Bedros Afeyan

When you’re at the end of your rope, hanging them on the streets no longer trending When your identity shallow, impermanent, changing, tilted, twisted in the livid wind When you posture strong faith and lust for glory, expansion, enslaving the infidel freely When you are manufactured history no angel ever witnessed during your hellish spree How may you treat hardworking, non-militarist side shows grazing in your path unconvinced? Fun fresh tightly wound villages, monuments thousands of years in nourishing unbroken spirit...

Ojakh is a must-see documentary by the French Armenian Director Diana Mkrtchyan. Ojakh poster Ojakh, like an Armenian high holiday meal, is meticulously and painstakingly prepared. It is a feast of potent documentary cinema that surpasses expectations with each living frame. Its running voice-over is brimming with grandiloquence. The saga strengthens with each leaf of unfolding storytelling. Each stunning image dances with the next, forming a metaphorical fortress of stomping Armenians stepping, jumping, swaying, demanding redress....

A planet spins dragging atmospheres rich in drama, a theory in allure Zodiac of fear, arms, scopes, flybys, hover, acquiesce, dive bomb, rest Tomorrow for our children, engorged coffers, debt burdens, stocks, tanks Church on Sunday, Golf my Saturday, boy’s night out, girls scream, so yeah Last will and testament, AI will absorb, reinterpret, purge, redact, reverse Stale narrative, sausage grinder trained, weights adjusted, hype stroked stare The rumor trill, social media friendsy, influencers stroke it rapid, agape, ready...

April comes in mandates one hundred and ten Reflexive poesy for 4-24, reflective loop gravity State denial, tortured nightingales a’gargle Makeup on the tiny PM, bald as a turtle’s carapace Shiny terrace, empty grab for dower power sunken swimmer He’s your little bitch, a national spasm, a glitch, pick him root by root Calls unanswered, Ankara in Baku, frying prisoners tortured till blue Stealing crescent stamped sovereignty on a map deflowered...

Will to power Will to will a tiny Nation to cower Diminutive stature Bearded, smiling Begging, bald, coward Skewered puppets Seasoned spit-rolling To ashes dripping Declarations, edicts, threats Hung by their feet martyrs Axe wielding officers honored Sleeping dual devils Sunni, Hebrew, till Petrol reserves dry Iran fall heavy Slaves they will strip, be Part oven basting Turkey Jerky, perky, finally dirty As traces of origins unsavory Sit for prayers, blood drinking...

A critical essay on an Armenian Masterpiece: Yasha and Leonid Brezhnev, a movie banned in Russia by Putin’s orders Edgar Baghdasaryan’s Yasha and Leonid Brezhnev PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA Bedros Afeyan, on 11-16-2024 Pacific Heights, San Francisco, CA Vogue Theater, Golden Gate Armenian Film Festival It is remarkable when a director from a tiny country in great peril of physical extinction takes on the big ideas of the world and contributes substantially to the simultaneous chewing of the cud of Soviet and post-Soviet absurdity and tragicomedy with inventiveness, indomitable spirit, artistic audacity, and folkloric musical omnipresence through genres and timbres that help render the movie scintillating....

Poor Turkic hordes and spokes-snakes Alas. no solution here, beyim beh No hope for drums and dreams No Armenian nation is ever destroyed Not as you want a la soluzione finale No, efendim. Yok, choking children, yok beh. You can push asunder Russian Armenians You can wait till they disperse, fade, sell out The vast Armies of Western Armenians Reconvened already past our stream of shoahs Round and round through new Azeri mongrels...

Give me German philosophy French gab, wine, poetry Italian cuisine, belle cantos, scenery Spanish painters, dancers, guitars Olé Japanese fighting styles, haikus, sushi Russian novels, laments, morbidity and me Alcohol spilled in silent forests of envy African suns come rise and sigh Black Slavery and Indian castes As Nazis seek manual scavenger Book burner, oiled submerger Cleaning society excrementally Expose Poland, Turkey, Hungary, Israel Brazil, Egypt, Iran, North of the DMZ...

And again And again In the hands of smiling barbarians Armies of conquering monkeys Rattling helmets against rocks Stomping boots made in China Bullets by the bucket Guns poking eye sockets. When Turks scam the earth And dance over corpses Professing religion, piety, rape Smiling to the camera Riding on tanks Drones killing new conscripts By digital prowess Azeri animals left to graze Mother Russia, encouraging The raids, hospital bombings...

In this burning world of change and clamor there must be a way False truth and lies a’glamour, there must be a way When Google, Apple, Meta and Chat Bots slide you fluff glimmering as truth and not solid granite somber unduality In that world of deep fakes, cheap dates, meek heroes, flights of crippled avatars How will the young know deeply an art, a science, a craft, a discipline, years and tears, dedication, endless resolve, maturing skill?...

