• hopilavayi: an erotic dictionary

memories of my ghost sista

~ the dead are never satisfied

memories of my ghost sista

Tag Archives: Gyumri

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.

Quote

quote unquote

11 Friday Sep 2015

Posted by babylon crashing in Armenia, Prose, quote unquote

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Tags

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

17 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by babylon crashing in Armenia, Feminism, quote unquote

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Tags

Armenian feminists, Clementine von Radics, Gyumri, Kim Kardashian, poem, Poetry, reblog, slut shaming must fall, where I call home

Salome dances her dance of the seven veils,
The men all eye her like wolves on the hunt, this beautiful girl
finally undressing for them. Finally they can see her
exactly as they want to.
The first veil drops.

In 2007, Kim Kardashian’s ex-boyfriend
released their sex tape against her will.
Kim Kardashian, rather than hide in shame
Used the publicity to promote her own career.
Salome moves like a dream half-remembered.
Salome dances like a siren song. All the men ache
to see the hot sugar of her hip bones.
The second veil drops.
In 2014, Kim Kardashian walks down the aisle
As the whole world watches. If only all of us
were so successful in our revenge.
If only all of us stood in our Louboutin heels
on the backs of the men who betray us,
surveying the world we created for ourselves.

The third veil drops.

Kim Kardashian knows exactly what you think of her.
She presses the cloth tighter against her skin
Her smile is a promise she never intends to keep

We can almost see all of her.
Salome shows us her body
but never her eyes.
The fourth veil is dropping.
The four things most recently tweeted at Kim Kardashian were
@KimKardashian Suck My Dick
@Kim Kardashian Can I Meet Kanye?
@KimKardashian Please Fuck Me
@KimKardashian I Love You. I Love You.

Women are told to keep their legs shut.
Women are told to keep their mouths shut.
Some women are kept silent for so long,
They become experts in the silent theft of power.
The fifth veil has dropped.
Kim Kardashian made $12 million dollars this year
Yesterday, uncountable men in their miserable jobs,
told their miserable friends that Kim was a “dumb whore”
Kim Kardashian will never learn their names.

Clementine von Radics (via clementinevonradics)

seen on rebloggy.com/kim kardashian

(via oduor-oduku)

O hell yes! There is very little
positive representation of Armenian women on the web and in the
media. If you scratch the surface, up and beyond historic poets and
artists, you will read about the ones we’ve lost, like Zaruhi Petrosyan, silenced
through domestic violence; and yet Armenian feminism and LGBT rights are alive and well in Yerevan and Gyumri. 

Always these are who I call
heroes.

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.

the heathen times

13 Sunday Oct 2013

Posted by babylon crashing in Poetry, sonnet

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Tags

1995-1997, Armenia, Cantor, Cossack, Gyumri, Peace Corps, poem, Poetry, sonnet, Tsovinar

Dry this stream bed, flowing through not desert
heat but Neolithic outcroppings, hills
they call them, marking the border. The dirt
here is sweet, sweeter than whatever spills
out on the other side. I have wandered
through these hills, down paths that even shepherds
couldn’t get their flocks to follow. I’ve heard
the sound of paw-pads on rock, like drunkards
kicking stones. Later my neighbors would tell
me ghost stories of the heathen times, back
when goddesses of wind, fire and shadow
roamed the hills. But I was under the spell
of youth, where having Cantor and Cossack
blood was all the safety I needed to know.

][][

notes:

It’s odd how one starts a poem about the river that divides Armenia from Turkey and ends up writing about being chased through the hills by unseen forces. I suppose it’s all about where the rhyme takes you.

This poem comes from my time spent in Gyumri, Armenia, as a Peace Corps volunteer. The city is surrounded on two sides by mountains and between the endless flat land the towering mountains are the foothills, which were bizarre when I first looked on them. The closest I’ve ever seen as a comparison is the Glastonbury Tor, in England, which looks like a huge burial mound. There were hundreds and hundreds of them, spanning the eastern and southern sides of the valley Gyumri is located in. It took around four hours to hike from the city center where I lived out to the hills, but I liked it because, for some odd reason, no one else seemed to venture out there. One night, though, having decided to go on a midnight stroll, I ended up getting lost and coming to the conclusion that something was following me. Perhaps I was hearing things, perhaps it was something as innocent as a wolf. Whatever it was I never found out, for even when I turned around and began looking for the source of the noise I couldn’t find anything. When I asked my neighbors why the hills were deserted they began telling me stories about the pre-Christian times of Armenia, with tales of fire whirlwinds, goddesses that caused goats to dry up and dragons that lived on the slopes of Mt. Ararat. I suppose they thought that since I was an American I’d be willing to believe in anything.

