Sunday, December 31, 2017
Thursday, December 28, 2017
Alan Semerdjian: ADVENTURELAND
Fifteen and flipping
burgers and selling
dreams, in one ear
and out the other
door to the big park
of the mind, the kid
stares at infinity,
loses his virginity,
swoons recklessly
at the elevation.
And when the older
machines creak and
groan when bending
this way or that, it's
all about the rides
they've seen, neon-
dipped romantic rides,
lonely ones, serious
ones, ones that leap
the heart to places
like the future where
adventure never fades
and the past, which
is, sometimes, empty
seats in winter, so
much potential still.
Posted by Armenian Poetry Project at 12/28/2017 07:00:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: Alan Semerdjian, Contemporary, USA
Wednesday, December 27, 2017
PETER BALAKIAN: Here and Now
The day comes in strips of yellow glass over trees.
When I tell you the day is a poem
I’m only talking to you and only the sky is listening.
The sky is listening; the sky is as hopeful
as I am walking into the pomegranate seeds
of the wind that whips up the seawall.
If you want the poem to take on everything,
walk into a hackberry tree,
then walk out beyond the seawall.
I’m not far from a room where Van Gogh
was a patient—his head on a pillow hearing
the mistral careen off the seawall,
hearing the fauvist leaves pelt
the sarcophagi. Here and now
the air of the tepidarium kissed my jaw
and pigeons ghosting in the blue loved me
for a second, before the wind
broke branches and guttered into the river.
What questions can I ask you?
How will the sky answer the wind?
The dawn isn’t heartbreaking.
The world isn’t full of love.
Peter Balakian, "Here and Now" from Ozone Journal. Copyright © 2015 by The University of Chicago. Reprinted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
Source: Ozone Journal (The University of Chicago Press, 2015)
Posted by Armenian Poetry Project at 12/27/2017 07:35:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: Contemporary, Peter Balakian, USA
Sunday, December 24, 2017
Նարեկ արք. Ալեէմէզեան։ ԵՐԿՆԱՒՈՐ ՄՍՈՒՐԸ
Գալ տարի նոր մսուր պիտի շինե՞ն
մսուրին առջեւ նկարուող մանուկները նորէն պիտի գա՞ն
Posted by Armenian Poetry Project at 12/24/2017 11:37:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: Canada, Contemporary, Nareg Srpazan
Tuesday, December 19, 2017
Aram Saroyan: LIFE IS A DREAM
Life is a dream.
Boulders on the beach assume the form
Of animals. No man is certain. Death
Speaks in the wings, coaching, prompting
Emotion, the love of wood
Burning, the child's face waiting, laughing.
The sun comes up so many times, lighting
The life that is there to be seen.
We have been traveling through this tunnel
In eternity. Rocks persistently speak
To us, saying something so pure it is only
Feeling. This and that, this and that.
The buildings of the mind shut down
Before the advance of this truth.
We are here for good. There is no one
To be us instead. We are alive and dead.
This poem appeared in the September 1974 issue of Poetry Magazine
Posted by Armenian Poetry Project at 12/19/2017 07:00:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: Aram Saroyan, Contemporary, USA