Never a year, never a tear spared dries away memory swells for the smell of genocide in spring Turks past fat Sultan decaying imperial spectacle, now modern, young, hopeful, ruthless, slipping a little French lingo to class up their base coat of red barbarisms. A little German discipline into armies of flake warriors eager to abuse and haunt till death women children and old folks in desert marches Ruthless to the point of perfection....

It has to be concrete, precise, incomplete It must compete, repeat, stress, climb steep reject cliches, cliques, tricher, bleach argue, sinew, do end innu falling ears blue, blossomed Dead leaf stuffed munchers turning clocks back, down ravines less ordered, less polar, less vice, anger. There is no going back. Essays, trials by ink and darts pre-poisoned Darting ahead smashed 6 o’clock news, This just in, breaking hues Same as it ever was....

on gravel heaving sigh from its tree lost child reddened dream floating till a rake grates its skin piles of cousins neighbors strangers burst in flames silent ashes seed the snow coming soon coming down dusting the tears left on the tree stripped down naked awaiting spring beyond gray dreary morbid stinging memory yearning blended agony Bedros Afeyan Pleasanton, CA 11-5-2022 © Copyright 2022 Armenian News Network/Groong and the author.

We are allowed fragments Fragments of happiness, stress, distress Fragments of arguments, retorts, refrains Fragments of shorelines, memories, holding hands Fragments of erections, welcoming inner embrace Fragments Midnight howls, traffic jams, thoughts dispersed, drenched Indeterminate, intermittent, interspersed, poisoned breath My things and your things and our things and their things Interminable, inexact, blaming the innocent, fetishizing fest Fragments Sheared off parcels of our existence stranded, stained Every ill will, every ill thought...

Mount, ride, dismount Mount, ride, dismount Catch your breath Sip some tea Jot down notes for Eventual illustrated memoirs Before you go right back mount, ride, screech, grunt, guttural sigh, dismount The night breeze erases the jumble Only poetry remains As a prickly trace of the half-hearted combat Combinations, distortions, strained bones and arches Between lust and lasting Thrusting and trusting Caring and stealing The fight and the fright A little death...

What Is? Marvelous Metronomed Silent but traceable Ahead of its emotions calling Pushing for growth without panic A recipe discarded A new one forged in retrospect Panic Edit mercilessly Sink Swim Sigh Read Cross the finish line half naked, Parched, Still singing Ever painting Running shoes From reality Burning A poem A poem A poem Bedros Afeyan Pleasanton, CA 8-5-2022 © Copyright 2022 Armenian News Network/Groong and the author.

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April of my life. April of my years. April in the sun, April in ashes gone She rode into moonlight, ghost of a village lost Her hair black and silky, tainted, torn, scalped Her flurry, her glory, humble obedient family Girl with a future. A whiff of freedom, esprit A new century, domestic skills a tyranny A slight hope, cracked hint, salvation, glee. In the evening, fires burn, dire screams...

I am ringing the bells! Town Square! Decibels! Sirens of warning, they are selling Armenia off They are beaten, they are scared. A silly journalist by trade A walk of fame, selfie laden journey from Gumri A so-called revolution, fighting corruption But then? Chaos, lost wars, lost territory Artsakh sold to the Turks, Azeris, tyrants, lost Our history, our misery, our pain as Armenians Our demands for lost land, Kars, Ardahan, Erzerum, Van, Moush, …...

What is it of and what is it to the collective hovering to engulf you? Memory is a sieve, sweeping in and away sediments Embellishing as it fills or empties, deforming as it surges To squeeze, infusing your thoughts with the wide flapping Canopy of others, their unescapable, unowned screams In the night stacks unknown, until pen meets silver paper, Records and rerecords in an order only a movie projector...

Her aura, emergent, lured faith anchor Her mist, myth, glore, scent Her no’s, her don’ts Maybe, baby, maybe Docking trail dragging Oars in the sand Spicy dream dishes wilt in Supine, slanted complements Ejected sediment strands Coiled crumbs, sooth, soil Rowing away shadows A dune, a day, a dune, a day A sunset sonata for All oars in the sand Just oars, all sand. Bedros Afeyan 12-25-2021 Pleasanton, CA © Copyright 2021 Armenian News Network/Groong and the author....

