.
One genocide, two genocide
Three genocide, mass murder.
Four genocide, five genocide
Six genocide, gas chamber.
Meryl Streep in Seta's Choice
Never coming to any theater
Near any of you.
Why aren't we Jews?
They have no mere genocide.
They went out and copyright,
Patented, Wall Street to
Hollywood marketing their
Very own capitalized proper
Gory noun monicker, the mini-
Seriesed, Mengeled Holocaust.
We cannot forget
It cannot happen again
We will not allow it!!
At least, we're not Biafrans
(are there any left?)
Or Eithiopians dying of
Self inflicted ecologic wounds.
Bangladesh had a concert,
Van a heroes dinner each year
But alas, poor Keserig,
Who weeps for thee?
We got sub-paragraph three
In US Senate UN joint resolved
paperwork mired disinformation.
We got April 24 and madagh.
We got rallies and marches
And terrorists. We got
Speeches and oral histories.
We're owed something, we the
First Christian first genocided
Job of a Nation.
We couldn't have been more meek
but still we uninherited our earth.
We're owed something we may
Never be blessed with,
Megha Asdoudzo.
—————— • ——————
because or the rest is ambivalence
nine tenths of this law
is lack of possession or
progression towards anything
more then we have become
and we have become all
that you ever wanted and
not what i meant at all
though we are more
comfortable after all
it is a comfortable
true love affair
that lingers so sweetly
haunting so deeply
a gentle swim upstream
to spawn in a sun warmed
pond like dream of you
it is walking in your city
discussing our life apart
reflecting you into each
store window golden gate sight
walking hand in hand
talking laughing eating drinking
all things real lovers do
it is the sun washed
wind blown dew gone
morning meals we share
in my white walled
greek isle solitude
sipping tea and sharing
thoughts the way lovers
growing old together do
june 1987
—————— • ——————
Jimi
'scuse me while i kiss the sky
if i don't see you in this world
i'll catch you in the next...
and don't be late
Big power blues
Screech maple neck sad,
Writh and die in the
Stereo vertex in my head.
You grabbed electricity
And rode that mother watt,
Wrestling life from physics,
Sqeezing dreams from electrons.
Ride that raw power end,
Hold on for dear life and
Contain, just barely contain
The force that kills, 'till
You break its rugged back
And sail on under
The Rainbow Bridge.
Sail on...
August 1987
—————— • ——————
Skimming the Surface of Reality
Cruising the Hollywood
Boulevard of your id
Shopping for fellacious
reflief, bartering with
The wages of academic sin.
Roaring over the icey slopes
Of her hard belly body down
On bobsled luge rattle runs
Skidding towards disaster.
Hopping from ecstacy
To visual reverie
Gleaming glib gloats
In alliterative breezes
That loft panoramic kites
Of fish bird convolutes
While Escher emcees.
Imaginative Power
We were monks, high priests,
Visionaries, demi-gods
White robed in service
To the all powerful Khaldis.
You would sing of sorrowful lakes
In twilight wailing for our sad race
Forseeing horrors yet to be.
I laughed,
But you
Had travelled stars and
Sighed my mockery to dust
Died in a coughing fit
And disappeared to be
The sword of Annaheed
Forever unsheathed.
We soared, us cranes,
Our ancient land seeking
But an obvious truth
Crying to the princely fish
We moved all mystic innate
Incarnate mountain sages
Wondering if there were a god
How he could fuck us so bad.
Megha Asdoodzoh.
august 1987
—————— • ——————
mozell
you ain't no white wine but
you'se got one crisp taste
and a sweet bouquet that
primes the drooly palate
august 1987
—————— • ——————
The Lady of Hali
Those Byzantine tear drop
Almond black eyes set
Onyx moist in olive skin
That shyly emerged from
The lustcore steam bath of
My mind's libidridden I.
September 1987
—————— • ——————
Reading with...
Joan Gartland
the lilt and sway
mezmerizing tones
all anglic waspy
meld celtic welsh
gaelic brogish
white washed eddies
flood and cool the
magnified intensity
of my ethnic
focal point
Mitzi Alvin
like those that labored
long in desert hot slavery
polishing pyramids
you craft tight poems
gemlike waterproof
that double reeds
a frail wail in sun
soaked agony of
pharoh impositions
september 1987
—————— • ——————
Crusefixion
If I could paint your
face wide roundness
your chiseled nose
would socket eyes in
almost symmetry
lash crowned on skin
slightly downed
steel grey blue eyes
rivet my palms bloody
'cross the distance
between me and your ripe
pout bursting lips
october 1987
—————— • ——————
peignoir
the gloire de dijon unfolds
and flutters peignoir silk
that's damp from recent bath
and slightly parfum scented
as you comb and dream in a
candle lit moment of perfection
and dreaming of what...
a gentle paced country life
of gentry riding afternoons
in a perpetual autumn of
ever falling leaves and gold
light glistening off your hair
...just combed while in peignoir
waiting for your bed noir baby
november 1987
—————— • ——————
Masteller Sketches
I. Sculpture
you are so easy to look at,
the chiseled angularity of
cheek and jaw that shadow
and highlight a dreamy visage
alternating between
pain passion sorrow
tear joyous agony and
an endless eddy mosaic
of perceived adolescent
tautness: marked by an
economy of structure and
detail...
the finishing touches of
eye perfect brows and lashes,
the arrogant bassy pouting of
a down crowned mouth and nose
that melds all into a ruddy
girl boyish symmetry that
infects the unprepared.
II. Apfelwein
It bubbles tart and dry,
in quenching suppleness.
It washes crisp and clear
like a blizzard blush where
I could lose my soul in
that gold effervesce.
III. The PA-AZ Contrast
pure forest youth
young desert maid
spirit that flows and
floats elusively away
spring forest nymph
desert evening sprite
nature focused in your eyes
vibrating through your hands
ozone arking to jam my waves
a sweet drowning in your
amniotic ether net.
december 1987
—————— • ——————
Watercolors
Eine Kleine Iris
Aryan clarity shines in
your moist eyes and
the taste of apple wine
sweet and crisp...
The poetry in your
every move and
weary sighes made me
want to defect and
die withering on your vine.
Mary
No one loved you
for your passion but
took your gifts in
gluttonous fervor and
bent you to our edge
where you were still
too pliable to break.
In another time, God
could have chosen you
for either role
Christina Maria
I'll never forget
the black hair and eyes
that frost you perfect
petite in childlike wonder,
the innocence of
eternal first love...
a self cleansing love
I'll never forget
that I wouldn't know
what to do with you
february 1988
—————— • ——————
late model moonlighting
you are better than her
in young bacall rasp
that charms in whispers
forever leaning toward
unravelling entropy
you could've been her
in lilt of movement
styled via lens
intimate intensity
in soft focus
you could've been her
but for the vodka
that owns you...
march 1988
—————— • ——————
Kenae
I drift across a cultural sea
the breeze of your spirit
filling the sails of my soul
and dream convoluted satori
in the wind chimed peace
of your youthful laugh.
Haien Grandfather
I prayed to you
as i always do
but this time in
a place where it's OK.
April 24, 1988
Why on this day
I listen every year
not to the liturgy
nor the speeches?
I hear your soft
whisper whistle
that takes me right
to your Yeghikeh.
April 1988
Japan
—————— • ——————
you did lilacs already
and did them well
while every year
lines haunt and lift me
in the first lilac
scented breeze
though yet i feel it
every overburdened springfull
of crawl out of my skin
yearning mania that
demands lilacs last forever
which they never do
for it is paradise
come and gone
slam bam thank you
of the spirit
the age old
soul fast food
April 24, 1988
—————— • ——————
Pollution in Hayastan
I always thought, always dreamed,
Always knew that our lands
Would stay pure ever tucked in
Our crossroad corner obscurity.
Lands where only we could make
Things grow, the garden bloom.
Land that was fertilized by blood
Bone ash and labored sweat.
Now the magic is gone as
Lakes die, crippled cranes
Fly only a drunken dance
Unable to reach and remind us
Of anything but that the
earth dies for everyone.
The First Generation
They are almost gone
And with them go the
Memories no art can revive.
Gone the village life,
The dialects, the smells,
The songs that we just
Cannot sing the same way
That vibrated Armenian,
Pulsed Armenian defiant,
Groaned massacre visions
That no New Country could
Ever wipe away but slowly
Melts into the other side
Of the Earth...
Patriots
Old patriots glare from
Two dimensions on walls
In the Armenian halls
While children dance
To a much different beat
Where a mere Armenian
Marriage is viewed a
Fedayeen victory.
While in Hayastan
Blue eyed Silva marches
For a bit of land,
Testing the limits
Of promised freedoms.
Armenians pushing
To the very edge of
This thing: Perestroika.
We gaze on faded heroes
And rearrange them
Making room for you
The mother we soon forget
and praise in English.
The mother we wonder,
If we could follow
Out to that edge.
Karabakh Frustrations
I sit suburban
In my family room
Where there is the drone
Of some corporate
Helicopter shuttling...
But all I hear
Are the sounds of
Hinds* buzzing Erevan
To keep people
Off the streets,
Because they dared
To ask for land.
While Turks
By another name
Take up their
Favorite sport
Again killing
Armenians, though
I do not readAbout helicopters
Over Sumgait.
—————— • ——————
The Armani Excursion
i watched you
emote and gush,
acting for our race
acting poems
emoting the homology
of poems lamenting
transliteral
fixations not
cute little wordy
games but life
gushing I...
watched you
warm the room
no acting
and
knew that Turks
killed people like me
to possess women like you
a hot you didn't even
know you had
but I just watched you
watched you move
walk right through
and
out of my mind
I couldn't describe
what had
drained me so
but in thanking you
i knew
your hands!
your big warm
Armenian lovely
woman hands
no Yeats delicate pampered hands
no cummings little rain hands
but hands to hold
and warm the souls
of men that couldn't
defend their race
november 1988
—————— • ——————
The Earthquake
Armenian grief is a bottomless sea
A vast dark sea
- Hovaness Toumanian
I. History
What must we next endure,
The wrath of Turks or
The indifferent cruelty of nature?
Crawling out of killing fields
Or from the rubble of our own homes,
We must crawl and begin again.
We must rebuild, prosper
And await the next wave
Of that cold dark sea...
II. The World
Rubble on the news
Non-reinforced structures
In the stone piled agony of
Televised grief
Phone numbers, hot lines
Flashed to a world, a country
That wants to help
Money, medicine, food
Doctors and dogs
Blankets and clothes,
We are overwhelmed.
We are not alone.
There are no borders,
No politics of disaster,
They disappear but one...
III. turks
In Sumgait and Baku,
Frenzied crowds shout
Inshallah...
And kill more Armenians.
These are not people.
They have no god.
They have no souls.
IV. Ourselves
We have a God,
We have a God that tests us.
Forever, we have this God
Testing us until,
In the final breath,
The last Armenian confesses
To whatever sin for which
We are endlessly atoning
And reveals
What hidden agenda
What mysterious way
Is paved with so much
Armenian blood.
December 12, 1988
—————— • ——————
gift
for nvair kadian
when they found you
little bullrush
and took you for
their own
who could have known
that you would grow
and grace us so
singing better and
dancing our songs
in effulgent sway
the rare beauty
of one yellow rose
on this bush of red
december 1988
(but if we saw her sister
that would be cool)
The summer hung like
Misted raspberries
On the humid vine and
We went out tasting
The harvest of her spirit
The Claret of her mystique
The evolution of her being
She who changed us so
Gently in the moonight
Soon we shall bask in the
Memory of this pleasent search.
June 1983/April 1986
—————— • ——————
Airplane Gallorie
like a bird in a zoo
i adore the fashion molt
of the school girl violet
in her shy meld of blush
on a beach georgia tan
that bleached her sleeping
lip crown blond upon
an impish pout
while
mizz m-b-a
all sculpted malloy
with oxblood
cordovan attache
maroon designer
burgandy purse
crimson carry
on the go beams
with travel weary
forbes ability
July 1985
—————— • ——————
Charmonie
I.
You came to haunt me,
Make me pay, for the
Ugly way I played with
Purer hearts then mine.
You came not for revenge,
To gore my deserving soul,
But to kiss me back
To retrack your healing path.
II.
I have missed you,
All along, before
We ever met and
Shall ever miss
You more knowing
That you indeed
Exist in parallax.
Our fate is sealed
In your moral way
That allows not for
A change with time
And only accept as
Destiny that I would
Not have pained you
As did your younger he.
I care no more
For my lovers sad,
But for you, the one
I'll never have.
October 1985
—————— • ——————
jills
i.
you
the simian
dark with hair
and oils of
your rain
forest past
you
pure animal
dishevelled
waif queen
scream black
night panther
passions
ii
you
my first poem
rose poem
personified
genteel so
pure white
that would have
heated to red
you
almost
thought about
wanting to love
me
october 1985
—————— • ——————
Marie
She was the ripest
Thing I'd ever seen
With pierce blue
Steelest eyes that
Sparkled so you
Assumed her blind,
Superior to anything
But passion.
She was the ripest
Thing I'd ever seen
Bikinied emerging
From the pool, a dream
No commercial's ever been.
Her skin so taunt so
Smooth so plump so ripe
So tan and tight that
Water streaked and rolled,
It just beaded on her
Surface tension.
Such perfection could
Never last.
october 1985
—————— • ——————
cause
love child
golden nymph
translucent
milk vein
membrane
tenacious
love clinging
leeching kisses
and couplings
that drained
and sapped
incessantly
writhing
mucus beings
pink dark
warm ooze
slurping
ameiosis
november 1985
—————— • ——————
kriss
generic boygirl
grown teenage fresh
and clean scrubbed
youth woman
soft clear eyed
skin brown hair
of sand and
fulvous beige
lithe pleasent
blossom sylph
beatific sprite
of humanesse
too pure to
feel the pangs
of life and
love i know
you never felt
the pain of
your neck
snapping in the
metal crashing
on your quick
trip to godhead
november 1985
—————— • ——————
mydonna
six or seven lives
you've led and left:
a continuum of growth
and development to
this middle age
confection that
eyes crave.
though you would
be my writer's lover
in plaid winter maine
isolation of keyboard
clicks, fire cracks
and bear rug mouthy
smacks of fantasy,
that psychic fuel
that pulls me
through the day
november 1985
—————— • ——————
Pink Linen Winter Dream
With fair summer but a memory
And spirits bridled nice and tight,
Adrift this cold raging sea
Consumed in a windsnow blight.
