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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