sand-alone stand

this is my poesy sandbox
in which I play
alone
hurling words
instead of stone

forging alphabetic tracks
with an iron will
to drive my train of thought

on syllabic steel wheels of twenty-six
moves my train
wagons of words
heavy with freight boxes of pain
within which bone marrows of memories contain

these words on wheels
locomote to desolate lands
imparting adage of the tongue-tied dumb
erringly called wisdom
so it can be heard by the blind ears of the brainy
and seen by the deaf eyes of the walleyed fool
but understood by neither minds

trundling its way downhill
to the valley of despair
in a serpentine motion it undulates
fired by coals of dark desire
it rises up again
but towards calvary this time
a hopeless mound of doom
shouldering a life-size cross
and three rusty nails to boot

unblinking sentences void of punctuation
ramble and stutter on staccato rails
stuck on a pair of unparalleled tracks of truth
they cough and creep slowly towards the last loop

destination?
nowhere!

well within sight
carrying a lump of a body
subtracted from its bone
barely able to alight

I am home again
back to the place I never left
alone again
face down in my sandbox
I am whole again

Time Ticks and also Tricks

Have you noticed? death is not in the habit of knocking on anybody's door before entering the last bastion of life. Death gets in whether the door is closed or ajar...

... and he gets what he wants! With scythe in one hand and an hour glass in the other, The Grim Reaper shows up in the nick of time, but sharp on time -- every TIME, and has yet to be tardy once, no chance.

He asks for no permission to gain access to anyone's home no mater how sequestered, gated, or fortified his target's abode. He knows when to arrive and does so with deadly deft. Cloaked in black grubs, he shows up at the doorstep of any address irregardless how distant that zip-code places his prey's place on the map of escapism.

Hitherto, no one has been able to duck his head low enough or jump his feet high enough to avoid the flight path of his scythe. He comes like a professional thief -- quietly, for he holds a perfect record in destroying lives of young and old alike. He gets paid gravely well for his services with ossified coins of skulls and bones. The noise we sometimes hear is the ones we make. He never speaks and never fails; he forevermore gets his guests by the scruff of their necks in one fell swoop.

At times The Pale Rider is a little cynical, but almost always ethical and merciful with his scythe's swipe; for he wants neither to scare off his victims on a wild-goose chase, causing them to run away from the inevitable nor does he want to be the cause of their premature death, as if we don't see that coming anyway.

Death! The great proprietor of all. The last heir of every individual's closing-breath is within call.

The knowledge he possesses  is singular, precise, and most sharp  -- half science and half art. His mission in life, I mean death, is to make a TIMELY cut, just as when the last grain of sand is in suspension before its fall within the narrow vitreous neck of two states; between two diametrically opposite worlds of is and was -- thus, there and then, the cutter cuts the umbilical cord of time, for good -- lights out.

Welcome to a new condition of primordial IS-ness abyss; innocent state of forgetfulness; playfully pure with provisional freedom, primed to reignite again the flames in the loins of a pair of Lethean players, to help life rear its head once more from another womb man. Say hello in crying, now as you've done so many times before, to your new Mom and Dad, in the likeness of good ole Adam and Eve.

No one knows, though, where the next "when", and when the next "where" would take place. So, to the not-so-dead-yet, I say: Pay attention to what goes on between the boundaries of your life's innumerable alphas and omegas; the staged platform upon which you forgot to perform your part well-enough to retire during the last go-around. Remember? No? Welcome, then, to Fantasy Land of Life and Death, all over again.

Every then and Again

Out in the hind end
Of nowhere I stand.
My heart beating da-DUM, da-DUM ...,
           In iambic metrical-feet of doom.

I quickly recalled,
The stories I once told,
Of sorrow and pain. 
           Though a bit bloody and quite inhumane.

Ararat witnessed,
A turkic serpent,
Creep from steppes due east,
           Gorging itself on victims in hellish love feast.

In Dante's inferno,
Seventeenth canto,
The Bard equates a reptile
           To tartars and turks in the seventh circle of hell.

In nineteen fifteen,
This genocide machine,
Was mowing down a race.
           Splattering innocent blood in God's face.

Churches were destroyed,
With mohammedan joy,
And thumbing their nose
            At Christ our Savior, without any remorse.

Same turkish monster,
Century later,
With a forked tongue it speaks.
           Deny that they killed Armenians or Greeks.

turks tell us often,
"No genocide happened;
No Armenians were slain,
           But we'll do that which we didn't do again."