Amid the slush and grime
Of this intemperate time
And the fiercest cold
That weakens the bold,
Amid the sleeting snow
And that incessant flow
Of whipping wind sones
That brittles the bones,
Enters our apparition of
Spring and love and flowers
The fertile warmth of life
renewed, the hope of all
mankind. The librarian
Of our flaxen souls tends
Us with purific care and
Frees us from solstistic bonds.
December 1985
—————— • ——————
Mack
I can only guess,
Your life today,
A late model shuttle
Of grocery carted
Unkempt children
Milk sweatshirted
Mustaches of your
Deer hunting beau.
We sensed your fate
In each tart kiss
Berried tongued
Tuesday afternoon.
January 1986
—————— • ——————
phright
You scared them all,
You brash and hard
Spirited Dietrich,
You carnivore.
They thought
You ate us all
And Hanselled us
In your Gretal
Witchy snare
They thought...
How wrong they thought,
Not knowing your
Adoptive fear and love
Of illegitimate passion
That made you grasp
And hold and made us
Hate to push you into
Your candy house oven
And run.
January 1986
—————— • ——————
Hoonvar Bergman
I went to bleed
Those Ullman tears,
To eat those
Wild Strawberries
To be depressed
Did you come
For encounter,
To meet a man
Of literary upperclass
`Twas only one night
And PG, your roomate,
Who knew where. Your
Freshman room of pink
And frilly scents of
Sandalwood in the air
Why I came and
How we got there,
Rolling clinging,
Mouth mated as if
I'd always missed you
And finally asleep
Embraced as a steamy
One that I've never
Seen since that night
I went to bleed
January 1986
—————— • ——————
lynny dearest
anglicatory grace
motherless genteel
basic decor of fifties
idyllic televised peace
scrubbed pale clean
frail plain presentation
with a much broader
scope and loving breadth
a quiet nymph‑calm sapphotic
with a passion depth
i never knew was there
february 1986
—————— • ——————
carole summer gails
in my early
first waking hours
swaddled newborn
circumsized world
I
cried in infant
harmony to you
whose lips i didn't
Feel
until in that
freshman heat of
exploring the
transformations
since last laying
side by side in
The
hospital bright
lanolized sterile
cribbed death dumb
unawareness of why
we never kissed
in passion drenched
darkness but in
daylight joy of
sun warmed
Earth
and july sky that
would never have
been so special had
we never had to
Move
away
February 1986
—————— • ——————
sketches of the byrd expedition
the olive skin burma‑shaved timbre
of our powerfull statured shy warrior
queen encasing a sweet soul trampled
tender mother burning at the stake
named for the moon luminescent goddess
of clear nights and summer cool wind
blown phantaseas defined in that climb
of your pure amber soft eyed stares
march 1986
—————— • ——————
one track mind haiku
tracks nailed
to loin bloody
thighs towards
the birth end
of the tunnel
march 1986
—————— • ——————
Anti‑Adonis and the Librarian
you'll never get that
gentle rape from me
whose tenement heart
burns hot engulfed
in your arsonist gait
oh
that i were a warrior
thundering the steppes
on noble steed sweeping
you up over my shoulder
screaming and kicking in
the misty breath morning
back to camp to ravage
so savage i hope i
weren't hurt
too bad
april 1986
—————— • ——————
april 24, 1986
play me that hard
riding music
partner
hard ridin' jams
play me that hard
driving music
baby
help me understand
i don't know
where i come from or
where i want to be
i never felt so lonely
honey
i just wanna be me
i got them genocide blues
momma
got them low down massacre blues
rapin' killin' maimin'
what's a poor boy to do
momma was so pretty
loved me like rock
the man he came in
and kilt her with his cock
my brother him so cool
the best in his school
they took his whole class
and made `em all suck gas
gives me them genocidal blues
baby
every april 24
i got those sick killin' blues
oh it just
tears my hear out
they did it for ol'allah
they did it for the bread
they took all the chillen'
and smashed in their head
they grab my little baby
raise her for they own
she don't know she armainian
she probly a turkish whore
i feel all genocidal blue
sweethang
down right holocaust blue
without you lawdy homelan'
i mays well up and die
—————— • ——————
virginia patti
alarific petals expand
contraltic tranquilities
carrying the echoed must
of ancient tufa stones in
the vocal wafting towards
the wheat field carpet
weaving vine ripened sheep
herding mountained past
the sinewous counterpoint
of kanun tendril pecks
reveals a love of life, you
and country that sparks
the reveral trance to flame
in your wide eyed attempt
to kiss the sky
april 1986
—————— • ——————
Ms. B
For all your inner
Beauty and fragile
Loving soul,
All I picture is
Your shuddertastic
Ovulicious tidal
Pleasure wincing at
Each different touch.
April 1986
—————— • ——————
devon
with a name like all england
and an american freckled face
fresh from the ohio farm in
my televised dreams of sunday
presbydinners and grandmaw's
rhubarb pie
and i could no
longer nap as my thoughts
would drift to my kinder-
garden love...you
may 1986
—————— • ——————
we all know one like her
sweet soul that pools
in greyfast eyes that
lures men serpentine
slithering for your
musky bitter taste
your structure primed
for childbirth so much
that you probably lick
them clean in lionest
but it's still the steel
you forge in loin furnace
red hot molten bloody
crest of aching burning
incredible itching fusions
that firebrands genetic
clots in bloodless brains
june 1986
—————— • ——————
the last hour
i.
you will be gone
and i remain alone
with foundation
eroded by your chocolate
mist and effervesce
continuing on
like the sole
survivor of your
nuclear war
aimlessly i wander
this barren planet
living in a bad
movie searching
for a plot
ii.
effluent in the
tongues of gods
a living carved
sculpture afrique
moved into my life
(they dared to call
her temporary)
evicting other visions
to the streets
as i give in
succumb to
matriarchal
servitude like
an old veldted
rain king
dancing for
a mate
june 1986
—————— • ——————
pure heart
doctors say
your heart ripples
irregular banter
threatening beats
though we
know it's a
clear running
mountain brook
that nurtures
all it love
washes over
spawning life
in its warm
bubbly flow
july 1986
—————— • ——————
there she goes just...
it was her
you were her
you were you
what why and
who were you
i was blitzed
and stumbled
dizzied and
twisted in the
gale of you
the cyclone
hurricane of you
the oz bound
house lifting
kansas apparition
twister of
my thoughts
and love lost
dreams served
back to me on
a dish of wind
of you
july 1986
—————— • ——————
the tortured artist ploy
my librarian to me
as beatrice to dante
as helga to wyeth
as kukla to ollie to fran
as bullwinkle to rocky
and natasha to boris
as markee to desade
and boys to ol'rock
and isolde to tristram
as i just met a girl named...
as perversion to errol
as you to the flynn of
your sweetest dreams
as me in my minds i
august 1986
—————— • ——————
generic white trash
in your ol'black faded
rock n'roll tee shirt
anemic pallored beige
colored hair unmade-up
po'white sleaze queen
emptian' my office trash
while sad lips advertise
world class mentholated
fellations for free
august 1986
—————— • ——————
A Dozen Long Stemmed Metaphors
from almost the moment
we met I've felt...
like one of us has cancer
like I have no right to sing
this song
like it's too early or too late
like you ought to be happier
but I'm not the guy
like I could be happier and
you're probably the girl
like why you are working for
a corporation instead of
modeling the finest fashions
to complement your beauty
which to me is
like nothing I have ever known
like something that addicted
every man you've ever met
like a clear skied golden sunned
autumn warm breeze knocking
the leaves off trees in giddy
swirls of harvest ripe fustration
like walking across our favorite
campus and dining in that
ivy league country inn
like it all took place in a movie
that I hoped would never end
like having the happiest of birthdays
which is what I wish for you
september 1986
—————— • ——————
forms
you were my
first awkward
quixotic charge
stopped by your
windmill majesty
perfect shadowed
cream sihlouettes
drenched in pure
august moonlight
what school girl
clothes did hide
you a real woman
and i a mere boy
october 1986
—————— • ——————
Visitation
to the poet's home
across harvard yard
anticipation meeting
with the daughter of
my grandfathers friend,
a pilgrimage to see
to learn, absorb the
aura of her way
to the poet's home
a tea august afternoon
of melon and madeleines
(bought just for me)
discussing words
and ironies of
working in our
new native tongue
to the poet's home
that ordered clutter
of books and words
in stacks and shelves
a stark and rich
canonical equilibrium
of perfect entropy
balance and awe
to the poet's home...
october 1986
—————— • ——————
rho-momma
percussive woman dance
and love percussive
woman dance that log
beat deep log beat and
dance my baby dance
sweet my lover dance
sweet percussive beat
that pleasure squirm
afro cascade beat
prim
so improper
became a proper
paradox of natural
rhythm logging
micro controlled
convulsions of
a style never
known to me
love that
woman percussive
fear that hot
woman dance so cool
to rub the belly
succumb to slightly
fecund matriarchal
synchopated servitude
all animal-woman
all woman-animal
define and redefine
make me feel
all scholar stupid
make me feel inadequate
make me feel a child
make me not feel at all
make me...
percussive woman dance
and love percussive
woman dance that log
beat deep log beat and
dance my baby dance
sweet my lover dance
sweet percussive beat
that pleasure squirm
and hold my triumvirate
in the nefertiti palm
of you hand
october 1986
—————— • ——————
she kilt me dead
all scott aloof
sculpted head on
neck long pedestal
that beacons ET
beauty eyes in
cock defiant glare
november 1986
—————— • ——————
she kilt me again
you dachau
punky doo
unshaven leg
attraction
that magnets
blood to posied
appendage
the lowest
spiral step
of soul
lost chaos
january 1987
—————— • ——————
Pepi
All swollen head
Rape queen strangled,
What promise of life
They lied to you.
Young willow fibre
Raped in two
Raped to the jagged
Edge where carnevors
Gorged on the marrow
Of your sweet terror.
M. Eby
What awful death
(hacked bloody)
Stalked you to
That horrored end
Where there is no hell
Vengeful enough
To house it.
Who could not learn
Any of the art you shared,
Moved to such hate?
Why was the drink
You offered not enough?
january 1987
—————— • ——————
a lament straight-up
with a chauvinist twist
a good lie
a half truth
no one knows
but you and i
a sad day
for a new truce
no one knows
but still we pay
a silent scream
for a good sleep
no one knows
our vivid dream
another time
a different place
no one knows
you could've been mine
january 1987
—————— • ——————
wrong word
if you be not languid
for you are not weak,
but i of shallow
thesauric mind who
did not delve to seek
that perfect pearly
adjective to grace
your abalone neck
if you be not languid
but move more in the
grace of soft laugh
light and auburn curled
bounce of a langur sirene
but seriously,
if you be languid,
you are languid as a lute
that rings so sweet
it moves a mind as
languid as mine to
alliterate homonymic life
february 1987
—————— • ——————
M. E. D.
so irish proper
non-stop hurling
of our spirits
in your breath
damp night when
i blew across
the warm moor
of your mind
the body
of your soul
as leviathan's
army lies fallow
in your ararat
valley plain
february 1987
—————— • ——————
April 24, 1987
Does it matter,
One point five two
Point six, the counting
The million thousand dead
Bleached Der-Zor skulls,
The thousand million four
Point three raped cleaved
Pelvic remains buried
In Tigris silt?
Does it matter,
That we the first
Twentieth century genocide?
Does that dim the brutality
Of the fifth or sixth
Genocide of the century
Genocide of the century?
The only number I know
Is that it was the
First genocide those
Armenians died in.
The first genocide my
Grandparents escaped or
Saw their parents killed in.
One genocide, two genocide
Three genocide, mass murder.
Four genocide, five genocide
Six genocide, gas chamber.
Meryl Streep in Seta's Choice
Never coming to any theater
Near any of you.
Why aren't we Jews?
They have no mere genocide.
They went out and copyright,
Patented, Wall Street to
Hollywood marketing their
Very own capitalized proper
Gory noun monicker, the mini-
Seriesed, Mengeled Holocaust.
We cannot forget
It cannot happen again
We will not allow it!!
At least, we're not Biafrans
(are there any left?)
Or Eithiopians dying of
Self inflicted ecologic wounds.
Bangladesh had a concert,
Van a heroes dinner each year
But alas, poor Keserig,
Who weeps for thee?
We got sub-paragraph three
In US Senate UN joint resolved
paperwork mired disinformation.
We got April 24 and madagh.
We got rallies and marches
And terrorists. We got
Speeches and oral histories.
We're owed something, we the
First Christian first genocided
Job of a Nation.
We couldn't have been more meek
but still we uninherited our earth.
We're owed something we may
Never be blessed with,
Megha Asdoudzo.
—————— • ——————
because or the rest is ambivalence
nine tenths of this law
is lack of possession or
progression towards anything
more then we have become
and we have become all
that you ever wanted and
not what i meant at all
though we are more
comfortable after all
it is a comfortable
true love affair
that lingers so sweetly
haunting so deeply
a gentle swim upstream
to spawn in a sun warmed
pond like dream of you
it is walking in your city
discussing our life apart
reflecting you into each
store window golden gate sight
walking hand in hand
talking laughing eating drinking
all things real lovers do
it is the sun washed
wind blown dew gone
morning meals we share
in my white walled
greek isle solitude
sipping tea and sharing
thoughts the way lovers
growing old together do
june 1987
—————— • ——————
Jimi
'scuse me while i kiss the sky
if i don't see you in this world
i'll catch you in the next...
and don't be late
Big power blues
Screech maple neck sad,
Writh and die in the
Stereo vertex in my head.
