And all the times we rolled like children in the grass
And all the questions that we cared not to ask
Shall we now thirst for a lemonade we shared
And hunger for the nights when we lost each other
In a steam of lust covering our window panes
And shall we hold all the memories of our past
Firmly in our palms like shattered glass?
And when we embraced each other in a nucleus of love
With such force that could not be destroyed by a fission or blast
When we reduced ourselves to a photon riding on a ray of sun
Moving without mass to our eternal rendezvous with God
Did we not promise to nourish our newborn fire
With passion tempered with the patience of a nun
And did we not protect it day by day and night by night
As a pregnant mother who never had a child?
Yet this same ship on which we feel trapped today
How many oceans did we cross with it standing side by side
And how many times we groped for each other in the dark
When the ice of solitude came upon its deck to embark?
We had nowhere to go, we had nowhere to go,
After the distance which pulled us apart
And the wheels of our evolution
Turned slowly in different directions...
And yet another beginning which could not continue
Like an unfinished symphony searching for its end
Waiting for its final chord to announce our last farewell
Ah, if I could pass one more hard-earned breath
Through the muscles which surround my neck
The red tie that you gave me now bleeds like an open vein
And leads me drop by drop to the places where it all began
The places where we thought we could be together again...
I unfold every tissue of my brain again and again
I stretch it like a lunar surface covered with meteor holes
To uncover the thread which ties the beginning to the end
I try to account for everything that my seasons took away
Yet I still remain puzzled with my white nakedness
Like an autumn tree which against its will was undressed
Clinging leaf by leaf to its rejected dignity
I now remain puzzled like a disgraced autumn tree...
You told me every poet is doomed to helplessness and despair
Because he must pay wages to work instead of receiving them
And the wages rise higher every time he writes a better poem
So I plucked my body of every predator bone by predator bone
So I dismembered myself to not cause anyone pain
So I changed from an adult to an adolescent and then a toddler
And if I do survive finding my way back into my womb
This time I shall choose the mother who will bear my ovum...
This time I shall choose the minute and place of my birth
This time I shall choose my world out of countless worlds
Do you remember when I was still a nine to five serf
Never again shall I sell out my most cherished fruits
For a paycheck or a title or an eighty percent dental plan
Never again shall I bend my back like a Japanese worker bee
To greet the masters who forced my future into a contract
This time I and only I shall validate my right to be free...
Look! How cheerful are the yellow daisies we planted last year!
They were just washed with the silver saintly raindrops
Which had left their Hawaiian birthplace to seek heaven
Look! How tenderly they shared their new blessings with us!
Shall we dance with them as they seduce the Westerly winds
Shall we make a prayer to bring their beauty into our hearts?
Shall we, shall we, shall we fall upon our faces and cry:
“Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus Deus, Kyrie, Kyrie, Kyrie Eleison”?
Ontario, California
February 1998
I Have The Night
By S. Norashkharian
I have the night, I have the night,
I fenced around my wilderness
I now disown everything else...
Only my friend, so loyally,
So certainly as the sunset
Will come again to embrace me...
I have unwrapped all of the gifts
That all my days have brought to me
Only the night, only the night,
Will wash my face with hope again...
I too have walked upon my knees
Like Catholic devout pilgrims
Chasing rumors of miracles
Or virgins who appeared in clouds
I too put my mind under siege
And flooded it with blinding lamps
And then unleashed ferociously
Its most dreaded ancient questions...
Only the night then came to claim
The urn of my cremated soul...
Only the night, only the night,
I now disown everything else
I now have the worthless patience
And apathy of old machines
Which rust slowly in cold junkyards
I now expose my nakedness
To everyone who peeks at me
With the contempt of the dancer
Who has stripteased for countless times
And changed her name with each new dance...
Go ahead now, try to rob me,
I will even give you my pen,
Go ahead now, use it to write
Everything the night said to me
And arm yourselves with it to fight
All the battles lost within me
Yet how can you rob me again
When you told me my legacy
Is not even worth a penny?
Only the night will be my heir...
Only the night, only the night
Will visit my fenced wilderness,
I shall recall all of my howls
My wolves will not wake you again
Deep in the night, deep in the night
My blue sailboat will carry me
Without a breeze yet pushed gently
With the warm breath of all my words
I have the night, I have the night
My blue sailboat will now take me...