The Cantor and Cossack reference is personal, for as far as I can gather from the little information I have found, my grandfather’s father on my dad’s side were both holy singers and horse soldiers during the days of the Russian Tzar. But that’s just family lore, what I know is that he came from a small village in the Ukraine, near Minsk. The difficulty of pin-pointing my ancestors isn’t just that everyone on my father’s side is dead, it’s that since they were Jewish and everyone else in the surrounding villages during WWII the Nazis rounded them up and executed everyone, afterward burning down the villages. There is literally no literal trance of my father’s roots.

the path into purgatory

10 Thursday Oct 2013

Posted by babylon crashing in Armenia, Poetry, sonnet

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Tags

1995-1997, Aragats, bus rides, Dante, Gyumri, Hellz da bomb, Hrazdan, Inferno, Peace Corps, poem, Poetry, Purgatory, sonnet, Yerevan

… at the midpoint of the journey of life, I found myself in a dark forest, for the clear path was lost.
—Dante Alighieri, Inferno

All roads to Hell start like this, Dante tells
us. The path into purgatory, though,
the ghost realm, is much more difficult. Hell’s
Nine Circles are sick and flash, we all know
Hellz da bomb. Limbo, though, is a bus ride.
We wound through the farms on the Hrazdan,
then north, near Aragats. I had no guide,
no blessed Virgil. I could not speak more than
baby-words. But, as the bus turned the last
mountain pass, there it was spread out below:
empty, vast, flat. A gray valley so vast
it was all horizon. But there—a glow
on the edge—ghost ruin that had survived
the ’88 earthquake—I had arrived.

notes:

Inferno is the first part of Dante’s epic poem Divine Comedy. It is an allegory telling of the journey Dante took through Hell, guided by the soul of the Roman poet, Virgil.

Hrazdan is a river that flows through the Ararat valley, irrigating many apricot orchards and farmland. It divides the city of Yerevan in half. Once, during a very drunken party, a bunch of us Americans went skinny dipping in the river because what’s the point of having a river in your city if you can’t strip off all your clothes and jump in it now and then?

Mt. Aragats is the highest peak in Armenia, forming part of a mountain chain that separates Gyumri from Yerevan. To travel between the two cities required me taking a big red autobus that traveled roughly 15 miles an hour, it felt like, worming its way up and down high mountain roads. The city I refer to at the end of the poem is Gyumri, which in 1988 was totally destroyed in an earthquake that killed 25,000 people. When I arrived seven years later it was still rubble, looking like something out of a war movie.

Image

dali in gyumri

20 Monday May 2013

Tags

graffiti, Gyumri, Salvador Dali

dali in gyumri

A friend sent this to me, an artist had painted this graffiti in my old city of Gyumri. Brilliant!

Posted by babylon crashing | Filed under Illustration and art, photograph

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Image

ruined building i call memory

07 Sunday Apr 2013

Tags

Armenia, art, ghost city of my soul, Gyumri

a ruined building in Gyumri, Armenia

I call this home.

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

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Image

in love with color: mariam aslamazyan

02 Tuesday Apr 2013

Tags

Armenia, artist, Gyumri, historic heroine, Mariam Aslamazyan, painter

Mariam Aslamazyan1

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Mariam Aslamazyan4

Mariam Aslamazyan6

Mariam Aslamazyan7

Mariam Aslamazyan8

Mariam Aslamazyan9

Mariam Aslamazyan5

Mariam Aslamazyan10

I am working on an article about the Armenian painter Mariam Aslamazyan, from Gyumri. I use to live near her studio on Abovian street. She is amazingly talented, working in oils and ceramics. I’ll post the entire article when I’m done, though it is a bit slow since there is hardly anything written about her in English and it takes forever to get the Russian magazine articles translated. Cheers!

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

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