You grabbed electricity
And rode that mother watt,
Wrestling life from physics,
Sqeezing dreams from electrons.
Ride that raw power end,
Hold on for dear life and
Contain, just barely contain
The force that kills, 'till
You break its rugged back
And sail on under
The Rainbow Bridge.
Sail on...
August 1987
—————— • ——————
Skimming the Surface of Reality
Cruising the Hollywood
Boulevard of your id
Shopping for fellacious
reflief, bartering with
The wages of academic sin.
Roaring over the icey slopes
Of her hard belly body down
On bobsled luge rattle runs
Skidding towards disaster.
Hopping from ecstacy
To visual reverie
Gleaming glib gloats
In alliterative breezes
That loft panoramic kites
Of fish bird convolutes
While Escher emcees.
Imaginative Power
We were monks, high priests,
Visionaries, demi-gods
White robed in service
To the all powerful Khaldis.
You would sing of sorrowful lakes
In twilight wailing for our sad race
Forseeing horrors yet to be.
I laughed,
But you
Had travelled stars and
Sighed my mockery to dust
Died in a coughing fit
And disappeared to be
The sword of Annaheed
Forever unsheathed.
We soared, us cranes,
Our ancient land seeking
But an obvious truth
Crying to the princely fish
We moved all mystic innate
Incarnate mountain sages
Wondering if there were a god
How he could fuck us so bad.
Megha Asdoodzoh.
august 1987
—————— • ——————
mozell
you ain't no white wine but
you'se got one crisp taste
and a sweet bouquet that
primes the drooly palate
august 1987
—————— • ——————
The Lady of Hali
Those Byzantine tear drop
Almond black eyes set
Onyx moist in olive skin
That shyly emerged from
The lustcore steam bath of
My mind's libidridden I.
September 1987
—————— • ——————
Reading with...
Joan Gartland
the lilt and sway
mezmerizing tones
all anglic waspy
meld celtic welsh
gaelic brogish
white washed eddies
flood and cool the
magnified intensity
of my ethnic
focal point
Mitzi Alvin
like those that labored
long in desert hot slavery
polishing pyramids
you craft tight poems
gemlike waterproof
that double reeds
a frail wail in sun
soaked agony of
pharoh impositions
september 1987
—————— • ——————
Crusefixion
If I could paint your
face wide roundness
your chiseled nose
would socket eyes in
almost symmetry
lash crowned on skin
slightly downed
steel grey blue eyes
rivet my palms bloody
'cross the distance
between me and your ripe
pout bursting lips
october 1987
—————— • ——————
peignoir
the gloire de dijon unfolds
and flutters peignoir silk
that's damp from recent bath
and slightly parfum scented
as you comb and dream in a
candle lit moment of perfection
and dreaming of what...
a gentle paced country life
of gentry riding afternoons
in a perpetual autumn of
ever falling leaves and gold
light glistening off your hair
...just combed while in peignoir
waiting for your bed noir baby
november 1987
—————— • ——————
Masteller Sketches
I. Sculpture
you are so easy to look at,
the chiseled angularity of
cheek and jaw that shadow
and highlight a dreamy visage
alternating between
pain passion sorrow
tear joyous agony and
an endless eddy mosaic
of perceived adolescent
tautness: marked by an
economy of structure and
detail...
the finishing touches of
eye perfect brows and lashes,
the arrogant bassy pouting of
a down crowned mouth and nose
that melds all into a ruddy
girl boyish symmetry that
infects the unprepared.
II. Apfelwein
It bubbles tart and dry,
in quenching suppleness.
It washes crisp and clear
like a blizzard blush where
I could lose my soul in
that gold effervesce.
III. The PA-AZ Contrast
pure forest youth
young desert maid
spirit that flows and
floats elusively away
spring forest nymph
desert evening sprite
nature focused in your eyes
vibrating through your hands
ozone arking to jam my waves
a sweet drowning in your
amniotic ether net.
december 1987
—————— • ——————
Watercolors
Eine Kleine Iris
Aryan clarity shines in
your moist eyes and
the taste of apple wine
sweet and crisp...
The poetry in your
every move and
weary sighes made me
want to defect and
die withering on your vine.
Mary
No one loved you
for your passion but
took your gifts in
gluttonous fervor and
bent you to our edge
where you were still
too pliable to break.
In another time, God
could have chosen you
for either role
Christina Maria
I'll never forget
the black hair and eyes
that frost you perfect
petite in childlike wonder,
the innocence of
eternal first love...
a self cleansing love
I'll never forget
that I wouldn't know
what to do with you
february 1988
—————— • ——————
late model moonlighting
you are better than her
in young bacall rasp
that charms in whispers
forever leaning toward
unravelling entropy
you could've been her
in lilt of movement
styled via lens
intimate intensity
in soft focus
you could've been her
but for the vodka
that owns you...
march 1988
—————— • ——————
Kenae
I drift across a cultural sea
the breeze of your spirit
filling the sails of my soul
and dream convoluted satori
in the wind chimed peace
of your youthful laugh.
Haien Grandfather
I prayed to you
as i always do
but this time in
a place where it's OK.
April 24, 1988
Why on this day
I listen every year
not to the liturgy
nor the speeches?
I hear your soft
whisper whistle
that takes me right
to your Yeghikeh.
April 1988
Japan
—————— • ——————
you did lilacs already
and did them well
while every year
lines haunt and lift me
in the first lilac
scented breeze
though yet i feel it
every overburdened springfull
of crawl out of my skin
yearning mania that
demands lilacs last forever
which they never do
for it is paradise
come and gone
slam bam thank you
of the spirit
the age old
soul fast food
April 24, 1988
—————— • ——————
Pollution in Hayastan
I always thought, always dreamed,
Always knew that our lands
Would stay pure ever tucked in
Our crossroad corner obscurity.
Lands where only we could make
Things grow, the garden bloom.
Land that was fertilized by blood
Bone ash and labored sweat.
Now the magic is gone as
Lakes die, crippled cranes
Fly only a drunken dance
Unable to reach and remind us
Of anything but that the
earth dies for everyone.
The First Generation
They are almost gone
And with them go the
Memories no art can revive.
Gone the village life,
The dialects, the smells,
The songs that we just
Cannot sing the same way
That vibrated Armenian,
Pulsed Armenian defiant,
Groaned massacre visions
That no New Country could
Ever wipe away but slowly
Melts into the other side
Of the Earth...
Patriots
Old patriots glare from
Two dimensions on walls
In the Armenian halls
While children dance
To a much different beat
Where a mere Armenian
Marriage is viewed a
Fedayeen victory.
While in Hayastan
Blue eyed Silva marches
For a bit of land,
Testing the limits
Of promised freedoms.
Armenians pushing
To the very edge of
This thing: Perestroika.
We gaze on faded heroes
And rearrange them
Making room for you
The mother we soon forget
and praise in English.
The mother we wonder,
If we could follow
Out to that edge.
Karabakh Frustrations
I sit suburban
In my family room
Where there is the drone
Of some corporate
Helicopter shuttling...
But all I hear
Are the sounds of
Hinds* buzzing Erevan
To keep people
Off the streets,
Because they dared
To ask for land.
While Turks
By another name
Take up their
Favorite sport
Again killing
Armenians, though
I do not readAbout helicopters
Over Sumgait.
—————— • ——————
The Armani Excursion
i watched you
emote and gush,
acting for our race
acting poems
emoting the homology
of poems lamenting
transliteral
fixations not
cute little wordy
games but life
gushing I...
watched you
warm the room
no acting
and
knew that Turks
killed people like me
to possess women like you
a hot you didn't even
know you had
but I just watched you
watched you move
walk right through
and
out of my mind
I couldn't describe
what had
drained me so
but in thanking you
i knew
your hands!
your big warm
Armenian lovely
woman hands
no Yeats delicate pampered hands
no cummings little rain hands
but hands to hold
and warm the souls
of men that couldn't
defend their race
november 1988
—————— • ——————
The Earthquake
Armenian grief is a bottomless sea
A vast dark sea
- Hovaness Toumanian
I. History
What must we next endure,
The wrath of Turks or
The indifferent cruelty of nature?
Crawling out of killing fields
Or from the rubble of our own homes,
We must crawl and begin again.
We must rebuild, prosper
And await the next wave
Of that cold dark sea...
II. The World
Rubble on the news
Non-reinforced structures
In the stone piled agony of
Televised grief
Phone numbers, hot lines
Flashed to a world, a country
That wants to help
Money, medicine, food
Doctors and dogs
Blankets and clothes,
We are overwhelmed.
We are not alone.
There are no borders,
No politics of disaster,
They disappear but one...
III. turks
In Sumgait and Baku,
Frenzied crowds shout
Inshallah...
And kill more Armenians.
These are not people.
They have no god.
They have no souls.
IV. Ourselves
We have a God,
We have a God that tests us.
Forever, we have this God
Testing us until,
In the final breath,
The last Armenian confesses
To whatever sin for which
We are endlessly atoning
And reveals
What hidden agenda
What mysterious way
Is paved with so much
Armenian blood.
December 12, 1988
—————— • ——————
gift
for nvair kadian
when they found you
little bullrush
and took you for
their own
who could have known
that you would grow
and grace us so
singing better and
dancing our songs
in effulgent sway
the rare beauty
of one yellow rose
on this bush of red
december 1988
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Book I
Eroica
And in that anticipated awe
Pitch black prone, alone.
Hollowed paper cones pulsed
Ecstatically.
And, lo, I touched your face,
In silent ecstasy.
No blaring tube to dim my thoughts,
Nor a candle's golden glow'
Just symphonic cones struggling
And beating time from its normal drone.
And lo, I touched your gentle face,
In silent agony.
Now, slow the sounds peel off the walls
To bury my soul in love...
And I await the resurrection.
December 1974
Boston
—————— • ——————
I Really Do Like Films
Slow motion.
A facet of the Modern Way:
Two-dimensional ecstasy.
Castration,
Precise and accurate.
Almost painless,
Almost real.
February 1975
East Lansing
—————— • ——————
To SYA
A dream
I thought I lost
Came back
And slept with me last night.
A vision
From my younger daze
Of twice a week shaves
When romantic bubbles
First flowed in my veins.
A vision,
Soft,
Of almond eyes
In female symmetry.
May 1975
East Lansing
—————— • ——————
Shabin-Karahisar
Armor,
Torn from off our very backs
And from our heaving chests.
Brothers, we have lost again
A dream,
Our lives,
The Quest
Bloody,
Pale and naked boys
Lift up your weary heads
And gather up our women
From our enemy's beds.
For we are leaving men,
Our horrid dungeon homes.
Each a different way..
All of us alone.
Oh, that April was the cruellest month,
We shall never forget.
No, we'll never forget
And never forgive
Those, the dead and dying
Those, their children
Those who trespassed against us.
April 1975
East Lansing
—————— • ——————
Aghtamar
I.
April,
Morning,
A radiant sun begins its task
Of cracking the frost
That veils the greening grass.
Birds, in counterpoint,
Sing and chirp
Welcoming the warming sun
And Spring's fertility.
Cranes and geese
Arise and fly
Northward
In graceful symmetry.
No human stirring,
No breakfast smoke or smell.
Nature, alone, is acting out
The rite of Spring: mourning.
With Van water lapping: the continuo.
Elonged shadows dance
To the wind and rising sun,
Except the crumbling mass.
Stoic, in its decaying majesty:
Aghtamar.
II.
A single ray,
Through a single slitted window
Dimly lights the church,
As did vesper candles
In an ancient time.
Her gold, long stolen,
And tapestries, mere ashes now.
Etchings, paintings, holy words
Evaporate from the stone
Which echoed
The prayers and chants of monks.
The prayers and chants,
The winds have swallowed.
The caped and chaliced silhouettes
Have melted into
The darkened corners of
Ambivalence.
III.
Aghtamar,
Another silent Easter, alone,
No one has rolled the stone
That guards your tomb.
No resurrection yet,
For you.
April 1977
—————— • ——————
Oblitergato
I.
Return from a practical world
Of urban monetary real thoughts
Of junk and jones
Of mind-raped mush
...and sirens sweetly singing.
Return to art
"Wherefore thou art"
"Beauty amid the garbage"
An ode to schizophrenia,
In praise of kiddie porn.
Broken downtown treats
Pornographic treats
Apre l'midi de nukes
Hillside L'estranler
II.
Kollide-O-Scope
Your brain waves
Alpha
Beta
Gamma
zzzik!
Short heighted, far sighted Prufrock
Crabs play in her downy hair
Her pimp descends you down the stair.
Oil coated mermaids moaning each to each
Dying together on the beach,
Why must they moan to me?
Their Low Level radioactive drone.
ProAbortionEcologicalERA Lobby heads
Feasting on the breast of earth...
Pass the salt, too.
III.
Call the doctor,
20/20 Vision
Drinkum down...
Gettum high...
December 1979
—————— • ——————
White Noise
Stellar laser consciousness
Cellar lazy communists
Foolish words sparking
The poles
Jacobian poles
Random pulses
Televised sixty cycle throbs of
I Love LucyRhoda...
Helen of Toys
Solenoidic circuit breakers
Snap and click
Overloaded relays
We are not grounded
Electrocuted orphans
Agent orange
Green rain
LSD
Angels, dust my mind
Lobotomize my frontal lobe
My mother lode
Van Gogh my ear
Mind control is on its way
Shed a radioactive tear
For what poetry used to be
Or not to be
February 1980
—————— • ——————
Blossoming into Her Summer
Blossoming into her summer
Of red lips, wet, with yellow
Flowers in her hair
That glistens brown-red
Balanced by eyes soft brown.
Voice that trails off into
Moist air, the aura of her
Fertility singing in the night air.
Your sweetest wooing song
Cooing in the moon night
Whispers of love lingering
On the lake breeze for two thousand
Light years. The song of motion,
Wide eyed grace in meadow love.
June 1980
—————— • ——————
The Other Light
I.