February 1998
Ontario, California
Holy Mother
By S. Norashkharian
I saw your face when my daisies smiled at me
And came forward to receive your white presence...
Then your sweetness permeated my tissues
Like the sunshine of the shores of Lebanon...
And everything around me was awakened
Even the fresh green blades of grass affirmed you...
I shall capture your beauty now nerve by nerve
And let it drip from my veins into my soul...
You greeted me, so why should I weep again
If tomorrow did not return my greeting?
Stay with me now so that I may celebrate
The motherhood which yet I have never known...
Alas! I was just two when I walked away
From the woman they said had given me birth...
This winter mourned like it held back tears for years
Help me embrace the winters which are in me...
I bring you now all my songs which were unheard
And the roses which were given back to me...
Holy Mother, will you be there tomorrow
To return my greeting again so dearly?
Ontario, California
February 1998
The Landscape
By S. Norashkharian
The children who were born to us of love
Grabbed our last names and vanished in the crowd...
We had given them all our youthful years
Until poverty leaked from our ceilings...
Yet we still survived with the fittest apes
To stand and speak for our dying species...
But when we even lost our habitats
We mourned like mushrooms in slaughtered forests...
In captivity we had no language
And no address to find our way back home...
We had been displaced and immobilized
Like a toy train which missed one of its rails...
We had forgotten the light which was blocked
By the black curtains hung around our souls...
The morality of the immoral
Had crippled our wills and had humped our backs...
And their religions had chased our spirits
Which developed wings and then flew away...
O those faces which betray all the times
When they plugged their ears from words of wisdom...
How can we now pass beyond our darkness
Without stumbling on bones we recognized...?
How can we unlearn all the formulas
Which define the lines of our absurd lives...?
Where is the country which we had once known
Before it was wiped from all of the maps...?
Alas! The landscape which we saw in dreams
Had yet to be drawn by masters unborn...
Ontario, California
March 1998
It Is Spring...
By S. Norashkharian
When the jasmine changes its dress
From a dark green to purple red
To welcome a thousand white stars
Which will bring the perfume of gods...
And when the earth impregnated
By the flirting kiss of the sun
Feels the movement of the new life
So blissfully in its entrails...
And when the crow sits in the rain
On the branch of a naked tree
Just because it is the highest
And far above the birds of fields...
And when the tree with many hands
Stretched up for supplications
Joins in with a glorious chorus
Which vibrates the rustiest strings...
May you now cleanse as far as the eye can see...
Ontario, California
March 1998
My Sweet Dog
By S. Norashkharian
What could I give you in return, my sweet dog,
For the years you guarded me from solitude?
And for the joy which leaped on me every time
I was benumbed by the growing void in me?
Like a poet you are seldom recognized
For your silent vigilance of predators.
You have no tears yet I heard your inner sobs
When your sister left us behind suddenly.
And you do laugh even at me, yes you do,
Perhaps thinking your old man would never guess.
And when you see the can of beef in my hand
You frisk as if I shall give you the whole world.
Yet in my skin I still carry the needles
Immersed in me by those to whom I gave more.
O my sweet dog, sit beside me and tell me,
Why should you cross our last river without me?
Ontario, California
April 1998
The Men In Exile
By S. Norashkharian
I.
Let the curtain fall on this shameful day!
What! To toil like slaves and not live like men?
To sleep with the stench of sacrifices
We offered like saints and foolish martyrs
Who pulled our talons and drilled in our teeth?
How we honored them! How we honored them!
Let the curtain fall on this shameful day!
What! To chase the gods who fled from their homes
When the time had come to collect our debts?
To be abandoned to the winter frost
By those who waited for our pilgrimage?
How we despised them! How we despised them!
Let the curtain fall on this shameful day!
What! To roam the earth with outgrown spirits
Imprisoned in shells made of minerals
Which could be bought for a handful of coins?
Now who will pay more for calcium and skin?
How we were shortchanged! How we were shortchanged!
Let the curtain fall on this shameful day!
All the doors we knocked fell on our faces!
The cockroaches laughed when we crawled like them!
The intruding ants of our destiny
Designed our pathways to fit their footprints!
How we were misled! How we were misled!