Deranged uncultured, dirty toenails, praying five times a day Pious pretenders, underpaid armed mercenaries, MIT son-in-law flunkies Red blood flagbearer, dripping prophets, stolen tech, bombs guided drones Threats, drains, warfront profiteers, high above the sky, propped, dropped Bayrakdar drones killed 5000 of my countrymen in cold blood, Israel cheered on Georgia welcomed caravans of arms, Turkish convoys on the run, cooking skin alive Azeri war chants, frothing animals killing from the sky, surgically laughing at their crimes...

It was on a Tuesday, or was it a Monday? Our shackles were no more, loose wrists, tongues, more The din high, patriotic slogans rose as morning bread Furnace of frustration bursting flames, fanfare fueled air Loudest of speeches seldom reach the truth buried in folded muck Frazzled by giants pounding our mountains, flying banners red or black We are just like them, not at all! Unique! Special! Blessed! Cursed!...

2500 Armenian soldiers sacrificed Mostly 18 year old recruits “We ought to win”Was the war slogan Ironic, engulfed in hubris Hyperbole, high praise, folly We had old tanks, Kalashnikovs and limited supplies They, an unlimited trove of kamikaze drones Made in Israel, electro-optically guided, swank Deadly killers, and Turkish drones too Made of EU and US parts, called Bayrakdar Turkish flag proudly brandished on their side Erdogan and Aliyev strutted their billion dollar bribes To hush the international press and pay for positive coverage The prostitutes of the world obliged....

Rapping Under Fire is a 27-minute documentary shot in Mardagerd, Artsakh. A glorious fusion of our history, Lin Manuel Miranda, now reincarnated through the red curly stormy hair of a director’s playful vision which is that of the overabundantly talented Ms. Taleen Babayan. The central characters of this epic poem to the Armenian mountainous spirit are three young men Spartak Osipyan, Valeri Ghazaryan and Erik Pogosyan. They comprise the Rap Group ‘Orinag,’ which means sample or example or exemplary sample, or a lawful manifestation....

He stood unbound, brilliant booming pitch Daring fame’s too short a lease to tire An overworked Queen and a burst poet’s appendix orphaned Crazy uncles, old world advice, newspaper boy in Café’s Circulating telegraph messages on windy roads While genocide visited the Armenian Night He discovered San Francisco and New York Flustered wasps, street walkers, huddled denizens Gamblers, dancers, poor and burning Arabs, American foundation All the way up and down the Malaga vines...

Beirut is not for grabs, for crabs or the sea monsters from the North Beirut is not Ottoman, nor an automatic toy to wind by neighbors Just for fun, for crime, for the howling of infants burning in the sun Beirut is not for Syrians, not for Kurds, not for Tanks and Radio Jamming rockets Of Southern friendly neighbors, nor for France and England to wipe their arses Ever so politely, sitting in cafés, spying on big Russian Bear or their Cowboy friends...

Waltz or pass a cradling caress Frown or prance, test in tenses past Thickest orchestral glorying Ghosts of war’s transmigrant memes Customs undressed, immolated, effaced Magical stitches, maddening wistful douleurs Panic pickled, swirling hemorrhaging Harmonic goose steps, stiffened spines Smiling boots glistening in Prussian violins Recidivist frivolity, for a grand dance or grosse pause Perturbed, blind soldiers hobbling past stretchers Kicking the contours, counting the dead Mustard gains Acid gargles...

Rocks in a garden, isolation, invocation Rocks in a garden, sizes, shapes, colors Gray in intent, rocks in a garden, huddled Yet sparse, mutually repelling, poke marked Aged agents, crazed edges, sharp chirped tones Rocks in a garden where birds streak white tales Birds of all colors, shapes, sizes, rocking in a garden We age inside the house, far from the garden, glass covers Windows and curtains, pots and pans, cats and bowls...

Man is wolf, when sheep read Prepared texts on teleprompters Prepare meals for TV consumption While wolves howl at the wind of time The chimes of crime The hives of beards and knives Dancing to West Side Story remakes In broad daylight. Man is wolf in the dark hours of the soul Hidden promise of a bullet launched in an eye socket For Dali to melt into the framework of trains run on time...

These things I shall do. Sing in Armenian. Think in arguments undreamt by non-Armenians. Do good and throw proceeds into the sea Never look back, nor look beyond that sea Look up to the North Star and show it the way Never hesitate to seize the matter by the throat Of the reverse argument’s crushing counterattack Planned the night before, but easy breezy till the stroke. Laugh hardily and often for tragedy is written in our stars...

We Interrupt This Program And so I wrote, aimless in my search Rummaged in the attic of equuuations Disciplined trails of prepositions Unsolicited expositions of windy woes The quatrain roams in the midday sun Manhattan There is honking with that train Son The bustle, cold slap, fuck you muttered, Garlic breath, shit stick shoes remarked A book under the armpit of Sun Life Building a future rampart orgy death mask...