In the other light,
Dim beam from antiquity,
Life as continuum
Pulse-throbbing ancient blood whispers
Drowned out by Diesel air noise bustle
Of cement paved steel-scapes.
The thin vein weaving about
Monumental episodes of historical
Insignificance.
Pastoral shadows of dying warriors
Moaning for their raped ladies
Synthesizing a new race, the result
Of monolithic Iron-Age wounds.
Tetanal wounds soothed by
Mammary-uterine visions of
Ultimate liberty,
Goddess of the dead and dying.
II.
The ancient whispers
Float the tepid air.
Old sleeping thought-larvae
Breaking time silken cocoons.
Freed by silence, nurtured
By prayer. Awakened
Milky-moist ruined dreams of
natural people.
Lost harmony that pains
The soul sensitive,
Wingless fragments of ethereal poetry
Counterpoint the broken remnants.
Archaeologists of the soul and spirit
Digging open their hearts and searching
For cosmic human threads.
III.
Murderers riding
The fever of plunder.
Hoofs pounding, pounding
Echoing and thundering
Pounding in pursuit of glory.
The burning glory of singed flesh
And mutilated children.
The smell of victory: exhilaration.
The genocidal stench, the same.
Kiss the warrior's boot, harlot,
Learn the master's touch!
Squirm on the jagged edge
Of life and blissful death.
August 1980
—————— • ——————
Anonymous Benediction
Middle of an April eve
A god abandoned people slept
Rifles cocked and murder drunk
Knocks upon a poet's door.
Genocide begins
As talons grasp the throat.
Varoujan, go forth and meet
Oppression"s bloody end!
Out into the midnight black
Rendezvous with atrophy...
January 1981
—————— • ——————
For Daniel Varoujan
I. Childhood
New suit
And choking tie,
Armed with fourth
Grade Armenian,
Native American
Child
Sing, the
Treasures of Varoujan
practiced for weeks.
Sing, the
Song of wheat.
Each golden
Tone inflection
Gutteral note
Memorized.
Each twist
And turn of still
Unknown craggy
Mountain verse
Like a goat jumping
Effortlessly, amazed at
His own fluid flowing
In his own ancient tongue.
The song, rhythm and
meaning beyond his grasp.
Knowing the general plot.
Pearly bitter
Sounds beaming forth
Radiating his own
Dreams.
II. Emulation
Varoujan, the poet for whom he sings,
Butchered bard of genocide
Make the ancient language ring.
Knowing not the poet's meaning
Yet, skip and prance the vocal dance,
Praise the language, people strong,
Raise the spirit of the throng.
Your people scattered to the wind
As the seeds of your sower true.
Plant and sow, bold bard!
Bring forth the eternal spring
Of the Armenian freedom dream.
Plant and sow, dear spirit!
Intoxicate the living blood and
Scream across the river the horrors
Of the all too present past.
Rattle the bones in harmony
For your martyred brethren.
Haunt the ancient land
Now empty of your race.
Let the butchers hear
The muffled screams again.
January 1981
—————— • ——————
Multi-Styled Contest Entry
I. Bop
Hey,
Like I
Am into
Existential mind expanding
Kiss the sky brittle
Breaking needles thrusting
Into black veins the pains
Of centuries of white hope
Bouncing off the cosmic thoughts
Of whores and off beat Kerouacan
Meaningless spittle of psycho-dramatic
Word collages
II. Haiku
Like a hobo's foot
In a found shoe,
My mouth embraces
The breast of your contest.
III. Satire
Oh, Danny boy,
Your contest is a joy.
And, if I win,
I'll spend it all on sin.
Oh, Danny boy,
You were just a Turkish toy.
They dragged you from your bed
And pumped eight bullets in your head.
January 1981
—————— • ——————
catharsis
maple an light
off white off beige
cotton-linen house
glass and light woods
bleached wood beach house
rattan
macramed hangings
plants, green lush over
pouring
life giving earthen
smells and
a potter's wheel
pillows
weaved and sewed inviting comfort...
natural, soft
warm tones
off beige natural
whisps of brown and
a hint of gold
dried flowers earthen
wares...a fireplace
with birch and books
on zen and love
on macrame and love
her place of wood, flowers
and eight exotic teas
spices and dreams...
weaving and crafting
towards freedom
cuisinart and sony
joni mitchell lady
twin, frannie
and zooie, cats
awaiting her chelsea
morning of tea and
oranges
well thought and planned
alumna nine-teen
seventy four
teaching deaf kids
safe, helpful
no icky-poo badevil
corporate polluting prostitution
just pure of heart: good
free of spirit: dreamer
poet of crafts and conviction
whole earth third
world millennium cookbook...
snail darting bird loving
no nukes fertile excess
singles bar desolation mind rape
...her own marijuana plants
you could love her well
but don't and don't know why
is she the myth
are you..
corporate polluting demagogue
oh, you'll love her
in between the campus
and the office
eat the fruit and nurtured leave
the off beige garden
the macramed chains and granola
the wine...you'll leave
pursue the bitch goddess
little sports car revlon
silicon breasted fly trap
you'll be the perfect
corporate cunt..
just when you know you
blew it
your lonely teacher of
the deaf calls and wants...
a job...
selling out...ends
meeting...going
nowhere...meet me
for a drink?
january 1981
—————— • ——————
Hasids in Suburbia
In the mall,
Between the Rock Your Brains
Out Disco Emporium and the
Antedeiluvian Confection Canteena
Amid the Springing brandnew
Ultra fad soon dated
Fur bearing original
Pseudo new york dachau daughters
Spawning in the sacred
Fountain of the mall...
Amid this diasporic dissipation
Strolled from Benny's
Blintze Boutique two time
Warped Hasids unaware
Of mallic chaos
The cosmetic disarray
Their mutated steppe sisters
Consuming fleshsex
Fashion diamond
Crystal gold mongers.
Buying Pol Pot lamps
Quality highgrade scalpshades
NeoNazi victims, shoe
On the other foot kicking
Another ass...indirectly
While braking for animals
Cursing the whale killers
Under pulsating suburban
Shower heads that
Pass no gas...
March 1981
—————— • ——————
white boy
i mean
i am not watchew
think
since yo thinkin'
'bilities is cloudy
from years of believin'
i am caucasian
since them hills is
in that place was my
folks ejected from
i'm just a third
world boy
incognito
pretending american
hating jews and spics
niggers and injuns
bein' cool and callous
the manifestation of
mountain man independence
squished into a
suit mortgage car
loan up for promotion
fightin' crabgrass
dazed by technochange
blues
think about
ivy league defense
contract brooks bros
showman with a
"my two main ladies
just been rape-ravaged
mangle fucked while me
watchin' helpless" psyche
i don't even know 'bout
i mean
i's got to be bad
wit' all this
hostility and white hope
undiagnosed brain cancer
not knowin' i
just could be blacker then you
and an ace of spades
august 1981
—————— • ——————
blackpoem
emulatin'
lee/brooks/hughes
on a big 'spensive
green tube text
editin' word
processing machine
suited in and
tied down in
florescent
eight hour
pulsing
aura
malika
sweetsoft
liquid brown tanned
poeTess
un-d'urbervilled
cocaine tran
scendent
love goddess
mystic in
afrograce
fullness
skimmn'
off corporate
bigtime bigbucks
to play poetique
on the sly
scopin' out
the bossman
would rather me doin'
financial over
analytical fore
cast of things
that shouldn' be
anyhow
vibrations malika
date nippled
choclate skin
watchew u doin'
in my dreams
dashikied out
stately modern
ancient queen lady
couldn' touch nohow
even if u was real
but if u was
i wood tarzan
into yo life
fightin' off
lions and
tigers and bears
oh my!
August 1981
—————— • ——————
new jersey apologies
lap lapping
atlantic south jersey
shorefolk
religious godless vagabonds
of cultural rebirthing
neptune pagans
i polluted your off-shore
mindless life dreams
of wholistic natural
sea escapes
ahab of the western world
drowning on your harpooned backs
from the west i sailed
into your private socialist nest
sons of the working class
daughters of sons of the working class
i took haven in your secluded bay
and blasted the port in payment
now adrift and paying still
chasing more plunder
mutiny seethes in the
starving crew
jersey revenge
in constant pursuit
january 1981
—————— • ——————
Oud Taksims
Richard Hagopian
Sweet
The sounds peel off the hull
And voice
Vibrating his skull.
Eyes closed
...with back leaned head
Almost ecstasy
Of blood crimson red...
John Berberian
Sharp
Clean accurate
Deep, mysterious pondering jabs:
A bitter attack.
Strength
In silent deep-set eyes
Pathos, dripping
From violent ancient
Strings of passion.
Hrant
Rough gravel-voiced
Prince and master,
Leader to us all
Now gone...
Playing always playing
Lion of the oud
Sweet King of Taxim
Lord of Pathos
Oedipus, the oudji.
Bright, crystalline
Gem like notes
Of brilliance
Striking through the static of old discs
To pierce the modern air
Reviving the pathos
Of lands lost.
Sing sweet prince
Of the stench of the past
Let the riffs blossom and burst
That spirit everlast.
Swooping dancing eagles
You never saw
Smoke-drunken hair
Belly-chested heroes
Old mountain goats.
Sing their bitter pleasure
Pain
Softly, in the next refrain.
Scream the rape of destiny
Higher yet and high,
Climb until the eagle shrieks
Its dire warning...
Cry.
january 1981
Huseyni
Pluck the
Unfolding rose
Blossoming
Deep tonic eyes.
Awaken the crimson deep red
Pungent blood scent
With menstrual chords.
Extend and stretch, gracefully,
Grab for the life essence fruit
And just miss.
September 1981
—————— • ——————
Grandfather Prayer
Listening to the music you loved
Never having tasted the bread, water
Nor breathed the Kesereeg air.
Listening to the music you heard
Performed by musicians, fezed and garlicked,
In the turn of the century gravity,
Old seventy-eights,
Dragged down by the weight of
Their historical load.
Your month old namesake sleeps
Unaware of the pain
Your pathos will cause him.
Grandfather, where are the
Tastes, smells and textures
That poetry and tapes
Simply cannot conjure.
Grandfather,
Why are we also
Infidels here?
September 1981
—————— • ——————
C.O.D.
i mean the guy
him just dropped
totally dead
while walkin' down the street
(do wa ditty ditty...)
with his kid and only wife and
sixty-four people
of his own ethnic persuasion
running
hither and yon
helping...
while the kid
who was cool
cooled out his momma
though he knew
by the baby blue
of his daddy's face
that things were
like suddenly
uncool
and while them
sixty-four people
cleared passages for
sireened stretcher bearing
station wagons and
beat a funeral dirge
death jazz jam
cardio pulminary rock
aboriginal message drum
on a hollow chest
and me?
i flashed my wallet
poetic license badge
real elliot nesslike
bellowing and taking charge
recording all the
gushing emotive tragedy
and respectfully submit
this certificate of death
september 1981
—————— • ——————
Oktemper
Sparkle of a starry
Moonight, crisp and cold.
Rustle of the wind steps
Through oak leaves
On the forest floor.
Bursting from within,
Ripe visions of the Tao
To eat or plant anew.
The madness of
Spring's libidinal fog
Expended.
The cold breath of death
Cleanses the soul
In a wind bath.
The geometric spirit soars,
Historical fibres bared,
God's very brush strokes
Felt in a ripple
Up the spine.
October 1981
—————— • ——————
Rast
Aquiline lumbering ascent
Into a majestic soar
In an ordered cosmos,
Flirting death from
Orion's sword.
Convoluting into a
Screeching talonic dive
Viciously quenching
A blood thirst.
october 1981
—————— • ——————
to gonzo gaboudikian: amerikan
heros of the revolution
singing ancient songs of
conquest in the imaginations
of armed chair
neo-pseudo-quasi-
revolutionary
jewelers who left beirut
afraid of real fedayeen
preach the freedom dream
in suburban comfort
it's cool here
prosper grow and make
them big time amerikan
big bucks shafting white
and black alike (no bigots
here!)...it's cool
arch-patriotic neo-macho
hairy chested hypocritical
party line scared
]little beirut boys contradictory
cocky little revolutionary
peacocks jumping ship
s.s. noah's ark just waiting
to re-land on the grand peak
and unload its babeling crew
but the crew wanted big-macs
and t-birds and little cozy
klubs where revolution and
the ark are discussed in
smoke and drink and fog of mind
i must be wrong
i mean this verse is in
the heathen tongue and
we all know that members
of our little mutinous
ark crew babel in the
momma tongue
i mean they are the only
ones hip to this armenian trip
and can read the official script
i mean we is talkin' about
cats who though they might
have brain slip and forget
their own mommas
they are like gonna always
be hip to their own little
momma tongue
always
december 1981
—————— • ——————
anatolian cowpoke: take 1
one bursting burp
of a sub-mechanized
gun spews a scatter
of lead molten, tumbling
towards a pregnant
turkish wench.
young olive skin
shreds from the bones
as a grafted fleshy ooze
of bloody glints and wet
bone chips. rape the
dead or dying whore
and leave the fetus
dead for vultures.
horrific agony is
frozen on her moslem face
as she is fed to christian
dogs.
rape the nation back!
let both bloods fertilize
the rotting soil. sing
of the glorious retreats
and keep the mind raping
ever raping, fighting in
the revolution.
december 1981
—————— • ——————
wonderlust
bloque poetique
an attempted
abstract collage
of wordy images and
out of focus detail
do not
overexplain a single
black, as in the pit
of space, shaft, as in
phallic thrusts, sprouting
like a smooth plastic oak
from a scalpy wooded lot
no!
more general,
ethereal and spiritual,
the mystique of five
million years of
"how did i get here?"
november 1981
—————— • ——————
Charents
He craved the
Ethos candied yams,
Redbrigades and
Overnight beatings,
Imbued with
Neo-taoist reveries.
december 1981
—————— • ——————
pasternaking
on a raging winter eve
metro-siberian solitude
blizzard storming wasteland
fire roaring (crackle hiss)
dreaming of a Lara kiss
january 1982
—————— • ——————
Lazland Grandad
The hoofbeats of the cowboys
Drive out the holocaustic
Thunder that crumbles onto your
Sears & Roebuck davenport in
The clutter of old age housekeeping.