Let the curtain fall on this shameful day!
The eagles we bred in our iron wombs
Became dangling worms in beaks of chickens!
The clouds which waited to welcome their wings
Now condense like lard in our arteries!
How we were betrayed! How we were betrayed!
II.
Let us expose now the beasts among us!
Where are they hiding since they turned away
From those guiding them in desolate lands?
Turn off all the lights! Let the show begin!
Let us see the world in its own contour
Without any glare and without shadows!
Let us now expose the beasts among us!
The darkness they used to veil their vile deeds
We shall spill into all their future years!
Like a moon-less night! Like a dawn-less night!
All the daring wolves which they castrated
Will howl in their ears like a requiem!
Let us now expose the beasts among us!
Let us demonstrate how they murdered us
To remove the gaps of evolution!
With their homicides! With their genocides!
All the missing links of our ancestors!
How they buried them! How they buried them!
Let us now expose the beasts among us!
Bring here their victims! The Homo Sapiens!
Homo Erectus who gave them their heights!
Homo Habilis who showed them their tools!
Bring their citizens! The Civilized Ones!
The homogenized and faceless masses!
Let us now expose the beasts among us!
Let the African come and make his case
Holding the hand of the native Indian!
Let the Jew come forth with the Armenian!
Forty five hundred Iraqi children
Who die every month! Bring them now forward!
III.
Seek words to replace obsolete prayers!
The Nature retreats! The Land vomits waste!
With concrete we shall imprison the earth
And the countless seeds still buried in it!
Animals which lived in our new suburbs
Are caught dead between the zoo and exile!
Seek words to replace obsolete prayers!
Oxygen retreats! We now gasp for breath!
The engines we built have outnumbered us
And they inhale it faster than our lungs!
The yellow cancer hovers above us!
Bald-headed children overfill our wards!
Seek words to replace obsolete prayers!
The Silence retreats! Where shall we seek peace?
Where is our refuge from raiding airwaves?
In which asylum shall we shield our minds?
Our forests are chopped to make Christmas trees
Adorned with bright lights and then trashed in days!
Seek words to replace obsolete prayers!
Liberty retreats! How long will it last?
Our lives are expressed with only keystrokes!
Hollywood strangers mimic our passions
While our hormones bounce wall to self-made wall!
O the agony of oppressed hormones!
Seek words to replace obsolete prayers!
Reverence retreats! We forgot our hymns
When we filled our ears with soap commercials!
Who will lead us now? Which elected clown?
Whose admonition should we now receive?
All the righteous men are in their closets!
IV.
The founding fathers and the idiots reign!
They outnumbered us so we accepted
The democracy they shoved down our throats!
They made us revolve like captive planets
Around the axis they made for our clocks!
How they emptied us! How they emptied us!
The founding fathers and the idiots reign!
Now we have the mobs to define our rage!
They insult the grief which clears our vision
And the pain we use to wash our conscience!
They sell us laughter packaged in sitcoms
And tell us to smile to think we had fun!
The founding fathers and the idiots reign!
We learned to consume faster than termites
So we chewed the studs which support our homes!
Our wants became needs sold in the markets
And when greed killed us faster than freeways
They threw at us more of their credit cards!
The founding fathers and the idiots reign!
Between the time clocks the silent wailing
Hardens on the ice of long monologues!
Between the gray days and the orange dreams
Widens the abyss! The caricature
Of our ideals mocks us each morning!
The founding fathers and the idiots reign!
The freedom to sleep on downtown sidewalks!
The justice of scales loaded with checkbooks!
The land of the brave who run from themselves!
The alienated and dehumanized
In the pursuit of happiness in graves!
V.
When their applause comes one no longer cares!
In vodka we trust! It will deliver
More than the statues which we dressed in gold
And ordained as saints and obeyed like lambs!
Pour the vodka now! Such is the reward
For iconoclasts and wreckers of myths!
When their applause comes one no longer cares!
The silver liquid on diamonds of ice!
Let it baptize us with the sap which flows
In the deepest loins of deprived passions!
Let it call upon the belly dancers
To arouse our lust at feasts of sultans!
When their applause comes one no longer cares!
We shall revisit the holy places
Where we walked naked and kissed the white sand!