New Armenia, old hat, walking stick, frown, fret. New Armenia, bragging high, singing low, waves waving us ahead New Armenia, not a drop of blood shed, not a tear, not a threat Civilized in discipline, New Armenia full of freedom from terror, friend Not Mother Russia, nor Oligarchs on parade, brothers and sisters nesting the precious egg Nesting for the groong’s return, hoot in joy, the group-dance, the flame, the Hayr Mer....

Armenian songs sad and strong Shielded landmarks, mountains cropped Fierce freedom pooled in lakes of reasoned chords Birds bearing witness, melancholy drones Joyous village dancers and wedding drums Huddled stoves, early morning bread’n prayers Rising hope, horizon’s keys sharp and fair Jump into the fire set by the strangers Their’s is but a false prophet of death or dispair Armenian songs sad and strong Give life to magic mountains Where future lovers never quarrel But yearn to weave their soft tales home Stones bearing crosses to the bone A language born in wit’s own poem To glimpse eternal flames As love casts its shadows blue In Armenian songs sad and strong...

Soul of my nation, fragile as summer day is long April horses drag cannons to pieces in desert scorn Womb of song, toil, tilled to perfection, cranial masquerade Bloody tents, raped prayers, our books torn in limb and page Scream an unvoiced anger, in a treeless forest, where one hand slaps Ringing rage through kingdoms lost in coins of the peering realm Massacre the helpless children covered in their mother’s urine stains Crosses across their chests beaten by scimitars in phallic contraband...

“The Promise” is a poignant saga of unimaginable emotional and historical majesty. It is the retelling of the finest instincts of man facing a grave chapter of man’s inhumanity to man. The Turks and Kurds kill and massacre. German war machine aids and abets. Great Britain, France and Russia are armed and ready for war. Armenians flea, fall, falter and finally rise from the ashes of their history’s darkest chapter, the Armenian Genocide, perpetrated by Young Turks from April 1915 till the end of the war “to end all wars....

A true artist senses the flow of living strife, feels each molecule react to the impulse and force of being, wishing, wanting, screaming in silence, and launches war on ignorance and apathy with each breath. Every artist worth his salt misses no nuance and feels every injustice scratch his heart, wound his soul, sand his senses to the oblivion he will not espouse. Vicken Chaldranian is a living, burning artist and we are lucky to have him fighting the good fight....

There is a House in the Highlands of Armenia, high above the howl of minions Turkish dogs scent mark its stone chiseled crevices and cracks, occupants unknown The house runs red, sometimes ashen, brown, sorrow dancing circles on its crown Carved noses, chins, hunched over caravans, invisible but in ink and salt stains Soft moan of orphans, headscarves covering sex identifying scars, tattooed as cattle Survival is a reed hanging from tall odds, beckoning the learned, become nomads They admire Germans and discipline, offering Doner Kekab scented Deutsche Marks Europe sears explosions in hate and envy, mad dogs of past glory reeked, bells rung...

Jaroslaw Fret, is a master director. He has produced this masterpiece with the Polish Theatre Group Teatr Zar, called Arminé, Sister. He takes no prisoners. For him, the theatre is beyond sacred; beyond timeless; beyond affect and surfeit of deceit; beyond make believe. It is more real than real itself. It is revealed; it is transmitted; it is osmosed. Theatre, like history, is a rushed-in rash of the skin. It is pomegranate juiced on your back, seeds oozing, witnessing sin....

CinemaArmenia – a special showcase of contemporary Armenian films, was a smashing success. CinemaArmenia was produced by Serge Bakalian. The joy of curating the films was ably handled by Peter Ajemian, Garbis and Silva Baghdassarian, Serge Bakalian and Luska Khalapyan. It was a Mid-May bookend to the San Francisco Bay Area Armenian Genocide Centennial Commemoration events that started early in April. An amazing array of films had been assembled anchored by the superb and stunning work by Fatih Akin, who is a German, award winning director of Turkish descent....

Oh longing, grass flown by, buzzed rotors clanking, modern wreck Oh, sunshine, fading chromosomes wailing through a night’s blight Orange muff, winter stark teleportation, is union station closed shut? Moved by this anachronic denial spiral of long leaved mustache slashed Billed as men of religion, of pride bursting away in reflections slighted They dance on our graves and spank their destinies with feathers flocked They bounce their checks and babies on our knees bleeding against rocks Infinite regress mindless hedonic whip slit skulls rolling down fez pools Progress toward the jungle of creviced kink self-chest-plucked beatings Progress with bulging guile, without regret, planning the next falling mass Killing is easy when echoes die young....

