Category Archives: Poetry

shadows follow

10 Thursday Oct 2013

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Most people think that shadows follow, precede or surround beings or objects. The truth is that they also surround words, ideas, desires, deeds, impulses and memories.
— Elie Wiesel

If my memories could have only slept
in Yerevan; if I would have never
faced the sky’s worrisome slackness, windswept
spirits swept between mountains and further
rocks; if the swifts and skylarks had only
saved me; then telling you of what happened
would be utterable. My skull’s memory
feels like an oak-beam ripped in two, opened
by force. Hesitantly I step forward.
I want to tell you how this all began
but pain is potent and drives everything
away. There is no magic, no numbered
spell to ease this. No. I left Yerevan
and went north, which was all my undoing.

wreckage’s fate

10 Thursday Oct 2013

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Was there enough time to know the wreckage
that I soon would be facing? There were swifts,
skylarks, over Republic Square. Savage
small things. I would sit at a cafe, the gifts
from home—letters—spread out on the table
before me, drinking surch and garejur.
Find me a story teller or fable
maker, someone who doesn’t need liqueur
to help forget. Is it wreckage’s fate
to be wreckage? Savage words and bright birds
and I still have nightmares—all in a row.
But still … to have time to sit, watch and wait.
That’s a gift. To have time to write down words
of our fall; to have time enough to know.

][][

notes:

The Republic Square, or Hanrapetu’tyan Hraparak (Հանրապետության հրապարակ) as it is called in Armenian, is the large central square in the heart of Yerevan. It is intersected by Abovyan, Nalbandyan, Vazgen Sargsyan and Amiryan streets as well as Tigran Mets avenue. During my summer training (1995) in Peace Corps I would sit at a little cafe outside the National Gallery and History Museum, drinking coffee, surch (սուրճ) and beer, garejur (գարեջուր) and watching the skylarks circle in the sky far over head. I liked that particular cafe partly because it was fun to people watch (everyone passes through the square at some point) but also because the layout of the square gives anyone sitting at the cafe an obscured view of Mt. Ararat, which is always a nice thing.

mountain mountain mountain

10 Thursday Oct 2013

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But stay tender. Stay enchanted. Mountain,
mountain, mountain. I drank you like vodka,
so you weren’t useless like a grave. Heathen
women prayed for you and so did Noah.
We flew in during the city’s blackout.
I didn’t realize just how you dazzled
until I fell in love with your devout
colors: blue hues cut into deep purple.
Everywhere I went that summer I spied
you. Then, when Turkish gunships attacked
Kurdish towns, smoke darkened your eastern side.
People still pray to you. We build abstract
myths then tear them down. There’s nothing cryptic
about how this wayfarer is homesick.

disgrace

10 Thursday Oct 2013

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These memories, these harsh memories, marred
with the stink of self-hatred and hard drink.
Meager flowers. Petals. Sparse leaf. A shard
I still cannot dislodge. I use to think
that time would dull them; to think that time’s cure
would make them all fade. Then I tried to write.
But what words are there for the dead? What poor
sequence or meager spell would ease the spite
I feel for myself? P.T.S.D. … they
said. Survivor’s guilt. A world with no lust.
Let me write my erotica, pretend
that the spiritual life is the best, pray
that this shard will loosen one day. It must.
I must. I must begin. I must begin.

][][

notes

P.T.S.D., Post-traumatic stress disorder, is a severe psychological condition that might develop after a person is exposed to a traumatic event. This diagnosis may be given when a group of symptoms occur, such as disturbing recurring flashbacks and nightmares, avoidance or numbing of memories of the event, or a high level of anxiety continuing for a long period of time after the event happened.

I was diagnosed with it after I returned home in disgrace from Peace Corps.

achilles’s bane

09 Wednesday Oct 2013

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Mother of war, an ice blue flame flutters
on the hill, wild violets, Achilles’s bane,
fragile on their stalks. All the warriors
who fell before you have given their name
to rocks and flowers, but your name is scorned.
If I were a mother with bronze daughters
of my very own I would have you mourned
in the proper way. The violet honors
you, a star with blue edged of fire, but I am poor.
There are some things more fragile than agates.
I have walked these dunes all morning, the wind
on the hill sings your song. Mother of war,
since I cannot find your grave these violets
must do what I started but will not end.

][][

notes:

Penthesilea was the daughter of Orithia and the god Ares. She was known for her bravery, her skill in weapons and her wisdom. During a wild hunt, she accidentally killed her own sister, Hippolyte the Lesser. She was so filled with grief that she set out to liberate Troy, but Greek myth claims Achilles later retook it. During the battle, since she was the daughter of the god of war she killed many high ranking Greek warriors, including Machaon and the Achilles the Greater. Her name means “She Who Compels Men to Mourn.”

