The Desert
  By Shant Norashkharian

Can we sustain
A rose garden
In the desert?
Or can we love
Without passion?
Can there be fire
In the boundless
Arctic Ocean
Where the cold winds
Scream so often?
Can there be joy
When a new breath
Has been smothered
In its cradle?
When apathy
Holds back the words,
And the new songs
Before they sound?
Can there be hope
When we accept
Three dimensions
Of existence,
And when we make
The compromise
Of living sane?
Or is it sane
To live in jails
With open doors
And yet refuse
To become free?
Or is it sane
To deliver
All consciousness
To a routine
Repetition?
Does the sea care
If the sailboat
Has a captain
Who is long dead?
Does the sea care
If the sailboat
Wanders around
For eighty years
Without the sight
Of a harbor?
Who made the swamps
From the rivers?
Are we shortchanged
For once again
When the hero
Is turned to worm,
And when knowledge
Stands for wisdom,
When the essence
Gives way to form,
And liberty
Is chained by norm?
Are we, tell me,
The cold shadow
Of raging fire?
Are we, tell me,
The ritual,
The daily lie,
Faceless, nameless
Robots and slaves?
Are we, really,
The stagnant air
But not the breath,
The moving lips
But not the thought,
Vibrating sound
But not the song?
And what about
The ecstasy
Which we must earn
From the heaven,
Will it also
Fade like the sun
A thousand times
To reach the earth?
Or the laughter
Of the children,
Or the weeping
Of the poet,
Will they also
Become buried
In the wild roar
Of the river?

Arcadia, California
July '88 
         The Poetry Of Shant Norashkharian
From 1988  To 2007
Poems of 1988

I dedicate this page to the great Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who gave me much strength when I was in great need. May the Lord God bless him forever.
"For my poems, written so early
That I didn't even know I was a poet,
Hurled like drops from a fountain,
Like sparks from rockets,

That burst like tiny devils,
Into the sanctuary of sleep and incense,
For my poems about youth and death
-- For my unread poems!

Scattered in dusty bookstores,
Where no one ever buys them!
For my poems, like precious wines,
A time will come."

M. I. Tvsetaeva
(1892-1939)
"Music is not illusion, but revelation rather. Its triumphant power lies in the fact that it reveals to us beauties we find nowhere else, and that the apprehension of them is not transitory, but a perpetual reconcilement of life."

"I sit down to the piano regularly at nine-o'clock in the morning and Mesdames les Muses have learned to be on time for that rendezvous."

Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky
Divine Lust
By S. Norashkharian

Now wet your lips
With my red wine
And let me soak
With warmth and love
Your eyes divine...

Now wet your hips
So lust will shine
And beckon me
Like a white dove
On a white pine...

Now wet your cheeks
And say “you're mine
Sparrow hawk
Come share my life
In my heart's shrine”...
                                               
                             Arcadia, California
                             October, 1988
A Smile
By Shant Norashkharian

The night
The cold
The loneliness
Timeless darkness
Endless space
Deafening!
A smile
Touches me
Like a ray of sun
From ancient homes
And ancient faces
Eyes buried in dust
Feelings, piercing
The paper walls
Feelings, twisting
Wrinkled and torn
Like paper dolls

Arcadia, California
July 1988
Come, My Beloved
   By Shant Norashkharian

Like a magician
You are here and gone
And like a young nun
You make me wonder
About life's puzzles
Of thousand and one...

Like a thief at night
You escape and run
And you hide your dreams
From the very man
Who can shine on them
Like the morning sun...

And like a surgeon
With a knife benign
You paralyze all
The nerves in my spine
As love works its way
Like poisonous wine...

Come my beloved
Thrust your throbbing thighs
Into my hard loins
So we may begin
To nourish the love
Born of our passion...

Arcadia, California
July, 1988

Getting To Know You
By Shant Norashkharian


Getting to know you is like whispering
Across the river and still being heard...
Getting to know you is taking a bath
In a sinful fire but without burning...
It is connecting with virgin spirits
It is exploring unknown sensations
It is acquiring wider perceptions...
It is to be free...


Getting to know you is being witness
To naked genius... it is hugging sounds
From the years long gone
It is revealing with Bach and Chopin
The secrets a few know and understand
It is reviving a forgotten dream
With yesterday's hopes without any doubts...
It is to be free...


Getting to know you is discovering
The abandoned child who lives within me
Is daring to be unacceptable
To feel the power of a deep instinct
Which tears and destroys
The shiny shackles of slavery
The golden cages of security
It is to be free...


Yes, yes, to be free!
Like the free dances
Of your wild spirit on key after key
Like the restlessness of your electric hands
Giving flight and form to the sonata
To revive the nerves
Once immobilized in the dust of years...
It is to be free...


Yes, yes, to be free!
Breaking all the dams built to hold the fears
Exposing the laws which made us captives
From the time we crawled
Breathing finally with lungs which endured
The suffocation of windowless minds
And the agony of guiltless prisoners
It is to be free...


Getting to know you is coming too close
To the sheer horror of execution
Mystic's surrender to persecution
Rebel's acceptance of his rejection
A monk's confession of lustful passion
A poet's terror from sunlight and warmth
After years of cold, dark isolation...
It is to be free...


Yet each note you play invites me to rest
My weary shoulders on your tempting lap
And relive my past with new warmth and love
Yet each note you play brings to me a world
Of essence and depth
Which only a few seek so ardently
Getting to know you
Is a beginning which will never end.


Los Angeles, California
November, 1988
Sunflower By Fabian Perez
Flamengo Dancer In Black By Fabian Perez
Sophia By Fabian Perez
“And yet everything which touches us, you and me,
takes us together like a single bow,
drawing out from two strings but one voice.
On which instrument are we strung?
And which violinist holds us in his hand?
O sweetest of songs.”

Rainer Maria Rilke