Robert H. Sarkissian: A Choice and a Breath

To serve is a choice and a great joy and fire
But it takes a while and a while to take
A slow-cooking slaking of passionate thirst
Like walking for miles to a wandering lake

To yield is a death but a life and a breath
When birthed it will give in its natural state
And one of the choices will fall by the side
No longer a voice that would have any weight

Robert H. Sarkissian: Booktellers

Books on shelves, on reserve, those that sell
hard and soft, spines and covers
diagnoses in chapters, science or characters
they sit and smell like musty cellars
worlds inside unto themselves
carried and borrowed, traveling onward
coming full circle and tumbling downward
beautiful pages of pulpous delight
yellowing corners, but lovely, and only
if I could understand or maybe remember
that which I read last year in September
I’d eat all the paper my stomach could hold
digesting the letters, and numbers, in bold
and cough up the words I love to recite
the words that deserve to be told I would tell

Robert H. Sarkissian: The Icon

In a room emptied
Light shone like fast heat on a road
The colors lucid
Sensuous fire flowed
            Who would not have heard
            Or could have ignored
Sound from another world
            That always glowed

Introducing Robert H. Sarkissian

Robert H. Sarkissian lives in Newton MA with his wife Audrey. He attended Northeastern University and received a degree in electrical engineering in 1995, and currently works as a technical writer. He writes poetry and satire and has had several poems published in literary magazines.