Old molting feathered relic,
In your blue zippered sweater,
With your gnarled leather hands
That barely tuned the TV in
To heros that always win.
Violently plucked from pastoral youth
To the incandescent whir and hum of
America--land of the confused,
Home of the melting iron in a
Rocket red glare that blackens
The lung and dims the brain.
Your madness of great despair
Infects your heirs, sublimely.
This hyperkinetic late night
Barrage of nuclear frenzy
Overwhelms them as
The Black Sea
Drowned you
In your
Dreams.
January 1982
—————— • ——————
Economy of Words
I. Pseudo-poetic prologue
Wordometric forecasts
Of nine-teen point six per-cent
Proliferation in the
Gross National Wordiness Index.
2. Cute, concise and somewhat meaningful stanza
Neo-quasi bopnik beat verse
Constructed in the modern
All glass, bronze reflective aura,
Of saying things succinctly once,
Of saying things succinctly once.
Three. Poignant though contrived department
Gross verbal eruptions, that
Spew, spit and sputter
In melodramatic over emotional
Blazing glory, oozing over and
Smothering the Pompeii of
Your idle minds.
Epilogue (Totally extra and possibly needless stanza)
The agnostic choir sings
The hymn of life.
God would smile, if he could,
On such slightly stray
Honestly confused pulsing globs
Of carbon sculpture.
January 1982
—————— • ——————
Mid-Winter Morning Drive to Work
Freewaying through the briny mist
In the dull mustard glow quite incandense.
The droning gnash of muffled steel
In the controlled combustion of unleashed egos.
Who will first impregnate the corporate ovum?
Radar guided, warp driven fighters
In the galactic grand prix...reset.
Mittying down Kerpocketa Lane,
Pearl harbor revisited and
Repunzel's golden hair.
February 1982
—————— • ——————
For Rouben Gavoor
(upon his 75th birthday)
Poet seashoring
Atlantic August grey day
Thunder roar of foamy
Frothing steel waves of
An aging ocean
Dying for unknown needs,
The void that makes him write.
Khaki dressed book
Back cover picture,
No Irish Setter,
New England mist in
Moist sand steps.
His grandfather's brother
Guiding
Revealing truths
Of great life forces
Tidal ovulations and
The vast mother being.
March 1982
—————— • ——————
I Remember You Dancing
I remember you dancing
In your maiden ripe glow.
Ancient old lilting dances
And passion sweaty fertility rites,
Dark eyes flashing in a blur of
The blackest hair and moon skin
Olive tan in a perfumed mist
And your own sweet smell.
Come back and haunt my dreams
Let us drink the wine of reverie,
Laughing of the time when
I was afraid to get too close
Since one kiss would release
An all consuming rage that
Could regenerate the race.
Your very being, breathing,
Crying out for pregnancies,
Maternal virgin exhilaration
Verified my belief in God
During the sweetest torture
Of all. I confess.
February 1982
—————— • ——————
Meek Beatitude Revisited
Michigan flatland,
Industrial springs and
Soot in the snow
melting in the nasal
Exhaust pipe of your
Internal combustion as
We await the nuclear cleansing.
March 1982
—————— • ——————
Haiku
fat buddha bellied
poet scribbling verse
to express his true
thin spirit
July 1982
—————— • ——————
Birthday Poem
I have forsaken the heroin of your love
For the methadone of its vestiges.
I have cold turkeyed your opium kisses
For some sleazy back alley muscatel.
I have sublimated the drooling child
Pornographic perversion I have for you
Into the Pharisaic murder of crabgrass.
I have lost the lusty return to the womb
Blindness and found instead Corporate
America supplying the literary muse
With F-16s with which to streak the
Stratosphere tracking six poetic targets
Simultaneously while my heat seeking
Missile is the object of this overt
Freudian cymbal slashing to the drone
Of the ritual mating dance.
Dreaming of albino nipples and the
Wet crotchy smears and smells of
Neanderphallic procreativities
While the cocaine of your aura seeps
Through my nasal rectum to vulcanize
My soul into a black gooey seething
Two months on non-poetic production
All because I thought you were gone.
June 1982
—————— • ——————
Vous etes comme Vous etes
(apologies to Paul Valery)
Who will gently kiss thee
When your thighs begin to sag?
Who will care as you age
recalling your soft and supple sins?
Gorge not thyself today.
Nurture the sappling thoughts within,
Allow your grace to grow...
Ah, but you fear this to be
Another sermon aimed
To save your forlorn soul...
That it is not
Nay, not even a prayer,
Just a poet's querie pathetique.
Who will gently love thee
When your breasts begin to sag?
March 1982
—————— • ——————
Auto Muse
Amid the splendor, arcane,
O melting winter slush grime
Traffic jamming to the drone
Of two thousand desperations
In their mobile hovels of
Cushy stereoed defoggers.
Amid the pot holed pot heads
Alcohol cravers, special occasion
Everyday beer guzzlers
Racing home, slowly, to explode
Or take the kids to lessons.
The humming steel ribbed
Grids of the freeway
"life in the fast lane"
Mainliners, stupefied
Though urban serene
Grotesque.
Rock and roll horrors
Of nuclear daymares
And the next police action
El Producto
El Salvador
Both smoking
Both stink
Bury them both
Two for one
Synthesis of the unrelated
Or are they?
Anyway,
As it gets real
Depressing despondent down,
The cultural garbage slime
And goo of modern collective sins
Suffocates my tender ego.
Just when i am ready
To vaporize the car that
Just cut me off
By firing the muffler
Seeking missiles
Laser guided destructos,
Just then that blithe spirit
Bird she never wert
Expressway muse in
A sooty satin gown gives
The penis of my soul
A blow job
And
I'm cool.
March 1982
—————— • ——————
April 24, 1982
The dissipating rumbling
Of the decaying evidence
Fertilizes the poppies
That burn orange in
My lost Armenian veins.
Driving in a fast car
By the gold church:
That blinding gleam
Of phallic defiance
In the dawn sun.
—————— • ——————
Finding Arlo Guthrie
(for Hrant Bondjukjian)
Boston born,
me too.
Got no i-a-n,
me too.
though i had no choice.
And while you were
Gaboudikianing and Emining
in nineteen seventy-four,
I was misplacing months
in a transcendent euphoric haze,
East Lansing tundra,
following the cultural
homeomorphism harmonically
between Alice's Restaurant
and the Emin you never knew.
July 1982
—————— • ——————
Looking for Harold Bond
(For Arlo Guthrie)
jamming my brain waves
making your music ...whine
late sixties neo-beatnik
folksinging para-hippie
almost displaced the taxim
with your crisp montana bathtub
new england autumn music
yet
out of the raw genitals of my soul
the cerebral hemorrhage of my sex
came the bloody pull of marash
the memory of my ancestral daughters
being raped in the vineyards
by dark haired youngbloods
burying their guns
July 1982
—————— • ——————
High Priestess Groping
Writing in collusion,
Ivy league introspection,
And this coming of age:
Quaint ethnocentricity
Marketed towards the sensitive,
Feeling and alive.
Carefully constructed
Verse monumenting
Dead weddings and uncle watches,
Stately Yankee grace
Reading the past,
That misty shroud,
In tea leaves
And sighs.
Yet, where is the pungent smell
Of your rapist smoking latakia
That burns your eyes to briny tears
As you realize the genesis of horror
That only passivity transcends?
July 1982
—————— • ——————
Academic Painting
The acceleration towards consciousness
Made for the pastel blur of madness.
Petals, red, of the rose scattered
On the sylvan pond teeming
With protozaic life evolving
Into all that ever mattered.
The cumulus billows aloft
Sail the autumn breath,
hinting in a way so soft
The winter threat of death.
September 1982
—————— • ——————
Brass Bed
Rustic farm furnishings
On a hardwood creaking floor,
Gentle music we did make
And sleep love drunk, winded.
August breezes flapped
The drapes to disarray,
The sanity of blood drained
Passion misted
The night air.
The pathos almost killed us.
As we were, it was gone.
Forcing the issue,
Creating nostalgia
Begging for more
Making it last...
Simply now,
The past.
August 1982
—————— • ——————
Peter
God chasing genius
Overwhelmed by life forces
Living from crisis to crisis
Bridged by contrived dilemmas.
O'Brien lost the world
In a moment's madness,
Splattering his thoughts
Bloodspeckling your nightmares.
His crumpled carcass
Closed coffin tragedy
Lures you down the path
Not yet taken.
His sparkling wit
Eye glint pipe smoking critique
Is but a grainy old film
In the Hollywood of our minds.
(An image sure to ionize
his metaphysic aura!)
Chasing God down
Vedic corridors of
Law school ivy
Insanity perhaps,
The rejection of art
Perhaps the fear of
Realizing the emptiness
Of the conflict.
Meditate, my brother.
Let your spine jingle
With classical awareness.
Then let us drink
To a stumble and think
Bizarre transcendent
Sex dreams in the
Joan of Arc dungeon.
Make God take you
The ancient way.
Die by the cleave
Of the Horsemen's saber
Writhe with life...
Slowly melt into the Earth.
August 1982
—————— • ——————
watertown
heaving off into the clouds
jet powered lurch into
september reveries relived
caffeine punctuating gazes
at the coloring patchwork
swooshing over bay and jetties
the tidal sways of yankee clarity
salt breezes and immigrants
taxying into watertown harvesting
ripe yearnings of unknown pasts
walking the same stones
ancient stones
shuffled by the pained
swaggered by literati
savored by me sweatered
facing the odors
and sounds unchanged
the melodrama of nostalgia
is the distaste that is
the gyroscope of this
experience pathetique
the winding sloping streets
blue hydrangeas and garlic
sea breezes bakeries and
markets brimming with that
quaintness evoking the
faintest of my memories
god has been in st. stephen's
blessed the zara melodies
and cursed assimilation
spirit infects me
unleashing love that
brings a grown man
to tears in a modest
second story flat
of old wallpaper
musty books
the enchanting aura
and home of my soul
that i feel being
pulled out my body
as i sweep back up
into the cold air
september 1982
—————— • ——————
corporaTess
you realize not,
while grey wooled
and crimson bloused,
the stirring caused
by your glossy mouth agape
and the tour of lips
by an impish tongue.
sexism overhangs you
as you emulate the modes
of the serious and successful
do you drink your whiskey straight?
while men in their hormonal ways
dream of ultimate power plays.
sipping champagne in slinky gowns
rolls royce and fur...conviviance.
november 1982
—————— • ——————
anatolian cowpoke: take 2
"absurdity," he thought
brushing trail dust off his chaps
"wasting turks without jams
ain't no fun...nohow"
his personal stereo batteries dead
this high anatolian drifter
mongol hunter bounty rapist
laying siege to virgins
in ouzo drunken madness
six gun blazer
molten leader
whorer of saloons
bullets bursting skulls
like hooves that crushed
his homeland melons
crestin the hill in
thunderous hallucination
about to pirouette in
an ultimate saber dance
amphetomaniac
resurrected from his mountain cave
back to avenge his limpet race
riding high and hard into the sunrise
rearing back with a hearty
hi-yo koorig-jalalin
january 1983
—————— • ——————
Deadline Poem
Late though it is,
Toiling in frustration
Amid the irritating
Startling dog yelps,
The blind of headlights
Glares through the sheers,
My tape deck devouring
Beethoven's Ninth in
Gluttonous sacrilege
And I burning incense
That was once my patience
To lure the muse
From out the restroom
To transform this
Phrasic column
Into a poem.
January 1983
—————— • ——————
Immaculate Contraception
Silent convolutions screamed
Into the dark night recalling
Famines and racial insanities,
Ancient kisses unfolding
Mystery in each hieroglyph.
America televised her unfairly
Into ambivalent singles bars,
This born again mama waken
From the Amerikan nightmare
To child rear and career plan.
Society, sated, rolls over
Igniting a smoke and dreams
Of gusto getters,
Cookout athletes,
Dart throwers, bowlers
And bar love frothing
In perfumed self-actualization.
February 1983
—————— • ——————
immediately upon seeing nran guin
hands henna stained
mask the powdered face
in extreme caulk-asian
fellini like six and
seven-eighths obscurity
waterlogged ultra-art
cacophanated twelve tone
polymusic lacking socialist
relevance in dissonance
scratch the ancient stone
assassinate the ram
contort with dying fish
crinkling flip them olden pages
in the hue of cantaloupes
armenian bard hunter
stoichic nee daedalus
riverunning over and over
the hue of artichokes
dye the warped wools
die the seething seaweed goo
dye and die..oh wow
(pot brain inflection
fade to clack and white
and black for more)
for crissakes bowlessly
abuse that muse
march 1983
—————— • ——————
Euxine Princess
It was not her langly gait
Not her clear green eyes, pale,
But the fecundity of her soul
And the willow-sway of her mindsong.
The liquidity of her life-laden
Repromagnakinesical purity of
The ever anointed priestess
She-demon lover-goddess
Pedestaled on a throne of breeze
Ethereal eponymph of my race.
March 1983
—————— • ——————
April 24, 1983
The Creek nation
Roam their own hills
And party down,
Congregating in
Their own mirrored
Monument. While me,
Armenian, drives by
Their cattle grazing.
Me driving through
Their blue skies and
Budded swaying trees,
Enjoying my road
To Konya fantasies.
Bartlesville, Oklahoma
—————— • ——————
High Priestess Lament
I.
After the star night
Moondripping ritual,
The sacrifice of the
Bloodied ewe anointed
In a dagger death,
Pyring vestal oracle burns
Opiate visions of mystic pasts
In the shrouded head,
Her cranial marriage bed.
II.
Cleansed in trance,
her pregnant mind explodes,
Amniotic thought births.
Children to care for and rear,
Children to care for her
In old age fireside reverie.
Errant children to wander
Off to where she never thought.