Beirut’s orgy in 18 confessions, Olé! Screamed and drowned Tom Jones served the Hummus near the pools of private clubs Orange crush between their legs, teenagers practiced re-innocence Dreams of heeled yachts, Monaco and Royal blow, effervescent geist Beneath the soil of imported champagne corked in a clown’s red nose Beyond the camps ’n hated enemies and jealous friend’s smiles sardonic Lurked world-stage trade-craft, spy vs spy groping public monkey bars Every prostitute, every little star, humping Roman Ruins, midsummer orchestras...

Toastmaster (2013) Directed and written by Eric Boadella Produced by Martin Yernazian & Eric Boadella Atorrante Films & Reversal Productions http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2375707/ https://www.facebook.com/pages/TOASTMASTER-a-feature-film-by-Eric-Boadella/145253528907326 https://twitter.com/ToastmasterFilm By Bedros Afeyan Might as well ask: So you want to be an adult male Armenian? For which of us can escape the challenge of being a gregarious host, master of ceremonies, Johnny on the spot entertainer, when called upon by tradition, dates and events, relatives and loved ones, demanding a prolonged chain, seemingly endless, of self-avoiding, lyrical toasts, a troubadour’s troubled soul spilled forth with slicked back wine, cognac, whiskey, glass half full, half empty, tug of war, that is ours to bear for millennia, if not more?...

WITHOUT THE BOMBS OF BEIRUT Without the bombs of Beirut, there was but sun Flooding bank vaults of time, pairs offered shine Beaches, heels, shaved legs and gum, sizzling sun Mountains a’snow, goggles ’n poles, untormented sons Beirut’s orgy in 18 confessions, Olé! Screamed and drowned Tom Jones served the Hummus near the pools of private clubs Orange crush between their legs, teenagers practiced re-innocence Dreams of heeled yachts, Monaco and Royal blow, effervescent geist...

It is entirely remarkable how banal her writing is. As if afflicted by a permanently swollen and actively secreting gland of bland, Nancy Kricorian writes and writes without heeding giant warning signs. So much bad writing, packaged, fanfared, pre-exposed as grand, and when you face the work you realize that there is “so much less there than meets the eye.” This is both infuriating and disheartening. The highs and lows of inspiration and despair are non-existent here....

Vicken Chaldranian is an auteur, having a strong voice, a vision he stays true to, come what may, no matter what obstacles you put in his way. Having made a number of movies already on shoe string budgets each with a heart as large as their budgets are small, with focused and limited shot plans and squeezed spatial scope, avoiding temporal seepage, keeping costs down, but reaching for the moon, the stars, the essence and reverie of man, each and every time....

April is the deadliest month unscented, unchimed Bottom welled, marching winds, tearing pages History sanded, blackened red, baked, desert cake Crystal ball darn yarn, music festers, tragedy pounds For they got away, got away they think, clean hands atremble A thousand lies carpet cover our millenial blood lines Progress thunders, defezed, Europa, opa, donner kebab Cannibals, semaphores, taunts, threats, honor gulped fang clubs Their helicopters whiz dream swift attacks, Greece, Cyprus Kurdistan, Bulgaria, Armenia their flag could further rape Civilized society serves measured scorn, coffee, demitasse Just invent invention, damned truth, talent, toil of others...

Stemming endless desire to see the sun, fan, cuddle Rays thrust in folds of petals thick in envy, dazzle Seeds of oil and industry, thick green rooted pride armies Worshiping arching god, gazing craned necks, offering unison Their love for bask parades, flasked tirades for silent baths A wild wind surrender, evaporating storm drilled clouds Through their lover’s piercing spectral bouquet of photons Cyclic summer long romance, enraged seed packs...

There is this accelerated-time, animated movie, (Aftermath: The World After Humans) informed by available current science, which examines how long it would take for mother nature, uninterrupted, un-DDT-ed, un-mowed down, un-deflected and human-intervention unassisted, to devour and extinguish all traces of our glorious mechanized world. Giant sky scrapers, our massive arterial highways, the connectivity promised by our suspension bridges, luxury boats, fast cars and Cineplexes apparently have no chance in as little as a few decades....

He wrote to sail away 30,000 puffs of air Unattached frame or basis Pleas of comfort, salient cheer Food, drink, menus naming chefs Recycle movies, swiveling baby screens Reclined outsize seat, business classed Pillows, blankets, cookie crumbs dans l’air Metal reinforced door to cockpit Stewardess, sparing in self-defense Sweating rubber bullets with the rest Citizens flash lapel flags Recovered hollowed lives Falling Hollywood stampedes Shoes in trays stuff x-ray machines Check their cheeks, few paces each to each Hand-held metal detected Warning buzzers, chirps, beeps Flashing lights snaking floors...