We shall seek heaven in the liquor stores!
Two empty bottles in the garbage can
And a canceled check is all we have left!
When their applause comes one no longer cares!
In a hundred years we shall live better
Than old pelicans posing for tourists
For the lowly meals beyond their flight range!
Bring all the bottles to anesthetize
The cynics whose faith was consumed like bread!
When their applause comes one no longer cares!
In a hundred years when our voice thunders
It will pierce the ears even of the fools!
The audience has left and the chairs are bare!
The time has now come! Bring all the bottles!
The men in exile will begin to speak!
Ontario, California
May 1998
The Separation
By S. Norashkharian
"Our life is always a separation
and a more difficult presence."
G. Seferis
"And ever has it been known that love knows not
its own depth until the hour of separation."
Kahlil Gibran
This summer as well sent us callous suns
Moving in and out like unwanted guests
Who bring the torpor of their boring days.
The separation squeezes my lungs
Wraps around my neck and defies my strength.
Yet it never yields. Yet it never leaves.
Let those who still breathe tell their own stories.
Let them tie the necks of their memories
To boulders to sink them in deeper seas.
And if they still rise and float like black oil
Let all of the seas which gave them shelter
Be devoured with fire and be drained like ponds.
How to reach deeper and negotiate
With subterranean questions of conscience
Which shudder and scream when exposed to light?
The separation is my firmament
Of collapsing stars now light years away.
How to move across the abyss within?
It opens my chest like a rough diamond
Pushed by the vandals across window panes.
How to erase marks which were made by cuts?
I hear its footsteps from my empty rooms.
It follows my path from dawn to darkness.
It turns every stone where guilt takes shelter.
Even by absence it rules my presence.
It fills my eyelids with ancient faces.
The past will not yield nor will the future.
Once I had courage to open albums
To reap smiles and sounds from fading landscapes
Which not long ago were warm with sunlight.
I groped for the wrists which still pulsated
And completed words which waited too long.
How to bid farewell when they are still here?
Veins and arteries a thousand years old
Tied us together and mixed blood and genes.
How to separate what was joined by gods?
Some of them followed wealthy caravans
And became hoarders of precious supplies
For the winters which they will never see.
Some of them buckled and were standardized
With limbs shortened or lengthened as required
And transplanted souls which were all alike.
Some were white pigeons raised inside my nest
Who fluttered away as if awakened
By the sudden touch of a magician.
Some wore uniforms to become machines
And please their masters who referred to them
With serial numbers like export products.
Some who yesterday were driftwood from wars
Cast off their culture like a burning gown
And mimicked native bloated consumers.
Some saw me axing weeds to make new trails
And coming from hills with open bruises
So they never went beyond the asphalt.
Some others refused to become members
Of the species which had enslaved its own.
They chewed their leashes so they were despised.
Did they disappear and abandon us
Like war veterans who had surrendered
To the enemy which had moved within?
It seemed that we used a common language
When from the harbor of our birth we sailed.
Our thoughts were not yet edited or jammed.
Now open freeways connect our houses
Yet our souls refuse to be united
Or recognize those we chose to forget.
The separation awaits in ambush
And it digs a hole behind the bushes.
How does it know where shall I rest my skull?
The separation creeps under my ears.
What will it whisper in the last moment
When no one is left to bid me farewell?
Ontario, California
August 1998
You And I
By Shant Norashkharian
Now let us go together you and I
Hand in hand and eyes fixed firmly in the sky
And let us be only to be and not to become
Whether we walk on the low ground or on the road high
Let us be like a dog chasing a butterfly
Or a stream which gives of itself even though it may dry
Yet how many more times can we still say goodbye
To a loved one who left us with the guilt to survive
Let us not wait for this moment to die
Like a newborn child who has not made a cry
A child which left us before we sang its first lullaby
Let us not wait, let us not wait
For another moment that may only be a lie...
And let us hide behind our shutters like a young girl shy
From a conscience which will never cease to harass and pry
Let us cleanse our hearts of the guilt we were made to acquire
From ancient teachings which broke our will to dare and desire
Let us bathe together with a lust which will never tire
As we rub soul against soul and thigh against thigh
To recapture the rapture of our first union of delight
When we still blushed not of shame but passion red and bright
And let us guard our new innocence with a wall of fire
And then give our revived joy wings that it may fly
That it may fly beyond the vision of our mind’s eye
Never to be bound, never to be bound
By laws which were made to keep us down and tied...
