• hopilavayi: an erotic dictionary

memories of my ghost sista

~ the dead are never satisfied

memories of my ghost sista

Tag Archives: Armenia

suckerish

13 Sunday Jan 2019

Posted by babylon crashing in Erotic, Poetry, sonnet

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Armenia, Armenian translation, cunnilingus, erotic poetry, Gyumri, moist split mound, poem, sonnet, suckerish, t’avshya vosku hank’

You filled my mouth with copper, blood and brine.
Under your skirt, tongue in your moist split mound,

“t’avshya vosku hank’” — your velvet goldmine.
We’d been dancing, a waltz-grind. You had frowned

when the kissing stopped. Romance requires
restraint. Rise and fall of hips, amazing

pangs no nun ever warned about, desires
obscene. I didn’t notice how sopping

you had become until your thighs rested
on my neck. Gyumri is full of despised

daughters. I too am cast-off, suckerish
for the shamed. In with copper, brine and blood

I taste your mother-lode. Pleasure surprised
you. Your giggle was more than I could wish.

NOTE:
Gyumri is a city in northwestern Armenia where I lived for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer. Despite some progress in recent years women are still viewed as second-class citizens by many in that country. “T’avshya vosku hank’” (թավշյա ոսկու հանք) is the Armenian equivalent of “velvet goldmine,” Victorian slang for cunt.

mercy

27 Thursday Dec 2018

Posted by babylon crashing in Armenia, Disaster –- Pain –- Sorrow, Poetry, self-portrait, sonnet

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

alcoholic, Armenia, Gyumri, lilith now and forever, Nagorno-Karabakh, poem, Poetry, ptsd, recovery, sonnet

Christmas Eve’s “No First Drink” Recovery
Meeting. The reek of Pall Mall in the air.

Don’t talk now. Don’t stand out. Not of Gyumri.
Not of dead orphans. Not of the nightmare

that haunts you from Nagorno-Karabakh.
Everyone here carries their own horrors.

Right now just listen, just be present. Black
humor, Lilith’s mercy, depraved lovers

kept you, if not lucid, at least sober …
but not tonight. You woke. You sit and grieve,

nod and listen. You love these survivors.
You love everyone but yourself. No prayer

will heal what you conceal under your sleeve,
under your burn scar, your broken knuckle.

kakhard

30 Tuesday Oct 2018

Posted by babylon crashing in Armenia, Erotic, Poetry, sonnet

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Armenia, Armenian witch, erotic poetry, finger fucking, kakhard, make me cum, sonnet, sticky fingers

After school I fingered you senseless. Filled
your mouth with more than quarrels over craft.

Left you soppy and brooding with my spilled
seed smeared across your lips. That word, I laughed

at what you called me: “kakhard.” It means witch.
Perhaps. I have blasphemed in the churchyard

of your arse sure enough. Made your clit twitch
with just my stare. Perhaps I am, “kakhard,”

and these dark Armenian arts the spell
that has ensnared you each time the school bell

rings, each time you knock on my door. Each time
kissing turns astonishing and sublime

while I lift the hem of your pleated skirt —
More. Touch me more. Make me hurt. Make me squirt.

Note:
In Armenian, “կախարդ,” is the word for witch.

Quote

night tide

28 Saturday Nov 2015

Posted by babylon crashing in Armenia, Erotic, Poetry, quote unquote, sonnet

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Armenia, Babylon Crashing, erotic poetry, Lake Sevan, night tide, reblog, sonnet

The drowned girl said, “be rougher, I don’t mind.”

In the old tongue — a tongue that I couldn’t

speak well. The lake water had made me blind

so I clung to her wide hips as her cunt

covered my mouth, my chin. In the night tide

the small waves inched over us. I could feel

her bent forward, pressing down, as she tried

to gag me -drown- while her wild mane went eel-

like, all hither and yon. I’ve walked Sevan’s coast,

the drowned outnumbers the living. Thirty

years-old; wild hair rose up, like — dark like, kelp —

a voice that called from the lake. Carmine’s ghost

calling, “Yeranut’yun.” — Bliss. The way she

pulled back and said, “you naughty little welp.”