Vosdanig, alone with your stained canvas Studio walls receding, madness, full gallop Easels creak to honking horns, Whooping Cranes Half-drunk tubes, steep step fallen, hairy brush lagoons Cezanne enters, pitied peaches, pirouetted pears Matisse, prince of breasts, bottoms smiling almost colorless Picasso, rearrange burning eyes, needles, crimes, cradles Pablo so enriched with each female receptacle And you return to the canvas, exhausted Mother and sister whispering up ahead Horse’s hooves, Turkish death march, spring 1915 dance Silence, pause, silence, breath...

Morning bark, open keyboard drummed Still night gown, slippers, hearing aid Ludwig’s fingers chase away echoes, traces Avenging ivory, disappointing romance Sequin phrases murmured, murdered, recast Pedals, smoke, ten finger contradictions A pause, a caress, a smile, a push A quarrel, a threat, a growling retreat Second movement tendresse Angry memory machine, restless moons Serenade to reorder carousels Misunderstood gestures, promises Stern Germanic rebukes Ah, Ludwig, how you shower The haze of notes transgressant Detached perfume, home brewed Reacting on you skin, burning A warming glow tracing five lines Fenced second movement’s finale Seductive aspirational gloom...

BRAIDS OF PRIDE By Bedros Afeyan No country of no man can do but swallow No woman of any breadth can envy or endure In our natures, killers or survivors Little Turkeys who peck the meek, deformed to death And once started can not stop pecking till all are dead In our nature, little Turkeys, we too would kill or could so dare But for domestication, commercialization Fear of deities more hollow Than a desert freeze, a midnight owl’s stare And we are done, our myths imploded Our piss no longer runs, our heads are bowed and hung....

A brush on fire scented origami Traces stroke hinder and dry Swallowed pigment serenades Shining whispers in their descent Pride of porpoise, flight in candor Brittle dragons enterprised in shells Colors rewrite our love affairs Stroked brushes erase despair All trains stop, planes hover in rage Last record players spin up into space A canvas bed for stories, trays, roots mingle for glorious framing allures Of medium change the message coos Irreversible, irreconcilable Served in a Dorian Gray balloon...

(Far Be My Ararad) As solid as Ararad, as flow bound an Armenian As permanent an Ararad, a slope of despair seduces each of us As snow covered and majestic as Ararad, every Armenian forehead, Throbbing forefathers etched in crossed lines that sing of life elsewhere. Life elsewhere, where Ararad is ours, where Ararad never Splays vigilance, and can slip or sleep. Ararad instead, must shed and shed each spring, winter harvest snow, Magistrate, fools in loss and love, each last one of us, an Ararad untouched....

The new production of Beast on the Moon at the Marilyn Monroe Theatre at the Lee Strasberg Creative Center, at 7936 Santa Monica Blvd in West Hollywood, is an original take on this celebrated and more than fifteen-year-old play by Richard Kalinoski. It is directed by Paul Lampert and stars John Cirigliano as Vincent and narrator, Olga Konstantulakis as Seta Tomassian, Robert Hallak, the understudy, as Aram Tomassian in the production to be reviewed here, and Zadran Wali in that role normally....

There can be but one answer, one easel, one lessened To extract one swirl, one splotch, one patch of heaven In an eye, a rectum, a floating nose, hazed, dribbling, drained There can be no answer after the dada denials of denials of genocides and reason There can be but paint and weight and shine and light from giant inlets for morning Worship, if the rains and clouds could but bother competing NY artists Stilted drivers, a new search for sense, after Hiroshima, after Hitler, Stalin, famine, avarice, the depression, public works, roller coaster ridden Bullet holes in worship temples of paint, thick, vibrant, mixing, melt....

CHARENTS: IN SEARCH OF MY ARMENIAN POET Yeghishe Charents CHARENTS: IN SEARCH OF MY ARMENIAN POET by Shareen Anderson is an ideal romp through the chaotic life of a brilliant, tempestuous, once conformist (toeing the communist line, an enthusiast of the initial revolutionary fervor), once in revolt (when he saw what they had become he could not help but return to nationalistic themes), once in every woman’s bed, once an ascetic prophet, a futurist, a symbolist, a naturalist, but always a creative outburst fountain of an Armenian people’s poet, Yeghishe Charents (born Yeghishe Soghomonian, 13 March 1897, Kars - died 29 November 1937, Yerevan)....