And as we turn our faces away from a godless horizon
To search for a path of renewal and self-creation
Let our senses break open their barriers of love
Like overflowing breasts tearing their outworn attire
Let them pour out like the demands of a spoiled brat
And dismiss reason like a lowly maid to the rooms behind
With its piling trash of untreated whys
With its scars of a million lost fights
And like the blood of three arteries pierced with knives
And like the flood of three rivers in a boundless ire
Let them push away years of dust and mire
Let them push away, let them push away
All that we were told was good and holy...
And let us not wait for the arrival of the spring
Because when it is time, beloved,
Your face will reflect the greening of the meadows around us
And your song will awaken the roots that once fell asleep
Under the icy weight of our loneliness and despair
And when it is time the earth will remember its promise
To beckon its children from under the rocks
Then we shall go you and I and visit the places
Where we wept in darkness and shivered with fear
O, those alleys which only have walls and fences
Where we lay down waiting night after night to die
Do you remember, do you remember
All those alleys where once we waited to die...!
And how we tried to mix the graveyard silence within
With the omnipresent noises of intruding machines
And the unending screams of clocks and telephones
And modern toys with which we disguised our fears
There was a land somewhere from which our feet were plucked
A land of cedars and salty air and bullets and tears
Where our sons died faster than their mothers could mourn
A land where the fragrance of lemon and olive trees
Became the solace of old men in apartments without walls
And how we tried to forget the blood in the same streets
Where we had played hide and seek and sucked on peaches
And how we failed, and how we failed
To forgive those who brought their weapons to test them on our land...
No, we cannot stir the memory of all the words
Which were left unsaid because they could not be said
And all the prayers which were interrupted by rockets
And all the hopes which began here yet in another world will end
We cannot play for the orphan who was burned alive
Or dance for the bride who was widowed before she was wed
When the ships of the land of the free and the brave
Paved their villages with sixteen inch shells
Yet do we know those clean-shaven beasts in designer suits
With unpublished numbers and Wall Street phone books
Do we know how they trade stocks and options of blood
Do we know where, do we know where
They gather to trade countries and legs and arms?
Let us go together you and I
To the other shore of this river which we must cross
Where we shall gather the fragments of Truth
Broken by the prophets and peddlers of souls
To fit them within the covers of their books
And with them we shall build our faces again
Because then we shall know who we are
Without the roles and images that now define us
And perhaps we shall find peace like a sweet lap dog
Which does not know love yet cannot not love
O, that peace which does not choose whom and what to love
Can we find peace, can we find peace
When we fail every time we choose to love?
Ontario, California
January, 1998
I dedicate this page to the great Frederic Chopin, who gave me much strength when I was in great need. May the Lord God bless him forever.
"Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art."
"I'm a revolutionary, money means nothing to me."
Frederic Chopin
Hats off, gentlemen -- a genius!
Robert Schumann
It Is Dawn Again...
By S. Norashkharian
“They died saying 'We don't have time', touching some rays of the sun.”
George Seferis
“Here is the hell for hermit's thoughts: here great thoughts are boiled alive and cooked small.
Here all great emotions decay: here only little, dry emotions may rattle!
Do you not smell already the slaughter-houses and cook-shop of the spirit?
Does this city not reek of the fumes of slaughtered spirit?
Do you not see the souls hanging like dirty, limp rags?”
Friedrich Nietzsche
I.
It is dawn again, again and again...
A lawn mower rapes the silence again,
And then it is raped again and again
By helicopters and a savage train
It is dawn again, again and again,
But the air is full of polluted rain...!
Drag now, drag and drag your blankets away
And let your complaints be dispersed again
Like the heated gas from your exhaust pipes...!
Rise again and run, rise and run and run
And then ride again, round and round again
The merry-go-round of the modern man...!
Forget your prayers, rush, rush to your sinks
With guilty faces shaped by your bosses
You are late again, again and again,
So apologize to your gold faucets
Your marble toilets and designer clothes
Ask your shiny cars to forgive again...!
But do not forget, no, do not forget
Your unrealized dreams which you have confined
Just between your death and your pension plans...!