][][

note:

In Armenian, the word for bliss is, “yer’an’ut’yun,” (երանություն).

— Babylon Crashing

the children of arba lijoch

17 Saturday Oct 2015

Posted by babylon crashing in Armenia, Poetry, sonnet

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Addis Ababa, Arba Lijoch, Armenia, Armenian Genocide, Ethiopia, Haile Selassie I, Kwame Dawes, poem, Poetry, sonnet

— for Kwame Dawes

Crown Prince Ras Tafari brought the children
of Arba Lijoch out of the desert —

Orphans who became Ethiopian,
who sang of the Metz Yeghern, the Great Hurt;

composed, “Marsh Teferi,” the first music
Marcus Garvey heard while in audience.

I, too, have heard of, “Natural mystic
blowing/ through the air,”
Ararat’s fragrance

in each word. I’m told, Babylon crashing.
Where in Kingston is the orchestral sound

of Addis Ababa? — I listen — I
listen, but the dance halls tell me nothing.

The ghosts of Van hang low in the background.
Who will sing their song? Tell their prophesy?

Notes:
Arba Lijoch were a group of forty Armenian orphans who had escaped from the 1915 atrocities in Turkey, and were afterwards adopted by Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia. He had met them while visiting the Armenian monastery in Jerusalem; they impressed him so much that he obtained permission from the head of the Armenian church, the Catholicos, to adopt and bring them to Ethiopia, where he then arranged for them to receive musical instruction. The Arba Lijoch arrived in the capital city, Addis Ababa, in 1924, and along with their conductor, Kevork Nalbandian, became the first official orchestra of the nation. Nalbandian also composed the music for Marsh Teferi (words by Yoftehé Negusé), which was the Imperial National Anthem from 1930 to 1974. Metz Yeghern is the Armenian word for their Great Calamity, their genocide.

Quote

quote unquote

11 Friday Sep 2015

Posted by babylon crashing in Armenia, Prose, quote unquote

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Armenia, ghost city, Gyumri, peace corps memories, prose

During the night a cold mountain rain fell, turning the dusty cobblestones of Atabekyan Street into a long, quaggy blotch, so that when the three-legged dog with the pepper-stump and heavy teats hobbled over to the front gate to meet the young foreigner once he finally staggered out into the chill morning air, skull throbbing with a grievous hang-over his neighbors had good-willingly inflicted upon him the night before, she was already soaked up to her haunches in mud.

Despite the protests of his landlady he had been leaving out dishes of cold cuts bought at the outdoor shuka-market for the dog, for he figured that she must have pups hidden away somewhere in the hollows of the nearby rubble that was all that was left of the neighborhood, house-fronts spilling out into the street in huge piles of pink stones.

“Ah, Mama Shun, dear, stay warm while I’m gone,” he said, bending down to pet her worn nape, hastily brushing away the fleas that rose up in a black mist to coat his hand.  

Far down the earthquake-rippled street the local children were out, shrieking, playing some sort of game of tag. He knew most of their names — Mayranush, Little Aram, Jbduhi, Takavor, Arpi, Isahag — and, off to one side, the small twisted girl that the rest of them shunned, Lusine-jan. She wavered in the morning air with her shaven skull and wide, unblinking eyes as the others kicked up spurts of mud in the numerous potholes. Unlike the others, in their summer dresses and raffish vests, Lusine was clothed for the on-coming winter, with heavy tights and a quilted, stained skirt. Like the three-legged dog she moved slowly through the street, weirdly jerkily, her downcast eyes avoiding his eyes as he passed by.

from Ghost City: a memory

Quote

quote unquote

13 Monday Apr 2015

Posted by babylon crashing in Armenia, quote unquote

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Armenia, Armenian words, madmen on my tongue, Պարույր Սեվակ հանրաճանաչ Հայ բանաստեղծ, Paruyr Sevak

Երանի գժերին որ էլ չեն գժվի:

I envy the madmen because they can’t go mad.