H.D.’s The Huntress

08 Tuesday Oct 2013

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xena

Come, blunt your spear with us,
our pace is hot
and our bare heels
in the heel-prints—
we stand tense—do you see—
are you already beaten
by the chase?
We lead the pace
for the wind on the hills,
the low hill is spattered
with loose earth—
our feet cut into the crust
as with spears.
We climbed the ploughed land,
dragged the seed from the clefts,
broke the clods with our heels,
whirled with a parched cry
into the woods:
Can you come,
can you come,
can you follow the hound trail,
can you trample the hot froth?
Spring up—sway forward—
follow the quickest one,
aye, though you leave the trail
and drop exhausted at our feet.

(1916)

pantariste’s labrys

08 Tuesday Oct 2013

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Every myth speaks, every way, every lost
path that wanders off to the last hill’s crest
must, at last, speak. It was there, as I crossed
the ridge, in pink clover, border pinks, blessed
lilies and sweet cress, that I found the ax.
The head, bronze tip, like the fingers that once
choked life, stuck up out of the greensward. Wax
pears hung nearby in witness. The grievance
we call history is that even when
I dig you up, dear ax, I will be told
that it was some man’s name, man’s arms, man’s face,
that bore you and that bores me once again.
Please, dear ax, speak. I listen for the old
truths found in these pink wind-tortured places.

][][

notes:

When Hercules’ soldiers fled from the Amazons’ attack Pantariste lead the chase after them. Two Greek foot soldiers turned to attack her but she killed them both (legend has it she broke the neck of one with her bare hands). She then threw her spear at Tiamides, who blocked it with his shield, but the force knocked him to the ground. Pantariste then beheaded Tiamides using her labrys, a double-headed ax.

dusk and the marpesian cliffs

08 Tuesday Oct 2013

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I have lived in the shadow of the Rocks
of Queen Marpesia, followed ruined
dusk, passing from ridge to ridge. Like beanstalks
and mad giants, men called you legend,
but they never followed where I followed;
from bud to bud—to apricot blossoms
in twilight gone faint—the petals tips glowed,
their pink hearts bending out. Once your war drums
beat here. Once you made brute northerners curse
the day that they headed south. Now cliff birds
are just shadows lost among the far cliffs.
I will never lose you; the universe
does not need grudging legends, myths and words
to see and name all your wisdom and gifts.

][][

notes:

Marpesia was an Amazon queen who ruled with her sister, Lampedo (“Burning Torch”), the city of Ephesus (Efes in Turkish), on the coast of Ionia, near present-day Selcuk. Greek myth states her building a series of mountain cities hidden within the Caucasus Mountains, which were referred to by the Greeks as the Rocks of Queen Marpesia or the Marpesian Cliffs. The Caspian Gates, a legendary barrier supposedly built by Alexander the Great in the Caucasus to keep the barbarians of the north from invading the south is said to be a continuation of what the Amazonian queen started. Marpesia’s name means, “The Snatcher.”

my lykopis, my she-wolf

07 Monday Oct 2013

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lykopis

She-Wolf, slashed and torn. Mother of archers
letting loose the great arrow heads as you
backed your way up the temple steps. Fingers
drew the iron bow string back and men, who,
moments ago mocked you, now lay shattered
in the wind; pomegranate’s blood pooling
by their heads. Lykopis, there is no word
to help me find your grave. Even crafting
arrow heads is a lost art, nothing glints
like flint taken from a bright stone. She-Wolf,
even as you stood by the temple’s gate
and struck down Theseus, Athens’ cruel prince,
I lost you—-I love you—-I need no proof.
I burn for you—-beyond faith—-beyond hate.

][][

note:

Lykopis was an Amazon archer who fought under Andromache. Her name means, “She-Wolf.”

at the temple of eurybe

06 Sunday Oct 2013

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Is your shrine a shelter for girls to train
in the craft of war? have you sent mothers
in bronze to battle? Are the names of slain
sisters, etched in stone, preserved? Warriors
like my aunt, whom they once called Walking Death,
followed you; forgive me for presuming.
I have followed you, too, felt the sword’s breath
arch down upon my bowed neck, felt the sting,
great, fierce, strong—you are hand-swung—of others
who have perished. Celano and Phoebe
fell by your side. Their names are forgotten.
Soon mine will be too. I’ll be no sister’s
pride, no walking death’s child. I am sorry.
My aunts are dead. My mothers have fallen.

][][

note:

In Greek myth Eurybe was an Amazon who was a master with a spear, fighting with her shield-guards, Phoebe and Celano. Unfortunately, all three were killed by Hercules, when their spears broke against the lion’s skin from his 1st Labor. Legend has it that they were all killed with a single sword stroke. Her name means “Grand Strength.”