Do not forget your aborted feelings
And the leftover morsels of your hopes
Which stink like last week's dirty dinner plates...!
It is dawn again, again and again,
Who came to rob you of your yawn again?
Like startled lambs your eyes are frozen
Yet not with horror, yet not with anger,
Only with endless anticipation
Like disappointed erect penises...!
II.
Go and mortgage your future breaths again
For their future shares in their future stocks...!
You have now become their foster children
To be recruited in the ranks of slaves...!
Go ahead and wait like abandoned dogs
On their driveways which lead to their locked doors...!
Your sleeping cities will soon be arranged
Into rows and lines of bursting freeways
It is time for your journey now again
Your journey from crib to car to coffin...!
Follow your freeways, your concrete leashes,
Follow them to where their ends have been nailed...!
It is time for your kamikaze rites
You must perform them again and again
Your Green Emperor will ask for more blood
There will be no one to question His right
Friday is payday, He will fill your mouths
With another dose which will bring you back...!
And as you wait in your late model toys
Like graveyard statues of stony patience
Clinging to your souls with your profane hands
As you wait and wait and you wait again
Load your eardrums with the mass media lies
Which you will digest and build consensus...!
And while your starved minds wander in your malls
Like confused tourists with ravenous eyes
Devouring more things yet devoured by things
Your despotic tasks will whip you again
As you chew and chew your hours for them
While wagging your tails for more of the same...!
III.
O you woeful mobs with happy faces,
You gave your clocks teeth to nibble your years...!
Their arms will pierce you like spears of poachers
When you are outrun like tired elephants...!
Why did you invite these unwanted guests
To feed on your lives and exhale despair?
O you butterflies with the hearts of moths,
You made gods of clay which squeeze you like clay
And demand to smell your burned offerings...!
While you never miss a weed in your lawns
Your unexamined and unkempt beliefs
Are trapped since childhood in your airtight heads...!
No, do not open those Egyptian tombs
The air sealed inside will infect us all...!
Do not spread the virus of the dead
Let ignorance live in its own darkness...!
And why have a mouth which spews out bubbles
If you are nourished from your intestines?
Yet those of you who have dared to be free
Were chased in the woods and brought back in chains...!
And those of you who raised their heads too high
Were leveled like grass to the lowest blades...!
And those with a tongue different from the rest
Were thrown to the streets to shout like the fools...!
It is dawn again, again and again,
The breeze from my shores calls me now again...!
In the alleys where the mind fears to walk
I hear the music played by the wise men...!
And between my spine and my fingertips
My longing drips till it floods me again...!
Ontario, California
March, 1998
Men On Their knees
“How can I get into this coop?
The roof comes to my shoulders
And however far I look
I see men on their knees
As though saying their prayers.”
George Seferis
We are inmates of invisible cells
With verdicts bearing our own signatures.
Our submissive napes and obedient knees
Bend with reflexes conditioned by fears.
Our existence waits to be assembled
Like pieces of toys packaged in boxes.
Our fragmented souls wander bewildered
Like a symphony always changing keys.
Just the other day an old man told me:
“We even rehearse our spontaneous moves.
We walk like shadows behind closed windows
And send greeting cards written by strangers.”
I answered: “My friend, to live is to stoop
Like a red tulip bowing from its weight.
I outgrew my coop by size but not strength
My lips are failing to hold back my words.
The white canvas which once displayed my soul
Is now bursting with my imploding sighs.
My life has begun in another world
Yet my feet are fixed here in clay and rocks.”
Then the old man growled like a cheap tuba:
“How much poetry was wasted on you?
Why do you still scrub the elegant floors
Of the palaces where you were despised?
You are like sailors who dared the oceans
Before they became beached like the lost whales.
You were born with fire in your intestines
Yet now you flicker like birthday candles.
Those who walk alone must burn their own trails
Like comets which cross through the universe.
If you want to grow then submerge your roots
In the living mud thrown at your own face.”
Ontario, California
May, 1998
"Brocatto Orchre" By Fabian Perez
"Brocatto Rosa" By Fabian Perez
Danae 1636 By Rembrandt
Lies! Lies! Lies!
By S. Norashkharian
"For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night."