Պարույր Սեվակ, հանրաճանաչ Հայ բանաստեղծ

Paruyr Sevak, Armenian poet

(via lovethelifeyoulivelastingly)

lilit shakhkyan

15 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by babylon crashing in Armenia

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Armenia, Lilit Shakhkyan, Mari Izmirlyan Orphanage, Peace Corps, please reblog, SOAR, SOCIETY FOR ORPHANED ARMENIAN RELIEF, Yerevan

lovely

We live in a world desperately full of children needing love and support. I repost everything the SOCIETY FOR ORPHANED ARMENIAN RELIEF (SOAR) posts because I deeply believe in everything they do.

Mari Izmirlyan Orphanage is a state orphanage in Yerevan housing approximately 100 children with special needs between the ages of 6 and 18. The SOAR Sponsorship Program is the primary mechanism through which SOAR provides support to specific orphaned Armenian children. Each week we highlight an orphaned Armenian child. This week, we highlight Lilit Shakhkyan at Mari Izmirlyan Orphanage.

Lilit has a serious hearing disability. In 2011, SOAR contributed to the costs of ear surgery for Lilit in which a Baha device was implanted in her ear. Lilit currently attends a special school for the hearing impaired.


Lilit likes to be in the focus of attention. She likes to participate in individual trainings, to play with constructive games, play with dolls, and play with bright-colored toys. She does not like to communicate with peers. She can compare objects and find similarities and differences. Mostly she communicates with facial expressions and behavior. Her future aspirations are to develop social skills, to use voice for communication, and to pronounce sounds.

If you would like to sponsor Lilit, please contact George S. Yacoubian, Jr., at gyacoubian@soar-us.org or enroll through the Sponsorship Program by selecting Lilit from Mari Izmirlyan. Thank you in advance for your support!

Image

in love with a ghost from war-torn nagorno-karabakh

16 Monday Dec 2013

Tags

ancient church, Armenia, art, ghost girl, ghost lover, Nagorno-Karabakh, war

Dec 16, 2013 (1)

Posted by babylon crashing | Filed under Armenia, Erotic, Illustration and art

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martyr’s ancestors

14 Monday Oct 2013

Posted by babylon crashing in Armenia, Illustration and art, Poetry, sonnet

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Tags

1988 earthquake, 1995-1997, All Saviors Church, Ani, Arcadia, Armenia, Gyumri, Katie Aune, Peace Corps, poem, Poetry, sonnet

photo by katie aune

I lived near the ruins of All Saviors
Church. If this were an altar for the dead,
worshiped since 3000 BC, martyr’s
ancestors, then I would have prayed and fed
them as I once fed the dead of Ani’s
ruins, across the border, a different
city of ghosts. But it is not. What frees
all these dead from Arcadia’s ancient
curse? They entered into me, sick larvae
in a ripe fruit, and now I can’t leave it
alone. If I could call on some unknown
fury to heal this I would. But fury
and loss is what binds these cast-off spirits;
and now, like them, I can’t leave this alone.

][][

notes:

If metaphors are the engine that drives a poem then the problem with writing about a city that 98% of the free world has never heard of is, like trying to make sense of out-of-date pop cultural references, 98% of the free world won’t get what you’re trying to say. The metaphor, in other words, fails. I’m trying to avoid that here, but I realize that if I need to write several paragraphs in my notes explaining what each reference I use means then … perhaps I need to rethink how I can “talk right down to earth in a language that everybody here can easily understand.” (thank you, Living Color).

So, as a quick reference guide, here goes:

The poem is set in the earthquake-devastated city of Gyumri, Armenia; a part of the world that archaeologists have determined has been continually inhabited since 3000 BC. All Saviors Church was a ruined church down the street from where I once lived. Ani is an abandoned, ancient Armenian city just across the border between Armenia and Turkey. As a metaphor, Arcadia usually refers to the idea of an unspoiled, utopian wilderness; sort of like what your hippie parents (or grandparents) might talk about when someone mentions California in the 1960s. Needless to say, the 1960s have never been “all that,” in much the same way that modern-day Turkey has never been the cradle of anyone’s crescent civilization.

The photo I use here was taken by Katie Aune.

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erotica [links]

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electric mayhem [links]

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  • Severus & the Deatheaters [myspace]
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