By S. Norashkharian
When the dry wind
Brings a song to the flute
When the hymns rise
From the dead wood
It is holy!
When a lost bee
Captures honey
From a rose
In the valley,
It is holy!
When the sadness
Is sweeter
Than the laughter
When a smile
A peaceful face
Ignites your soul
Like a furnace
It is holy!
To leave behind
Pastures and swine
To live only
With bread and wine
To be divine
To be free
It is holy!
At Thirty Six
By S. Norashkharian
At thirty six
A worn-out face above my sink
Examines me every morning
Counting the bits and bytes of life
Which left their marks shallow and deep
On this giant silicon chip...
The useless laughs and useless tears
The useless dreams and useless fears
Useless! Useless! memory cells
On this wide sheet of useless space...
At thirty six
Stars of white and silver gray
Cut the darkness of youth away
As every day without delay
Pushes gently another day...
I look around
For the faces
Which I have left
With things unsaid...
I touch my arms
To feel the warmth
Of all the hugs
Which are now dead...
I search for rare
Lost sensations
Like paralyzed
Wheelchair patients...
I search for more
Explanations
Like monks of far
Lonely churches...
At thirty six
I remember
The azure eyes of a young nun
Who sacredly stretched up her arms
And touched my soul with words benign...
She looked above
With a strange hunger for love
And saw the skies bathing the sun
With the cool breeze of the spring's dawn...
A prayer then suddenly rose
And mixed the air
With the perfume of the roses and daffodils...
O how I wished a hundred times
To recapture in my nostrils
The sanctity I left behind
Just to recall for one moment
Her angel face
Whitened with awe
And the knowledge of the divine...
At thirty six
I learned to wash
All memories
And thoughts with wine
And only hope
That all the wars I fought and won
May mean something to a someone...
A New Sensation
By S. Norashkharian
When the days are gray
In April and May
And the windows wet
My tired eyes reflect
When all things are said
And my lips are blue
But yet they still pray
Begging for a ray
I suddenly shake
With deafening cry
Like a tiger mad
Rattling its cage
Lo! The walls I made
Crack now with a warm
And a sweet passion
With each cell and nerve
A new sensation
Floods me with a warm
And a sweet passion...
The Black Age
By S. Norashkharian
Black smoke, black chimneys
Sulfur, Carbon, Nitric Oxides
Black breath, gasping for life
Lungs filled with dust
Black, black, black with rust
Procession of flesh and bones
Masses of limbs and heads and mouths
Seven to five or eight to five
Masses of flesh, masses of bones
Mindless, mindless, flesh and bones
Somewhere between
The apes and gods
Black termites rushing to chew
Daily diets of paper stew
In black suits, with black ties,
Daily diets of black lies
Shiny sidewalks
Faces of glass and eyes of ice
Concrete and steel hallways for mice
Harvard yoyos with lethal toys
Thoughtless, senseless like black pawns
In a foul play for wealth and fame
On a giant board of chess game
