Author Archives: babylon crashing

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i want to sing only for you

08 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by in Armenian, Poetry, Translation

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Someday I will find a friend to help me re-learn all the Armenian I knew while in Peace Corps. Now I feel frustrated, I’ve forgotten so much. But I know one day I’ll sing again, sing beautifully.

Ես մուրացկան.
Ես ուզում եմ այցելել ձեզ.
Բայց ես չեմ կարող երգել.
Խնդրում ենք սովորեցնել ինձ երգել.
Ես ուզում եմ երգել է միայն ձեզ համար.

.

I am a beggar.
I want to see you.
But I can not sing.
Please teach me to sing.
I want to sing only for you.

the road to enlightenment has many paths

08 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by in Erotic, Poetry, sonnet

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“… loveroot, silk thread, crotch and vine.”
— Walt Whitman

I’m not interested in who suffered more,
just those who mastered pain’s blood alphabet.
Trust joy. If what you long for is a door
that will lead you to love do not forget
that the door is here. What other purpose
could the orgasm have but to let me
talk to gods? At the moment of climax
when I leave behind ego and body
I call that act enlightenment – no hate,
attachment or pain – only bliss. Only
pilgrims working hard at their nightly prayers,
at blood’s loveroot. Don’t trust those who dictate
the path to wisdom. They are not holy
like you and all of your sticky fingers.

 

 

 

 

view from gyumri of mount aragats

07 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by in Armenia, Illustration and art

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view from Gyumri of Mount Aragats

Everyone talks about Mt. Ararat as a glorious mountain because it’s out of touch, but Aragats is the mountain I love. It was where I went to wander one dark, dark December night until the battle-fey found me. I was 26 and wanted to fade away in the blizzard that shut the mountains down and I decided to walk to Yerevan from Gyumri because I couldn’t live with the weight of having the children I tried to take care of in the orphanage die.

my mistress’s witcheries

07 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by in Poetry, sonnet

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“It is knitting time,” a friend, a witchling,

informed me. She knew secrets to distill

dyes, how to tink, frog and yarf. Loom knitting

was her passion. “I was taught how to kill.

I was trained in the witcheries of war.

But,” she added, “Blood does not interest me.”

She lived in a lone mountain pasture, far

from the engines of men and their ugly

tools. That spring she taught me how to prepare

wool for spinning; how to charm honey bees

from their hives; how to talk to willow, yew

and oak. “I was trained only for warfare,

but witchcraft is far better. This craft frees

me for my loves: knitting, goats and now you.”

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NOTE:

For a while I wanted to write a knitting poem, but since I don’t actually know how to knit I wrote this instead. The terms I use in the poem:

FROG: To rip back (when you say, “rip it, rip it”) by removing the needles from the project and pulling on the loose end of the yarn.

TINK: To undo knitted stitches by reversing the knitting motion, effectively un-knitting the stitch.

YARF: Slang for “yarn-barf.” A big lump of yarn that accidentally gets pulled out of a new center-pull ball, usually when you’re trying to find the end.