This is Our Rock -- Ararat

High above the firm feet and mighty calves that anchor --;

High above the bearing groins and creative loins that nurture --;

And high above the uplifting chin and snow-capped peaks that thunder -- Soars Mount Ararat.

Piercing the virgin blue sky behind the diaphanous clouds of Cirrus, vested in silk-spun gossamer cover. Further down, tighter knit Cumulus clouds providing extra linen for good measure; bashfully try to hide the petrous flesh of the mountain's magnificent and titillating physique.

Rock and Sky make love in dizzying altitude of 16854 feet, well above the unimaginative sea-level mundane worlds. This is No Gibraltar, folks -- this is ARARAT -- our Faith our Blood our Rock.

Welcome to our Rock.

Firmly planted and rooted in organic lands of Armenia since the get-go periods of historicity, so needs no re-introduction to all those swines who continue to roll in the mud of revisionism.

Ararat faces Yerevan, just look and see. This is exactly why Ararat has turned its back to those who practiced genocide on its autochthonous people. Ararat says to those marauders today, while humbly borrowing a sobering line from Matthew 7:23, "I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice evil."

Is genocide not the ultimate Evil? Of course it IS! And it's dogged Denial too.

Long live, Ararat! Armenia's unshakable rock of faith.

The Confessional Wall

The last time I saw grandpa,
he was barely standing,
leaning against my bedroom wall,
mostly lamenting -- as if demanding.

I heard him whisper some things
to the ears of that wailing wall.
And he began telling stories which cannot be told.
Words cannot be spoken in thick voice of blood;
there's no fluid grammar for that kind of clot.

As he finished spilling
his secrets one by one,
specter of red-fezed ghouls
began to rage on.
And in less than an hour,
God bless his soul -- he was gone.

Rest in peace, grandpa.

"They double killed your grandma,
right before my blind eyes,
but I saw it all, clearly I recall,
through the lens of my mind's eye,"
as he confided his grief to the wall.

As I looked at him in silence,
I noticed those eyes of his,
which have seen nothing but dungeon
since 1915,
still managed to swell
with substance of sorrow,
as his weak body trembled
for what's yet to follow.

"I watched the whole thing play out,
though my eyes were plucked,
using my ear-sight instead,
as a new source of light," 
and as the Turks slaughtered
with demonic might,
that is what remembers my mind," he stressed.

... and he broke down and cried.

"bear with me, my dear child,
I'll tell you how grandma died,
though sometimes I wonder,
if there's a thing called God.
Well, why didn't He interrupt?"
he towered his voice and yammered.

"Forgive me God, I cry your mercy ...
I still believe in YOU, You, you, y--,"
he lowered his voice and stammered.

 "I heard a crying baby
sliced out of your grandma's belly.
The newborn's womb-to-tomb journey,
thus ended in a hurry."

As he bewailed in pain,
he went on to say,

"They cut down your grandma,
and baby-uncle too;
 in one stroke of the scimitar
 the Turks butchered two."

A Tiny Swallow's Journey Back Home

At this intersection of history where genocide and denial still collide to this day, we look out wide-eyed with shock at the smoldering wreckage of injustice. Every year, for one-hundred-and-one times since 1915, we have felt the same genocidal collision reverberating within the deepest core of our souls.

On this most solemn day of remembrance, I humbly urge all Armenian hearts to beat as one. Hence, join your heart with mine, for our souls will journey to places where eyes don't like to see, nor feet dare to tread, alone.

With a heavy heart, therefore, inward bound I go as I travel back in mind and spirit. A tightly held crucifix in one hand guiding my soul and a flickering candle in the other guiding my eyes. With prayer of “Der Voghormia” on my lips, I tread a tortuous path of one hundred and one night-years in length, taking one and a half million steps towards the foothills of the Armenian Golgotha of 1915.

Suddenly, It was 1915 – again.

The Ottoman Turks were committing the first genocide of the twentieth century with Mongolian zeal. These scimitar-wielding beasts spared no one. They butchered helpless men and women, and raped young girls before their fathers’ eyes, making physical death a welcome choice for any father. They killed innocent children and their half-dead grandparents. An old man in terror clasping a shaky cane in one hand while the other pointing to God in the direction of uncertainty. Not even babies were spared, as these ruthless killers snuffed out even the youngest of souls.