Lazarus shooting brother
Oedipus in the sawdust ghetto,
Negating the future she
Would never know not wanting.
April 1983
—————— • ——————
High Priestess Ordained
Light beamed into the blue
Eyes of the son you
Should have had radiating
Softly celibate from
Your linen gown.
A day of cutting shapes,
Hacking at history.
Sculptor of the static past
Child of your soul and tired
Arm weary and spiritless.
Having placed
the laurel crown of thorns,
Blood blinded, you
Never saw so clear.
The bishop murdered,
You ordained yourself
And began life anew.
April 1983
—————— • ——————
In View of the Exponential Changes
In Technology in the Modern Era
The continuum never was for us.
They speak with accents and
Have dragged within their Asian auras
The muticous agrivestiges of
Their shattered culture.
They are dying, slow and
In relative grace,
Leaving us mere memories
Of their past, our fading link.
For the continuum never was for us...
August 1983
—————— • ——————
Requited Love
Contempt is not the harvest
Of this familiarity
Nor the extrapolation thereof.
And boredom is
that common dirge
We cannot invoke.
Ours is but an irony,
A flaccid embarrassment.
For love is instantaneous
And lust's a humid breeze
In which passion
Gently atrophies.
August 1983
—————— • ——————
The One Eyed Poet
How did it come
That you did not die
And that some revere you
More than those bards who
Were butchered before their prime?
Yet, to write of love,
The absence and impotence thereof,
Needs a depth of vision
More than your one eye supplied.
It required the countenance and
Blessings of your dead peers
Fertilizing your frail voice
Blooming amid the cinders
Softly singing in a passive strain:
The Strain against your destiny,
To survive and temper our agony.
September 1983
—————— • ——————
The Lost Poem Poem
It was a paragon
In its natural state
All scribbled,
Erased and scratched:
Pure symmetry in rough draft.
Now its gone without a trace
And I've got egg upon my face
For instead of typing up excellence
I'm reduced to this:
Lyrical nonsense.
It' the fish that got away,
Seventy-four miles per gallon,
The check that's in the eternal mail
And all those sex act lies.
Yet, this poem was different.
It had class.
It coulda been a contentda...
It coulda been champeen...
Really though, it's basking,
In the glow of lost poem heaven.
Waiting patiently until
Its resurrection in some nook,
Some crevice overlooked.
As i praise my serendipity,
It harmonizes: mediocrity.
September 1983
—————— • ——————
The Altar of Freedom
It struck day,
A sleepless sweaty dawn,
Lisbon clamminess that
Wouldn't wash away.
The religious inhalation
Of those last cigarettes
In thick inspirational smoke
Aspirated our cause:
Automatic justice
Burped up, barfed upon
Tabloid headlines.
Was sacrifice the plan
Or an abortive contingence?
Did you know that you would die
Or merely that you might?
Were you, as suggested, Russian pawns
Or were the philistines your only source of stones?
Were you ever doubtful of your path
Or did rage direct your souls?
When will we be free?
II.
Your acts evoked disdain,
Such terror I can't support.
Though a madness-like cold turkey
Provoked your violent acts.
You can't use a paper ladle
Around the pot of freedom broth,
But with your iron thimble
We'll never have our fill.
September 1983
—————— • ——————
Poet Gets Weird = tan(poem2)
one day he decide
"a poet i will be"
and began to write
bad choice made consciously
for he had really nothing to say
yet he liked
the image in his brain
the tattered intellectual
the passions...
though he still had nothing to say
he had no muse
anyway he
forced the writing on
and did a poet be
so here is a sample
for you to see
judge its style
assess its quality
"christmas apricots, wisconsin love
she dried her face
tearless clean as she
would scraping
barnacles off the dory
of her transgressed sex
the moon screamed
(luminous sources often scream
in mediocre modern poetry-ed.)
a mutated echo
over the ashen
stupor of the indifferent lake
the cruel pond
the anodized sea
(bodies of water are either
neutral, mean or metallic
in mediocre modern poetry-ed.)
aged shrubs gloat
in the screeching desert dust
where her lover homomorphed
collapsing in her very eye"
the poet with not much to say
grasps kellerlike in the pre-annie air
existentiating the banal
vertigating in the wake of muses
but
the boy can talk some shit
amen
october 1983
—————— • ——————
maybe mrs. robinson
you could never splash
her face across a magazine
nor would she have started a war
though she may yet birth a king
she has a form
a musk
texture color glance
that life-sway tidal swoon
it seemed only i could sense
there is no lust
but worse
affection
the bushwhacked result
of a cupid arrow
reaming my brain
from arear
in jfk gore on
a fall dallas day
november 1983
And in that anticipated awe
Pitch black prone, alone.
Hollowed paper cones pulsed
Ecstatically.
And, lo, I touched your face,
In silent ecstasy.
No blaring tube to dim my thoughts,
Nor a candle's golden glow'
Just symphonic cones struggling
And beating time from its normal drone.
And lo, I touched your gentle face,
In silent agony.
Now, slow the sounds peel off the walls
To bury my soul in love...
And I await the resurrection.
December 1974
Boston
—————— • ——————
I Really Do Like Films
Slow motion.
A facet of the Modern Way:
Two-dimensional ecstasy.
Castration,
Precise and accurate.
Almost painless,
Almost real.
February 1975
East Lansing
—————— • ——————
To SYA
A dream
I thought I lost
Came back
And slept with me last night.
A vision
From my younger daze
Of twice a week shaves
When romantic bubbles
First flowed in my veins.
A vision,
Soft,
Of almond eyes
In female symmetry.
May 1975
East Lansing
—————— • ——————
Shabin-Karahisar
Armor,
Torn from off our very backs
And from our heaving chests.
Brothers, we have lost again
A dream,
Our lives,
The Quest
Bloody,
Pale and naked boys
Lift up your weary heads
And gather up our women
From our enemy's beds.
For we are leaving men,
Our horrid dungeon homes.
Each a different way..
All of us alone.
Oh, that April was the cruellest month,
We shall never forget.
No, we'll never forget
And never forgive
Those, the dead and dying
Those, their children
Those who trespassed against us.
April 1975
East Lansing
—————— • ——————
Aghtamar
I.
April,
Morning,
A radiant sun begins its task
Of cracking the frost
That veils the greening grass.
Birds, in counterpoint,
Sing and chirp
Welcoming the warming sun
And Spring's fertility.
Cranes and geese
Arise and fly
Northward
In graceful symmetry.
No human stirring,
No breakfast smoke or smell.
Nature, alone, is acting out
The rite of Spring: mourning.
With Van water lapping: the continuo.
Elonged shadows dance
To the wind and rising sun,
Except the crumbling mass.
Stoic, in its decaying majesty:
Aghtamar.
II.
A single ray,
Through a single slitted window
Dimly lights the church,
As did vesper candles
In an ancient time.
Her gold, long stolen,
And tapestries, mere ashes now.
Etchings, paintings, holy words
Evaporate from the stone
Which echoed
The prayers and chants of monks.
The prayers and chants,
The winds have swallowed.
The caped and chaliced silhouettes
Have melted into
The darkened corners of
Ambivalence.
III.
Aghtamar,
Another silent Easter, alone,
No one has rolled the stone
That guards your tomb.
No resurrection yet,
For you.
April 1977
—————— • ——————
Oblitergato
I.
Return from a practical world
Of urban monetary real thoughts
Of junk and jones
Of mind-raped mush
...and sirens sweetly singing.
Return to art
"Wherefore thou art"
"Beauty amid the garbage"
An ode to schizophrenia,
In praise of kiddie porn.
Broken downtown treats
Pornographic treats
Apre l'midi de nukes
Hillside L'estranler
II.
Kollide-O-Scope
Your brain waves
Alpha
Beta
Gamma
zzzik!
Short heighted, far sighted Prufrock
Crabs play in her downy hair
Her pimp descends you down the stair.
Oil coated mermaids moaning each to each
Dying together on the beach,
Why must they moan to me?
Their Low Level radioactive drone.
ProAbortionEcologicalERA Lobby heads
Feasting on the breast of earth...
Pass the salt, too.
III.
Call the doctor,
20/20 Vision
Drinkum down...
Gettum high...
December 1979
—————— • ——————
White Noise
Stellar laser consciousness
Cellar lazy communists
Foolish words sparking
The poles
Jacobian poles
Random pulses
Televised sixty cycle throbs of
I Love LucyRhoda...
Helen of Toys
Solenoidic circuit breakers
Snap and click
Overloaded relays
We are not grounded
Electrocuted orphans
Agent orange
Green rain
LSD
Angels, dust my mind
Lobotomize my frontal lobe
My mother lode
Van Gogh my ear
Mind control is on its way
Shed a radioactive tear
For what poetry used to be
Or not to be
February 1980
—————— • ——————
Blossoming into Her Summer
Blossoming into her summer
Of red lips, wet, with yellow
Flowers in her hair
That glistens brown-red
Balanced by eyes soft brown.
Voice that trails off into
Moist air, the aura of her
Fertility singing in the night air.
Your sweetest wooing song
Cooing in the moon night
Whispers of love lingering
On the lake breeze for two thousand
Light years. The song of motion,
Wide eyed grace in meadow love.
June 1980
—————— • ——————
The Other Light
I.
In the other light,
Dim beam from antiquity,
Life as continuum
Pulse-throbbing ancient blood whispers
Drowned out by Diesel air noise bustle
Of cement paved steel-scapes.
The thin vein weaving about
Monumental episodes of historical
Insignificance.
Pastoral shadows of dying warriors
Moaning for their raped ladies
Synthesizing a new race, the result
Of monolithic Iron-Age wounds.
Tetanal wounds soothed by
Mammary-uterine visions of
Ultimate liberty,
Goddess of the dead and dying.
II.
The ancient whispers
Float the tepid air.
Old sleeping thought-larvae
Breaking time silken cocoons.
Freed by silence, nurtured
By prayer. Awakened
Milky-moist ruined dreams of
natural people.
Lost harmony that pains
The soul sensitive,
Wingless fragments of ethereal poetry
Counterpoint the broken remnants.
Archaeologists of the soul and spirit
Digging open their hearts and searching
For cosmic human threads.
III.
Murderers riding
The fever of plunder.
Hoofs pounding, pounding
Echoing and thundering
Pounding in pursuit of glory.
The burning glory of singed flesh
And mutilated children.
The smell of victory: exhilaration.
The genocidal stench, the same.
Kiss the warrior's boot, harlot,
Learn the master's touch!
Squirm on the jagged edge
Of life and blissful death.
August 1980
—————— • ——————
Anonymous Benediction
Middle of an April eve
A god abandoned people slept
Rifles cocked and murder drunk
Knocks upon a poet's door.
Genocide begins
As talons grasp the throat.
Varoujan, go forth and meet
Oppression"s bloody end!
Out into the midnight black
Rendezvous with atrophy...
January 1981
—————— • ——————
For Daniel Varoujan
I. Childhood
New suit
And choking tie,
Armed with fourth
Grade Armenian,
Native American
Child
Sing, the
Treasures of Varoujan
practiced for weeks.
Sing, the
Song of wheat.
Each golden
Tone inflection
Gutteral note
Memorized.
Each twist
And turn of still
Unknown craggy
Mountain verse
Like a goat jumping
Effortlessly, amazed at
His own fluid flowing
In his own ancient tongue.
The song, rhythm and
meaning beyond his grasp.
Knowing the general plot.
Pearly bitter
Sounds beaming forth
Radiating his own
Dreams.
II. Emulation
Varoujan, the poet for whom he sings,
Butchered bard of genocide
Make the ancient language ring.
Knowing not the poet's meaning
Yet, skip and prance the vocal dance,
Praise the language, people strong,
Raise the spirit of the throng.
Your people scattered to the wind
As the seeds of your sower true.
Plant and sow, bold bard!
Bring forth the eternal spring
Of the Armenian freedom dream.
Plant and sow, dear spirit!
Intoxicate the living blood and
Scream across the river the horrors
Of the all too present past.
Rattle the bones in harmony
For your martyred brethren.
Haunt the ancient land
Now empty of your race.
Let the butchers hear
The muffled screams again.
January 1981
—————— • ——————
Multi-Styled Contest Entry
I. Bop
Hey,
Like I
Am into
Existential mind expanding
Kiss the sky brittle
Breaking needles thrusting
Into black veins the pains
Of centuries of white hope
Bouncing off the cosmic thoughts
Of whores and off beat Kerouacan
Meaningless spittle of psycho-dramatic
Word collages
II. Haiku
Like a hobo's foot
In a found shoe,
My mouth embraces
The breast of your contest.
III. Satire
Oh, Danny boy,
Your contest is a joy.
And, if I win,
I'll spend it all on sin.
Oh, Danny boy,
You were just a Turkish toy.
They dragged you from your bed
And pumped eight bullets in your head.
January 1981
—————— • ——————
catharsis
maple an light
off white off beige
cotton-linen house
glass and light woods
bleached wood beach house
rattan
macramed hangings
plants, green lush over
pouring
life giving earthen
smells and
a potter's wheel
pillows
weaved and sewed inviting comfort...
natural, soft
warm tones
off beige natural
whisps of brown and
a hint of gold
dried flowers earthen
wares...a fireplace
with birch and books
on zen and love
on macrame and love
her place of wood, flowers
and eight exotic teas
spices and dreams...
weaving and crafting
towards freedom
cuisinart and sony
joni mitchell lady
twin, frannie
and zooie, cats
awaiting her chelsea
morning of tea and
oranges
well thought and planned
alumna nine-teen
seventy four
teaching deaf kids
safe, helpful
no icky-poo badevil
corporate polluting prostitution
just pure of heart: good
free of spirit: dreamer
poet of crafts and conviction
whole earth third
world millennium cookbook...
snail darting bird loving
no nukes fertile excess
singles bar desolation mind rape
...her own marijuana plants
you could love her well
but don't and don't know why
is she the myth
are you..
corporate polluting demagogue
oh, you'll love her
in between the campus
and the office
eat the fruit and nurtured leave
the off beige garden
the macramed chains and granola
the wine...you'll leave
pursue the bitch goddess
little sports car revlon
silicon breasted fly trap
you'll be the perfect
corporate cunt..
just when you know you
blew it
your lonely teacher of
the deaf calls and wants...
a job...
selling out...ends
meeting...going
nowhere...meet me
for a drink?
january 1981
—————— • ——————
Hasids in Suburbia
In the mall,
Between the Rock Your Brains
Out Disco Emporium and the
Antedeiluvian Confection Canteena
Amid the Springing brandnew
Ultra fad soon dated
Fur bearing original
Pseudo new york dachau daughters
Spawning in the sacred
Fountain of the mall...