SHE WITHOUT A DAUGHTER By Ana Arzoumanian Dash out! Using large steps, grandma, run!… No turning back, they are coming, run, they are upon you; go to the other side, pretend, now pretend, don’t scream, who would help you now? if it’s just you they have to play; ease off that thing inside, be patient, they are just bodies threatening you, guarding you, just bodies squashing and pressing. Like a slave without a master who implores you not to who has nobody to pray to be patient and try to forget; soon the last one will be resting, spent finally, the last one and you’ll have died each time too....

Paper cuts from books as thick as his lips As gapped and gashed as his teeth His curly hair, Medusa rendered quatrains, airs Uninvited village crier smile, apologetic Defiant, untrue in magnitude but Blue in spirit, ethos gardens in pungent parapente. I read the words, so aware of other words unsaid Sevag’s piercing smoke rings dance in Mashdots’ band Barouir repatriating anger, not centrally planned solace When ghosts sing in riddles, nightmares cued, reverberate....

Urge to create, to merge and purge Madness, Fever rendered, heartbeat Shorn, breath a’tremor, lunging Emptiness meets mid-progress Disturb chaos, chaotically kneaded Create a lighthouse, spread thin in rows Wondering words diffuse in an endless field Leaf trails seeped in sorrow, blind, stunned stares Loneliness alley pulped, swallowed Famished thirst, sprinkle this cracking dryness With wet, pulsing words Let order transmute distant murmurs For you to crave and rave in chaotic dreams The next salvo in invisible love’s mortar...

In the museum of life still labeled framed I stand with a rusty spout leaking In the garden of life snakes coil around trees I covet Cradle conceive and deceive for mere profit On an island of sound I dangle from trees To swing with dreams chiseled in brass laced tempi Mounting melancholy meager eager fissile remedy On an ocean wave deafening to break I find my confessor ready to spray my story The agony of a board cracked in two My dry suit betrays its name three times Before the rooster can chime the church bells Ringing the Suns monotheistic mourners adieu....

Paper cuts from books as thick as his lips As gapped and gashed as his teeth His curly hair, Medusa rendered quatrains, airs Uninvited village crier smile, apologetic Defiant, untrue in magnitude but Blue in spirit, ethos gardens in pungent parapente. I read the words, so aware of other words unsaid Sevag’s piercing smoke rings dance in Mashdots’ band Barouir repatriating anger, not centrally planned solace When ghosts sing in riddles, nightmares cued, reverberate....

Waltz or pass a cradling caress Frown or prance, test in tenses past Thickest orchestral glorying Ghosts of wars transmigrant memes Customs undressed, immolated, effaced Magical stitches, maddening wistful douleurs Panic pickled, swirling hemorrhaging Harmonic goose steps, stiffened spines Smiling boots glistening in Prussian violins Recidivist frivolity, for a grand dance or grosse pause Perturbed, blind soldiers hobbling past stretchers Kicking the contours, counting the dead Mustard gains Acid gargles Yellow vomit Mass graves...

Raiding my memory, to erase or explore You are naked, flowing in tight corners, raw You are pretty in smell, style, smile tall, thin, dark haired, almond eyed You are you, and inescapably, mine Harmony gnashes a wavy banner Towing our names emblazoned in the sky Love made with breakfast, launched through each other Fancy cabaret act at night, with feathers, star dust And stamina as diligent as mountain climbing racing bikes...

The pain of blades of grass Growing under the asphalt Gnawing at their instincts At stolen layered light Through crevices and cracks With steamy breath – the rain Of uncrushed ambitions – barred Complexion, unseasoned Vexing grey grime Spit and urine nourished Grinding twin empires Ottomania, Russophobia Our ancestors endured, escaped, resisted So you can burn and smoke their fingers Reaching out on lurching nights to an addict’s rage, plea transfixer...

DROPOSHPERE By Bedros Afeyan Blood banks of promises drop by Drop pass bastard sons of the deposed Gauged republic, genericized, disengaged I dream to see the warming sea Blazon nights and neon flares Hammering clamorous to ordinaire An empire gone un-adjusting Another – rising fumes and smog Billions of arms reaching for our waste Wider than wealth Brighter rectum than oil As we coil and vent Bolder eagles, unturbanned, Unheadscarved, aggregate To curse credit crevices Sloping, panting clangs Moaning delight in ancient Single note instruments of state Calming Cool Aid awaits Ribbon dancers at an Olympiad Brotherly destiny of Tibetan Pride or jest....

“Out of the Cage,” is a collection of “sramid” or sharp and witty sketches by the renown Armenian theatrical ensemble that is built around the considerable talents of Vahe Berberian. This band of brave Armenian performers dare to repeatedly skewer myths and legends, stereotypes and comfortable self-medicating dosages of delusion which usually take the form of banner headlines in party organs, fervent and melodramatic official speeches, oft repeated and hackneyed slogans, categorically stated national goals and other crutches which divert our eyes from what is really going on and where we are clearly headed....