I see torture, mayhem, doom, and bloodshed under my mind's eyelid -- behold! The first Christian nation is being sacrificed like a lamb on its own native land under the watchful eye of heaven, just like the Messiah some nineteen hundred years before. I must confess, I could well believe now the tales told by elders of tortured poets of yesteryear.

For I see the dry inkwells atop the bloodstained desks of Daniel Varoujan and Siamanto, thirsting for words, empty of its poet's breath. Crusts of unspoken words forever lost in the black hole of memories. But suddenly those inkwells swelled with red ink of blood that year. A year in which, the unheard cries and wails of the victims spoke volumes in bursts of blood to a deaf world that would not listen nor could hear. Its ear oozing with thick wax of indifference.

Lord Have Mercy! I pray once more, as I reflect.

On that black Saturday of April 24, 1915, the sad western sun set on our native lands never to rise again from the horizon of despair. The ensuing night was painful and long, casting one hundred and one years of darkness upon our collective soul. Hitherto, Armenians at large have known no peace, no resolution, no restitution, no recognition, and no justice from neither above nor below the firmaments.

Staggering thus under the backbreaking lumber of the genocide cross, this Christian nation’s children have trodden the Via Dolorosa far too long to Calvary of disappointment. The moral arc that has curved over vast tundras of time has not yet bent towards justice. We wait, yet again, for one hundred and first time, for the bell to toll -- justice! Yes, justice, a word which has yet to ring even once in the halls of governments worldwide. For ten decades, the world’s major powers continue to hold a mocking moment of perpetual silence in callous disinterest.

For a century and counting, Armenians have made effort on effort to free themselves from the talons of the genocide curse. We wait for our God, or any lesser god who would listen that day, to show a more kindly face to this nation. How many more than one and a half million innocent people need to be slaughtered to reach the consciousness at large? How far must a river of blood flow to reach the ocean of justice at last?

In deference to the 250 Armenian intellectuals who lost their lives on April 24, 1915, I take poetic license by asking a few ponderous questions on their behalf while expecting no viable answer in return:

What yet unspoken words must we say
To a blank page that doesn't hear?
What yet unpainted words must we brush
On an empty canvas that won't adhere?
How do we come up with a story
In less blood clots than all the ones
That had been told a million and a half times before?

In weal and woe,
The narrative always remains starkly the same,
No matter how briskly or gently
We mix our alphabet or paint.
Such IS the tragedy of our history;
The sore history of our story.

Every inch of road we travel,
Is no different to our tired feet.

In the womb of mother earth lie our forebears, bones crushed to chunks and dust beneath the feet of the enemy who continue to stomp on our holy lands. Blood spilling from our forefathers’ necks have found the hidden cracks beneath the earth, clotting shut the fault lines of history. The new generations of Armenians will, some eventual day, show the world that our fallen victims silently sleep within the innards of our lands awaiting justice. Today, their orphaned spirits still search for the remains of the ancestral lands.

The descendants of the Armenian genocide survivors continue to bear the gruesome weight of grief in their hearts. Eyes downcast, with pondering heads and wandering feet they try in vain to find their way back home. Walking divergent paths on foreign lands farther away each day from where home used to be.

We are like swallows ever flying about and finding no shelter to rest our aching bodies and splintered souls. We long to find the familiar safety and warmth under the eaves of the cattle barns dotting our sweet homeland. I am burning with high desire that someday, that little swallow, our symbol of hope, after one hundred and one night-year journey, will rise again to build its nest within the cracks atop the church belfries of Ararat land, nearer to God, once more.

Arsy-Versy Vista

albeit, this may sound
a bit asinine on one hand
-correction, hind end-
but right on the proverbial
sphincteric button on the other

considering the tail-end
ass-backward view taken
by the myopic hoi polloi
birthed lassoed in their own
self-noosing nuchal cord

a devolutionary society
witlessly lapping in cycles
at wanton peloton pace
in prodigality and waste

a passel of polypeds
with humanoid trace
of theroid mammalian race


if  you  want   to  change
the  spluttering  scenery
undulating   right   before
your nose 'n eyes- you've
got to  stop  following the
herd- stop  being on  the
hoof before reaching the
promised   land   of   the
slaughterhouse -----------

get off  your four  NOW!
and firmly stand on your
own two hominine hoofs
previously known to you
as FEET ------------------
                but you forgot


invest in your humanity!
              exalt it!
            exult in it!
           reclaim it!
         celebrate it!