Amid this diasporic dissipation
Strolled from Benny's
Blintze Boutique two time
Warped Hasids unaware
Of mallic chaos
The cosmetic disarray
Their mutated steppe sisters
Consuming fleshsex
Fashion diamond
Crystal gold mongers.
Buying Pol Pot lamps
Quality highgrade scalpshades
NeoNazi victims, shoe
On the other foot kicking
Another ass...indirectly
While braking for animals
Cursing the whale killers
Under pulsating suburban
Shower heads that
Pass no gas...
March 1981
—————— • ——————
white boy
i mean
i am not watchew
think
since yo thinkin'
'bilities is cloudy
from years of believin'
i am caucasian
since them hills is
in that place was my
folks ejected from
i'm just a third
world boy
incognito
pretending american
hating jews and spics
niggers and injuns
bein' cool and callous
the manifestation of
mountain man independence
squished into a
suit mortgage car
loan up for promotion
fightin' crabgrass
dazed by technochange
blues
think about
ivy league defense
contract brooks bros
showman with a
"my two main ladies
just been rape-ravaged
mangle fucked while me
watchin' helpless" psyche
i don't even know 'bout
i mean
i's got to be bad
wit' all this
hostility and white hope
undiagnosed brain cancer
not knowin' i
just could be blacker then you
and an ace of spades
august 1981
—————— • ——————
blackpoem
emulatin'
lee/brooks/hughes
on a big 'spensive
green tube text
editin' word
processing machine
suited in and
tied down in
florescent
eight hour
pulsing
aura
malika
sweetsoft
liquid brown tanned
poeTess
un-d'urbervilled
cocaine tran
scendent
love goddess
mystic in
afrograce
fullness
skimmn'
off corporate
bigtime bigbucks
to play poetique
on the sly
scopin' out
the bossman
would rather me doin'
financial over
analytical fore
cast of things
that shouldn' be
anyhow
vibrations malika
date nippled
choclate skin
watchew u doin'
in my dreams
dashikied out
stately modern
ancient queen lady
couldn' touch nohow
even if u was real
but if u was
i wood tarzan
into yo life
fightin' off
lions and
tigers and bears
oh my!
August 1981
—————— • ——————
new jersey apologies
lap lapping
atlantic south jersey
shorefolk
religious godless vagabonds
of cultural rebirthing
neptune pagans
i polluted your off-shore
mindless life dreams
of wholistic natural
sea escapes
ahab of the western world
drowning on your harpooned backs
from the west i sailed
into your private socialist nest
sons of the working class
daughters of sons of the working class
i took haven in your secluded bay
and blasted the port in payment
now adrift and paying still
chasing more plunder
mutiny seethes in the
starving crew
jersey revenge
in constant pursuit
january 1981
—————— • ——————
Oud Taksims
Richard Hagopian
Sweet
The sounds peel off the hull
And voice
Vibrating his skull.
Eyes closed
...with back leaned head
Almost ecstasy
Of blood crimson red...
John Berberian
Sharp
Clean accurate
Deep, mysterious pondering jabs:
A bitter attack.
Strength
In silent deep-set eyes
Pathos, dripping
From violent ancient
Strings of passion.
Hrant
Rough gravel-voiced
Prince and master,
Leader to us all
Now gone...
Playing always playing
Lion of the oud
Sweet King of Taxim
Lord of Pathos
Oedipus, the oudji.
Bright, crystalline
Gem like notes
Of brilliance
Striking through the static of old discs
To pierce the modern air
Reviving the pathos
Of lands lost.
Sing sweet prince
Of the stench of the past
Let the riffs blossom and burst
That spirit everlast.
Swooping dancing eagles
You never saw
Smoke-drunken hair
Belly-chested heroes
Old mountain goats.
Sing their bitter pleasure
Pain
Softly, in the next refrain.
Scream the rape of destiny
Higher yet and high,
Climb until the eagle shrieks
Its dire warning...
Cry.
january 1981
Huseyni
Pluck the
Unfolding rose
Blossoming
Deep tonic eyes.
Awaken the crimson deep red
Pungent blood scent
With menstrual chords.
Extend and stretch, gracefully,
Grab for the life essence fruit
And just miss.
September 1981
—————— • ——————
Grandfather Prayer
Listening to the music you loved
Never having tasted the bread, water
Nor breathed the Kesereeg air.
Listening to the music you heard
Performed by musicians, fezed and garlicked,
In the turn of the century gravity,
Old seventy-eights,
Dragged down by the weight of
Their historical load.
Your month old namesake sleeps
Unaware of the pain
Your pathos will cause him.
Grandfather, where are the
Tastes, smells and textures
That poetry and tapes
Simply cannot conjure.
Grandfather,
Why are we also
Infidels here?
September 1981
—————— • ——————
C.O.D.
i mean the guy
him just dropped
totally dead
while walkin' down the street
(do wa ditty ditty...)
with his kid and only wife and
sixty-four people
of his own ethnic persuasion
running
hither and yon
helping...
while the kid
who was cool
cooled out his momma
though he knew
by the baby blue
of his daddy's face
that things were
like suddenly
uncool
and while them
sixty-four people
cleared passages for
sireened stretcher bearing
station wagons and
beat a funeral dirge
death jazz jam
cardio pulminary rock
aboriginal message drum
on a hollow chest
and me?
i flashed my wallet
poetic license badge
real elliot nesslike
bellowing and taking charge
recording all the
gushing emotive tragedy
and respectfully submit
this certificate of death
september 1981
—————— • ——————
Oktemper
Sparkle of a starry
Moonight, crisp and cold.
Rustle of the wind steps
Through oak leaves
On the forest floor.
Bursting from within,
Ripe visions of the Tao
To eat or plant anew.
The madness of
Spring's libidinal fog
Expended.
The cold breath of death
Cleanses the soul
In a wind bath.
The geometric spirit soars,
Historical fibres bared,
God's very brush strokes
Felt in a ripple
Up the spine.
October 1981
—————— • ——————
Rast
Aquiline lumbering ascent
Into a majestic soar
In an ordered cosmos,
Flirting death from
Orion's sword.
Convoluting into a
Screeching talonic dive
Viciously quenching
A blood thirst.
october 1981
—————— • ——————
to gonzo gaboudikian: amerikan
heros of the revolution
singing ancient songs of
conquest in the imaginations
of armed chair
neo-pseudo-quasi-
revolutionary
jewelers who left beirut
afraid of real fedayeen
preach the freedom dream
in suburban comfort
it's cool here
prosper grow and make
them big time amerikan
big bucks shafting white
and black alike (no bigots
here!)...it's cool
arch-patriotic neo-macho
hairy chested hypocritical
party line scared
]little beirut boys contradictory
cocky little revolutionary
peacocks jumping ship
s.s. noah's ark just waiting
to re-land on the grand peak
and unload its babeling crew
but the crew wanted big-macs
and t-birds and little cozy
klubs where revolution and
the ark are discussed in
smoke and drink and fog of mind
i must be wrong
i mean this verse is in
the heathen tongue and
we all know that members
of our little mutinous
ark crew babel in the
momma tongue
i mean they are the only
ones hip to this armenian trip
and can read the official script
i mean we is talkin' about
cats who though they might
have brain slip and forget
their own mommas
they are like gonna always
be hip to their own little
momma tongue
always
december 1981
—————— • ——————
anatolian cowpoke: take 1
one bursting burp
of a sub-mechanized
gun spews a scatter
of lead molten, tumbling
towards a pregnant
turkish wench.
young olive skin
shreds from the bones
as a grafted fleshy ooze
of bloody glints and wet
bone chips. rape the
dead or dying whore
and leave the fetus
dead for vultures.
horrific agony is
frozen on her moslem face
as she is fed to christian
dogs.
rape the nation back!
let both bloods fertilize
the rotting soil. sing
of the glorious retreats
and keep the mind raping
ever raping, fighting in
the revolution.
december 1981
—————— • ——————
wonderlust
bloque poetique
an attempted
abstract collage
of wordy images and
out of focus detail
do not
overexplain a single
black, as in the pit
of space, shaft, as in
phallic thrusts, sprouting
like a smooth plastic oak
from a scalpy wooded lot
no!
more general,
ethereal and spiritual,
the mystique of five
million years of
"how did i get here?"
november 1981
—————— • ——————
Charents
He craved the
Ethos candied yams,
Redbrigades and
Overnight beatings,
Imbued with
Neo-taoist reveries.
december 1981
—————— • ——————
pasternaking
on a raging winter eve
metro-siberian solitude
blizzard storming wasteland
fire roaring (crackle hiss)
dreaming of a Lara kiss
january 1982
—————— • ——————
Lazland Grandad
The hoofbeats of the cowboys
Drive out the holocaustic
Thunder that crumbles onto your
Sears & Roebuck davenport in
The clutter of old age housekeeping.
Old molting feathered relic,
In your blue zippered sweater,
With your gnarled leather hands
That barely tuned the TV in
To heros that always win.
Violently plucked from pastoral youth
To the incandescent whir and hum of
America--land of the confused,
Home of the melting iron in a
Rocket red glare that blackens
The lung and dims the brain.
Your madness of great despair
Infects your heirs, sublimely.
This hyperkinetic late night
Barrage of nuclear frenzy
Overwhelms them as
The Black Sea
Drowned you
In your
Dreams.
January 1982
—————— • ——————
Economy of Words
I. Pseudo-poetic prologue
Wordometric forecasts
Of nine-teen point six per-cent
Proliferation in the
Gross National Wordiness Index.
2. Cute, concise and somewhat meaningful stanza
Neo-quasi bopnik beat verse
Constructed in the modern
All glass, bronze reflective aura,
Of saying things succinctly once,
Of saying things succinctly once.
Three. Poignant though contrived department
Gross verbal eruptions, that
Spew, spit and sputter
In melodramatic over emotional
Blazing glory, oozing over and
Smothering the Pompeii of
Your idle minds.
Epilogue (Totally extra and possibly needless stanza)
The agnostic choir sings
The hymn of life.
God would smile, if he could,
On such slightly stray
Honestly confused pulsing globs
Of carbon sculpture.
January 1982
—————— • ——————
Mid-Winter Morning Drive to Work
Freewaying through the briny mist
In the dull mustard glow quite incandense.
The droning gnash of muffled steel
In the controlled combustion of unleashed egos.
Who will first impregnate the corporate ovum?
Radar guided, warp driven fighters
In the galactic grand prix...reset.
Mittying down Kerpocketa Lane,
Pearl harbor revisited and
Repunzel's golden hair.
February 1982
—————— • ——————
For Rouben Gavoor
(upon his 75th birthday)
Poet seashoring
Atlantic August grey day
Thunder roar of foamy
Frothing steel waves of
An aging ocean
Dying for unknown needs,
The void that makes him write.
Khaki dressed book
Back cover picture,
No Irish Setter,
New England mist in
Moist sand steps.
His grandfather's brother
Guiding
Revealing truths
Of great life forces
Tidal ovulations and
The vast mother being.
March 1982
—————— • ——————
I Remember You Dancing
I remember you dancing
In your maiden ripe glow.
Ancient old lilting dances
And passion sweaty fertility rites,
Dark eyes flashing in a blur of
The blackest hair and moon skin
Olive tan in a perfumed mist
And your own sweet smell.
Come back and haunt my dreams
Let us drink the wine of reverie,
Laughing of the time when
I was afraid to get too close
Since one kiss would release
An all consuming rage that
Could regenerate the race.
Your very being, breathing,
Crying out for pregnancies,
Maternal virgin exhilaration
Verified my belief in God
During the sweetest torture
Of all. I confess.
February 1982
—————— • ——————
Meek Beatitude Revisited
Michigan flatland,
Industrial springs and
Soot in the snow
melting in the nasal
Exhaust pipe of your
Internal combustion as
We await the nuclear cleansing.
March 1982
—————— • ——————
Haiku
fat buddha bellied
poet scribbling verse
to express his true
thin spirit
July 1982
—————— • ——————
Birthday Poem
I have forsaken the heroin of your love
For the methadone of its vestiges.
I have cold turkeyed your opium kisses
For some sleazy back alley muscatel.
I have sublimated the drooling child
Pornographic perversion I have for you
Into the Pharisaic murder of crabgrass.
I have lost the lusty return to the womb
Blindness and found instead Corporate
America supplying the literary muse
With F-16s with which to streak the
Stratosphere tracking six poetic targets
Simultaneously while my heat seeking
Missile is the object of this overt
Freudian cymbal slashing to the drone
Of the ritual mating dance.
Dreaming of albino nipples and the
Wet crotchy smears and smells of
Neanderphallic procreativities
While the cocaine of your aura seeps
Through my nasal rectum to vulcanize
My soul into a black gooey seething
Two months on non-poetic production
All because I thought you were gone.
June 1982
—————— • ——————
Vous etes comme Vous etes
(apologies to Paul Valery)
Who will gently kiss thee
When your thighs begin to sag?
Who will care as you age
recalling your soft and supple sins?
Gorge not thyself today.
Nurture the sappling thoughts within,
Allow your grace to grow...
Ah, but you fear this to be
Another sermon aimed
To save your forlorn soul...
That it is not
Nay, not even a prayer,
Just a poet's querie pathetique.
Who will gently love thee
When your breasts begin to sag?