William Shakespeare
Lies! Lies! Lies!
Give me my walls, give me my walls
And the cement to fill my ears!
Give me my flags and my anthem
I shall erase my beginnings!
Give me the glue for my eyelids!
I have witnessed all the trenches
Where justice left its skeletons!
Give me the grit of my comrades!
Give me hammers, give me axes
I shall destroy all of the ramps
Which connect me to my species!
Give me new genes, give me new genes!
Chase the peddlers of the half-truths
And weigh their guilt by their own scales!
Identify the tools they use
To sterilize the greatest minds!
Beware of those who creep on walls
They have no legs to match their heights!
Beware of those who mix acid
With milk only to make it white!
And those who hang heroes all night
Yet sing praises for them all day!
Beware, beware, beware, beware
My little ones beware of them!
Lies! Lies! Lies!
I have chewed the seeds of defeat
And one by one I spat them out!
I am detached from the edges
Which define my vague existence!
I shall collect my shattered faith!
I shall protect my battered gates!
Ah! To go on with a journey
Which left a trail of sunken ships!
To be promised the highest peaks
By wings which were not meant to fly!
To cling firmly to the moments
Which have not yet lost their glitter!
And to forget the victories
Which passed by me like budding girls!
And to rebuild the spine which cracked
By all the doors slammed at my back!
Chase them away, chase them away
The vile merchants of innocence!
And tear away from their smooth mouths
The grins of the Turkish pashas!
And cut away all the tumors
Which they have bred within our souls!
Give me the voice which will silence
All of the past and future lies!
Ontario, California
March, 1998
My Poor Arab!
By S. Norashkharian
My poor Arab! The abused child of the world!
The darkest clouds blown by the winds of the West
Have cast shadows upon your land once again…
Who knows this time which of your sons they will claim?
Which of your towns will vanish with keyboard strokes
And how many friends will you search for in vain?
And how much blood, how much blood will they vomit
Flooding your streets and your bedrooms once again?
O my brother, where will you now hide from them?
They call themselves civilized…!
Yet their warplanes will soon reappear
With blue and red and white colors marked on them
And fifty stars boasting their crimes without shame…!
Soon they will creep into your space once again
Invisible like the fingers guiding them
Raping! Raping! The virgin face of your skies
Chasing your nights away with their blinding fires
And bomb by bomb and shell by shell tearing down
All that you built stone by stone and breath by breath…!
They call themselves civilized…!
O, my brother, close your eyes and plug your ears!
No! Do not wait for what your dawns will unveil!
For their terror will make you hope for the nights
Which are trapped in the black holes of collapsed stars…!
No! Do not wait for the yellow dust of death
To clear away from the limbs spread everywhere
Like the remnants of your defiled dignity…!
And do not wait for your mothers to stumble
Upon the charred shoes their children left behind…!
They call themselves civilized…!
Yet these bullies will trade your blood for your oil
And the blood of their sons for their bank accounts…!
So let us pump your black liquid down their throats
Until they gasp like ducks caught in their oil spills
And while it flows in the veins and tentacles
Of their global conglomerates and World Banks
Let us burn it! Let us burn it with revenge!
For they built them to rule our fate with black hearts
And they bred them to squeeze our lungs like pythons…!
They call themselves civilized…!
Where is your voice, where is your voice my brother?
Where is your voice and why is it lost again
In the uproar of lynching mobs which exclaim:
“Entertain us, entertain us now or else!
If you have no more scandals give us wars!”
Where is your voice and how is it missed again
By armies of reporters with satellites?
And which court ruled that you deserved punishment
For suffering the curse of your own tyrant?
They call themselves civilized…!
“Allahou Akbar!” You cry from your minarets
“Bism Illahi El Rahman El Rahim!”
And you bow down like a zebra caught by throat
And accept your Allah’s will with frozen eyes
While the High Priests debate your fate in Councils
Which they have made to legalize their vile deeds…
O, the High Priests and the nations they butchered!
Five times a day you accept your Allah’s will
My dear brother, how will you now accept theirs?
They call themselves civilized…!
Walk with me now beyond borders drawn for us
And beyond the deserts where we lived like ghosts
Without footprints and without a signature
And beyond all of the fountains where our lips
Blistered with thirst which could never become quenched
