The Armenians are’t wanted,
Christians in Muslim land,
we have to make Turkey for Turks,
they’re not part of the plan.
The kulaks are class enemies,
hoarding all the best land,
it’s fine to starve the productive,
they’re not part of the plan.
The Jews have undermined us all,
this is an Aryan land,
gas them to build a brand new Reich,
they’re not part of the plan.
We must make a Great Leap Forward,
make metal, not till land,
peasants may die, but we have more,
they’re not part of the plan.
Let’s take it back to Year Zero,
and reshape this whole land,
send tainted to the Killing Fields,
they’re not part of the plan.
The unborn just get in the way,
don’t need them in this land,
what’s life compared to convenience?
They’re not part of the plan.
These -istaphobic right-wingers
are blights upon our land,
let’s kill the lie that is freedom,
they’re not part of the—
Wait—hey, who gave them all guns? Oh shi—
The famous mountain where Noah came to rest,
ending the ecliptic flood, building an altar for time as test.
Flourished kingdoms at the upper Tigris grew,
Babylonia and Urardhu created powers to sew.
Persian legends refers the holy Vulcan as the cradle of human race,
Armenians built a monastery in honor to St. Jacob’s pace.
Mount Ararat as omnipresent and utterly elusive,
snow capped peaks imaginative conclusive.
Magical countenance almost not of this earth,
crisp air in endless blue white mountain infinite birth.
Center of legends, myth and story,
the fire God Vahagn stumbles upon Ararat with all gory.
Giving life to Tigris and Euphrates River,
pagans visited ghost of royal ancestor in shiver.
Armenians and their homeland of Kurdistan under fire,
centuries in war for nationhood and holy place entire.
Good spirits in distillation known as Ararat Brandy,
Sir Winston Churchill called his favorite tipple, ‘handy’.
No Arc ever found beside many tries on Mount Ararat still today,
keeping mysteries in holy books still at bay.
Bone to bone
connected dna
time has stolen
soft words
nothing to say
atrocity
Armenians
slaughtered
Turkish delight
terrorists in the night
millions dead
who is right
who is left
who will confess?
a sorry would maybe do
instead
Erdogan
wishes to murder you too
In The House Of Dengbej
Three sisters sit
Each in crimson velvet
And veiled hair.
Relate tales
Of interracial love.
Of Armenian Boys and Kurdish Gals.
This is a town of
Cobbled streets and redbrick houses of the ancient Lore.
Diyarbakir, Sur.
Fidus Achates: an Armenian gal and a Kurdish girl
Are no more. The ghosts of the Armenians; translucent
Still linger on the mud walls.
Poplar trees cast melancholy shadows
Over the last remaining residents
Mostly Kurdish
Soon to join the ghosts of the Armenians?
Still the guerrilla resistance continues.
Behind the soiled curtains of white lace.
Death is a banality. Blood spills on baked soil
Daily.
Freedom is a distant land to be conquered.
Wine making and relating tales of ancient lores
And the allure. Lured the youth to Sur.
The House of Dengbej in Sur.
Finest stories are spun like sugar
And spread from tongue to tongue.
* Sur was once a very cosmopolitan town with a harmonious community. It is now a town of bitter conflict between the Turks and Kurdish.
The fault line streamed from the Nazi state,
The Jewish Shoah, Holocaustic fate.
Mongolia, Croatia, and Belarus,
Humanity had no excuse.
Rwanda, Burundi, and South Sudan,
The full scope of terror's sad sway,
In Cambodia they pointed their fingers
To where the horrid 'Killing Fields' lay.
The dire purges in Mother Russia, by the brutal Stalinist guild,
Ancient Turkey, the Ottoman Empire, so many Armenians killed,
And legions of Greeks to their deaths there went,
Assyrians too, until nearly spent.
The fault line leaves remains that burn,
We see them ever, and then,
The hard way is how we have to learn,
Over and over again.
The fault line runs on steel rails across the "American" land,
A tomb, a gloom, an iron doom, for my wife's native band.
Dinner with old friends:
salmon with red cabbage, asparagus, Caesar's salad, penne with
broccoli, two white wines.
Jane Jacobs could analyze how it all got to our table
or even how their daughter came to us from Cambodia.
The economy or market bringing a thing of beauty, the farms, the trucks,
such comfort. The ancients knew this too
yet we are anxious about famine, genocide and nuclear war.
How can we organize (govern) ourselves to end self-imposed suffering?
That Quebec and Puerto Rico may secede peacefully at any time a
majority chooses is a source of pride. Why not Kurds, Chechyns,
Tibetans and Armenians?
Difficult to write a poem about it. At table, candlelight, we debate
or whine about the other side winning and making a mess
of our lives. The election could be stolen, tampering with voting
machines,
what policy question does that possibility raise? War in Iraq,
school testing, prison population. Religion, the abyss surrounding the
little promontory life.
It'll all work out in the end. Go to your daily practice, be a good citizen.
Another failed effort to write what I mean. Such confusion, yet
two white wines.
You are cruel and stopped counting your treasons
You're respected Muslim nevertheless.
You don't need to give yourself a true reason
To pray, it's scheduled five times nonetheless.
You do not appreciate expensive wine
Although you drink yet you abstain from pork.
Minaret calls for prayer, its surface shines,
The mosque is atop. "Now left at this fork!"
Passing empty field, a small town, then uphill
Following neighbours and your dear loved ones.
The sight of an old cripple gives you a shrill,
His look is strict but begging you to come.
The view is of artsy brush of Monet, Claud,
Quiet murmur is prayer of imam.
In distance majestic Christian Ararat
Is hypnotizing. Now here it's Islam.
Story goes back a century, it's a while,
Thank God, the world remembers genocide.
Human's Id is nibble, double faced and vile,
Armenians hold their heads up with pride.
You Armenians who question my identity...
Who whisper behind my back and smirk
Considering me a half breed
Not pure
The child of a mixed marriage
You who refuse to speak to me
In your mother tongue
Because my words falter
And my accent is disgraceful
You who turn your back on me
Unwilling to ratify
My identity
Unable to include me
In your inner circle
Of the chosen purebreds
Be ashamed!!!
Yes, be ashamed and hang your heads
My identity is not based
On the language I speak
Nor the knowledge I know
Nor my appearance
Or customs I follow
Slash my wrists
Slash them both and see…
Let the blood flow
And mingle with the red
Of the blood of the martyrs
Splashed on the Armenian flag
See also the orange in my blood
Reflecting the color of the fertile land
That brings forth the nourishing wheat
See also the magnificent blue of my veins
Matching the blue of the flag
The color of the pure sky
That looks down and smiles
And blesses my beloved country
My motherland……
Armenia!
For Nathan A's Contest
They fell by the way...
The old
The sick
The famished
Discarded heaps of humanity.
They jumped to their deaths...
The beautiful
The young
The desirable
Preferring to die than be ravaged.
They marched on....
During the day
During the night
With no destiny in sight
Endlessly enduring...
The insults
The beatings
The rapes
The stench of death.
They bowed their heads...
Their blood soaked the ground
Their screams muffled
Their anguish stifled
Their hearts torn
Their hopes murdered.
They still march on...
Through the wilderness
Of our seared consciences
Ever searching
for a final resting place.
Their blood stll cries out...
For justice
For acknowledgement
For restoration
For healing.
The Armenian Genocide
Will NOT be forgotten...
By all Armenians
By me
By God!
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