Boghos L. Artinian: [How tightly must I hold you?]

How tightly must I hold you? pray!

And my strokes, firmer or gentler still?

Should I vibrate you more forcefully

Or less, that I may deserve the sounds

you let out

For my father

When he lived?

Boghos L. Artinian: The bicycle

A couple of years before
the major Armenian Genocide
a Turk had asked for 'just a short ride'
on my father's new bicycle.


My father knew the consequences
of saying no to a Turk
in those ominously tense times.


Thank you father for obliging,
though you knew you would never see
your new bicycle again.


That is why you could be around
to see us many years later!


Boghos L. Artinian MD

Boghos L. Artinian: Unwitting-vehicle bomber

Boghos Artinian is a 65 years old physician practicing in Beirut since 1968, and writing poetry since 1982. This poem has appeared in the website Poets Against War.

The perpetrators were terrorists sly,
For they chose someone who didn't love to die;
A spinster who happened to work at a site
They wanted to penetrate and ignite!
While she slept they booby trapped her car,
And next morning they watched the embassy afar.
When her car, unchecked, entered the compound
They blew it up; just bits of her were found.

Boghos L. Artinian MD