March 1982
—————— • ——————
Auto Muse
Amid the splendor, arcane,
O melting winter slush grime
Traffic jamming to the drone
Of two thousand desperations
In their mobile hovels of
Cushy stereoed defoggers.
Amid the pot holed pot heads
Alcohol cravers, special occasion
Everyday beer guzzlers
Racing home, slowly, to explode
Or take the kids to lessons.
The humming steel ribbed
Grids of the freeway
"life in the fast lane"
Mainliners, stupefied
Though urban serene
Grotesque.
Rock and roll horrors
Of nuclear daymares
And the next police action
El Producto
El Salvador
Both smoking
Both stink
Bury them both
Two for one
Synthesis of the unrelated
Or are they?
Anyway,
As it gets real
Depressing despondent down,
The cultural garbage slime
And goo of modern collective sins
Suffocates my tender ego.
Just when i am ready
To vaporize the car that
Just cut me off
By firing the muffler
Seeking missiles
Laser guided destructos,
Just then that blithe spirit
Bird she never wert
Expressway muse in
A sooty satin gown gives
The penis of my soul
A blow job
And
I'm cool.
March 1982
—————— • ——————
April 24, 1982
The dissipating rumbling
Of the decaying evidence
Fertilizes the poppies
That burn orange in
My lost Armenian veins.
Driving in a fast car
By the gold church:
That blinding gleam
Of phallic defiance
In the dawn sun.
—————— • ——————
Finding Arlo Guthrie
(for Hrant Bondjukjian)
Boston born,
me too.
Got no i-a-n,
me too.
though i had no choice.
And while you were
Gaboudikianing and Emining
in nineteen seventy-four,
I was misplacing months
in a transcendent euphoric haze,
East Lansing tundra,
following the cultural
homeomorphism harmonically
between Alice's Restaurant
and the Emin you never knew.
July 1982
—————— • ——————
Looking for Harold Bond
(For Arlo Guthrie)
jamming my brain waves
making your music ...whine
late sixties neo-beatnik
folksinging para-hippie
almost displaced the taxim
with your crisp montana bathtub
new england autumn music
yet
out of the raw genitals of my soul
the cerebral hemorrhage of my sex
came the bloody pull of marash
the memory of my ancestral daughters
being raped in the vineyards
by dark haired youngbloods
burying their guns
July 1982
—————— • ——————
High Priestess Groping
Writing in collusion,
Ivy league introspection,
And this coming of age:
Quaint ethnocentricity
Marketed towards the sensitive,
Feeling and alive.
Carefully constructed
Verse monumenting
Dead weddings and uncle watches,
Stately Yankee grace
Reading the past,
That misty shroud,
In tea leaves
And sighs.
Yet, where is the pungent smell
Of your rapist smoking latakia
That burns your eyes to briny tears
As you realize the genesis of horror
That only passivity transcends?
July 1982
—————— • ——————
Academic Painting
The acceleration towards consciousness
Made for the pastel blur of madness.
Petals, red, of the rose scattered
On the sylvan pond teeming
With protozaic life evolving
Into all that ever mattered.
The cumulus billows aloft
Sail the autumn breath,
hinting in a way so soft
The winter threat of death.
September 1982
—————— • ——————
Brass Bed
Rustic farm furnishings
On a hardwood creaking floor,
Gentle music we did make
And sleep love drunk, winded.
August breezes flapped
The drapes to disarray,
The sanity of blood drained
Passion misted
The night air.
The pathos almost killed us.
As we were, it was gone.
Forcing the issue,
Creating nostalgia
Begging for more
Making it last...
Simply now,
The past.
August 1982
—————— • ——————
Peter
God chasing genius
Overwhelmed by life forces
Living from crisis to crisis
Bridged by contrived dilemmas.
O'Brien lost the world
In a moment's madness,
Splattering his thoughts
Bloodspeckling your nightmares.
His crumpled carcass
Closed coffin tragedy
Lures you down the path
Not yet taken.
His sparkling wit
Eye glint pipe smoking critique
Is but a grainy old film
In the Hollywood of our minds.
(An image sure to ionize
his metaphysic aura!)
Chasing God down
Vedic corridors of
Law school ivy
Insanity perhaps,
The rejection of art
Perhaps the fear of
Realizing the emptiness
Of the conflict.
Meditate, my brother.
Let your spine jingle
With classical awareness.
Then let us drink
To a stumble and think
Bizarre transcendent
Sex dreams in the
Joan of Arc dungeon.
Make God take you
The ancient way.
Die by the cleave
Of the Horsemen's saber
Writhe with life...
Slowly melt into the Earth.
August 1982
—————— • ——————
watertown
heaving off into the clouds
jet powered lurch into
september reveries relived
caffeine punctuating gazes
at the coloring patchwork
swooshing over bay and jetties
the tidal sways of yankee clarity
salt breezes and immigrants
taxying into watertown harvesting
ripe yearnings of unknown pasts
walking the same stones
ancient stones
shuffled by the pained
swaggered by literati
savored by me sweatered
facing the odors
and sounds unchanged
the melodrama of nostalgia
is the distaste that is
the gyroscope of this
experience pathetique
the winding sloping streets
blue hydrangeas and garlic
sea breezes bakeries and
markets brimming with that
quaintness evoking the
faintest of my memories
god has been in st. stephen's
blessed the zara melodies
and cursed assimilation
spirit infects me
unleashing love that
brings a grown man
to tears in a modest
second story flat
of old wallpaper
musty books
the enchanting aura
and home of my soul
that i feel being
pulled out my body
as i sweep back up
into the cold air
september 1982
—————— • ——————
corporaTess
you realize not,
while grey wooled
and crimson bloused,
the stirring caused
by your glossy mouth agape
and the tour of lips
by an impish tongue.
sexism overhangs you
as you emulate the modes
of the serious and successful
do you drink your whiskey straight?
while men in their hormonal ways
dream of ultimate power plays.
sipping champagne in slinky gowns
rolls royce and fur...conviviance.
november 1982
—————— • ——————
anatolian cowpoke: take 2
"absurdity," he thought
brushing trail dust off his chaps
"wasting turks without jams
ain't no fun...nohow"
his personal stereo batteries dead
this high anatolian drifter
mongol hunter bounty rapist
laying siege to virgins
in ouzo drunken madness
six gun blazer
molten leader
whorer of saloons
bullets bursting skulls
like hooves that crushed
his homeland melons
crestin the hill in
thunderous hallucination
about to pirouette in
an ultimate saber dance
amphetomaniac
resurrected from his mountain cave
back to avenge his limpet race
riding high and hard into the sunrise
rearing back with a hearty
hi-yo koorig-jalalin
january 1983
—————— • ——————
Deadline Poem
Late though it is,
Toiling in frustration
Amid the irritating
Startling dog yelps,
The blind of headlights
Glares through the sheers,
My tape deck devouring
Beethoven's Ninth in
Gluttonous sacrilege
And I burning incense
That was once my patience
To lure the muse
From out the restroom
To transform this
Phrasic column
Into a poem.
January 1983
—————— • ——————
Immaculate Contraception
Silent convolutions screamed
Into the dark night recalling
Famines and racial insanities,
Ancient kisses unfolding
Mystery in each hieroglyph.
America televised her unfairly
Into ambivalent singles bars,
This born again mama waken
From the Amerikan nightmare
To child rear and career plan.
Society, sated, rolls over
Igniting a smoke and dreams
Of gusto getters,
Cookout athletes,
Dart throwers, bowlers
And bar love frothing
In perfumed self-actualization.
February 1983
—————— • ——————
immediately upon seeing nran guin
hands henna stained
mask the powdered face
in extreme caulk-asian
fellini like six and
seven-eighths obscurity
waterlogged ultra-art
cacophanated twelve tone
polymusic lacking socialist
relevance in dissonance
scratch the ancient stone
assassinate the ram
contort with dying fish
crinkling flip them olden pages
in the hue of cantaloupes
armenian bard hunter
stoichic nee daedalus
riverunning over and over
the hue of artichokes
dye the warped wools
die the seething seaweed goo
dye and die..oh wow
(pot brain inflection
fade to clack and white
and black for more)
for crissakes bowlessly
abuse that muse
march 1983
—————— • ——————
Euxine Princess
It was not her langly gait
Not her clear green eyes, pale,
But the fecundity of her soul
And the willow-sway of her mindsong.
The liquidity of her life-laden
Repromagnakinesical purity of
The ever anointed priestess
She-demon lover-goddess
Pedestaled on a throne of breeze
Ethereal eponymph of my race.
March 1983
—————— • ——————
April 24, 1983
The Creek nation
Roam their own hills
And party down,
Congregating in
Their own mirrored
Monument. While me,
Armenian, drives by
Their cattle grazing.
Me driving through
Their blue skies and
Budded swaying trees,
Enjoying my road
To Konya fantasies.
Bartlesville, Oklahoma
—————— • ——————
High Priestess Lament
I.
After the star night
Moondripping ritual,
The sacrifice of the
Bloodied ewe anointed
In a dagger death,
Pyring vestal oracle burns
Opiate visions of mystic pasts
In the shrouded head,
Her cranial marriage bed.
II.
Cleansed in trance,
her pregnant mind explodes,
Amniotic thought births.
Children to care for and rear,
Children to care for her
In old age fireside reverie.
Errant children to wander
Off to where she never thought.
Lazarus shooting brother
Oedipus in the sawdust ghetto,
Negating the future she
Would never know not wanting.
April 1983
—————— • ——————
High Priestess Ordained
Light beamed into the blue
Eyes of the son you
Should have had radiating
Softly celibate from
Your linen gown.
A day of cutting shapes,
Hacking at history.
Sculptor of the static past
Child of your soul and tired
Arm weary and spiritless.
Having placed
the laurel crown of thorns,
Blood blinded, you
Never saw so clear.
The bishop murdered,
You ordained yourself
And began life anew.
April 1983
—————— • ——————
In View of the Exponential Changes
In Technology in the Modern Era
The continuum never was for us.
They speak with accents and
Have dragged within their Asian auras
The muticous agrivestiges of
Their shattered culture.
They are dying, slow and
In relative grace,
Leaving us mere memories
Of their past, our fading link.
For the continuum never was for us...
August 1983
—————— • ——————
Requited Love
Contempt is not the harvest
Of this familiarity
Nor the extrapolation thereof.
And boredom is
that common dirge
We cannot invoke.
Ours is but an irony,
A flaccid embarrassment.
For love is instantaneous
And lust's a humid breeze
In which passion
Gently atrophies.
August 1983
—————— • ——————
The One Eyed Poet
How did it come
That you did not die
And that some revere you
More than those bards who
Were butchered before their prime?
Yet, to write of love,
The absence and impotence thereof,
Needs a depth of vision
More than your one eye supplied.
It required the countenance and
Blessings of your dead peers
Fertilizing your frail voice
Blooming amid the cinders
Softly singing in a passive strain:
The Strain against your destiny,
To survive and temper our agony.
September 1983
—————— • ——————
The Lost Poem Poem
It was a paragon
In its natural state
All scribbled,
Erased and scratched:
Pure symmetry in rough draft.
Now its gone without a trace
And I've got egg upon my face
For instead of typing up excellence
I'm reduced to this:
Lyrical nonsense.
It' the fish that got away,
Seventy-four miles per gallon,
The check that's in the eternal mail
And all those sex act lies.
Yet, this poem was different.
It had class.
It coulda been a contentda...
It coulda been champeen...
Really though, it's basking,
In the glow of lost poem heaven.
Waiting patiently until
Its resurrection in some nook,
Some crevice overlooked.
As i praise my serendipity,
It harmonizes: mediocrity.
September 1983
—————— • ——————
The Altar of Freedom
"We have decided to blow up this building and remain underI.
the collapse. This is not suicide nor an expression of insanity,
but rather our sacrifice to the altar of freedom."
Note from the Armenian Revolutionary Army
July 27, 1983, Lisbon.
It struck day,
A sleepless sweaty dawn,
Lisbon clamminess that
Wouldn't wash away.
The religious inhalation
Of those last cigarettes
In thick inspirational smoke
Aspirated our cause:
Automatic justice
Burped up, barfed upon
Tabloid headlines.
Was sacrifice the plan
Or an abortive contingence?
Did you know that you would die
Or merely that you might?
Were you, as suggested, Russian pawns
Or were the philistines your only source of stones?
Were you ever doubtful of your path
Or did rage direct your souls?
When will we be free?
II.
Your acts evoked disdain,
Such terror I can't support.
Though a madness-like cold turkey
Provoked your violent acts.
You can't use a paper ladle
Around the pot of freedom broth,
But with your iron thimble
We'll never have our fill.
September 1983
—————— • ——————
Poet Gets Weird = tan(poem2)
one day he decide
"a poet i will be"
and began to write
bad choice made consciously
for he had really nothing to say
yet he liked
the image in his brain
the tattered intellectual
the passions...
though he still had nothing to say
he had no muse
anyway he
forced the writing on
and did a poet be
so here is a sample
for you to see
judge its style
assess its quality
"christmas apricots, wisconsin love
she dried her face
tearless clean as she
would scraping
barnacles off the dory
of her transgressed sex
the moon screamed
(luminous sources often scream
in mediocre modern poetry-ed.)
a mutated echo
over the ashen
stupor of the indifferent lake
the cruel pond
the anodized sea
(bodies of water are either
neutral, mean or metallic
in mediocre modern poetry-ed.)
aged shrubs gloat
in the screeching desert dust
where her lover homomorphed
collapsing in her very eye"
the poet with not much to say
grasps kellerlike in the pre-annie air
existentiating the banal
vertigating in the wake of muses
but
the boy can talk some shit
amen
october 1983
—————— • ——————
maybe mrs. robinson
you could never splash
her face across a magazine
nor would she have started a war
though she may yet birth a king
she has a form
a musk
texture color glance
that life-sway tidal swoon
it seemed only i could sense
there is no lust
but worse
affection
the bushwhacked result
of a cupid arrow
reaming my brain
from arear
in jfk gore on
a fall dallas day
november 1983
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