It isn’t melody or melancholy, Dread or a draped dungeon to flee When we state our pledge, ‘Tis of Thee Our Country, hillside beacon, brave, free When our faces, pigments, surnames strain Our limited, luxurious vocabulary When our ancestors, wars, treasons, failures Enslave our surfeit motility, evict, evince retreat When greed gropes our hopes and renders them Randian folly There comes a time for prayer, for grace and glory To penetrate the fog of flag-flung hypocrisy Hosannas to a nation shedding disgraced prejudice For a bright, young, industrious dreamer To set us free, let the past sink and heave For tomorrow will greet our ideals in destiny...

He stood unbound, brilliant booming pitch Daring fame’s too short a lease to tire An overworked Queen and a burst poet’s appendix orphaned Crazy uncles, old world advice, newspaper boy in cafe’s Circulating telegraph messages on windy roads While genocide visited the Armenian Night He discovered San Francisco and New York Flustered wasps, street walkers, huddled denizens Gamblers, dancers, poor and burning Arabs, American foundation All the way up and down the Malaga vines....

Have I lived in life a jester’s dream? Soliciting in beggar’s garb Accentuated laughs and coughs. Unsuppressed incomprehension Swiftly lost and bought In a booth of lights? The crucible of truth plunged to its death After the fall The view from the Bridge With a salesman shared. Wright augmented play commence! Pen can head, heal and disgrace. College Park, MD (1987)

In the late seventies and onwards, when the Lebanese Armenian community started immigrating to the US and settling in large numbers in LA, one of the jokes was that they had gone from BH to BH. The former stood for Bourj Hammood and the latter for Beverly Hills. While they were from Boorj Hammood, many of them, they actually settled in North Hollywood and eventually migrated to Glendale or Pasadena or the San Fernando Valley....

(Sans Slow Movement) by Dr. Bedros Afeyan Gliding in a desert of sound Cello here, piano there, Anticipation, A caravan under the sun Limited water supply Unkind draining ditches Parapets, parasols, vestibules Yet bars close and bars follow Repeats, shifts, gloom, ecstasy Brahms at the keyboard Marching through the cello Slicing infants, newborns In thirds, fifths and glissandi Yet bars close and bars follow Repeats, shifts, gloom, ecstasy Movement after movement, Emblazoned with emotion Breathing fire, yet recurrent Recycled, repeating past Its own beauty, A sonata for a repentant You and me....

I dreamt I saw you in a dream You were white in dress, flowers adorning black hair You were singing, swinging, swaying from a key To key stroke of genius and elegy You sang of desire, of endless folly Having visions of sonnets The Bard would greet with envy You sang of love, abandon, menagerie You cooked and scraped and loved my company But every dream in dreams must end To reveal crusted truths in moments Before the taking of cakes and tea...

There was a woman once I knew Whose love could not smother but coo Poised and fragile, butterfly in flight Color fed, serene, as though untouched But soon a break, a turn to flush Like a giant gouache engulfed Bleeding sores, memories ill stored Disillusioned lanterns invaded by civil wars Promised quotients and debts unpardoned Propellants to sadden a shadow-grafted soul This hewn of binding hues heralds each morn Blessing thine escape, the grasp Divine A postponement for a vagrant troubadour Searching in breaths to shore, to shore Without implosion or demi-tour....

Nauseating tedium in the lyceum Melancholy races, crushed dolls Imitating invaders, evaders Echoes louder than dendrous tentacles Starving the ecstatic dreamer The 200 miles an hour creations Coiled through the maze of viscous jammers, Welcoming their blades to an impromptu dance Carving up his tongue, his liver, the fire brand, Floating face down, crowned in rejoicing perversion, In frenzied monodromy, uncreased calm, vanity rising Vortices of vagrant collective virility, strapped on, deadly....

Letters do fly and words often fall Symbols crinkle, dissemble, crawl White canvas with dark jaunty jesters Lengthy islands chain, drum in sequins Shallow sea beds teasing, resisting villipends. Paws prance with Poe, pensive parapets Dream Pamphleteers, stretch vortices into hymns Poe Am I, Poe do I crave, poem ending mopes To follow vilipensive, jagged ornaments. With a breath recirculant, heating brass instrument caverns – to sing, Like Delilah holding the severed head of an angel – to dance, For the earth to move under this very pen, rearrange its ugliest sins, Abandon its stabbing instruments at the altar of a trembling virgin’s vitrine....

LET FREEDOM REIGN By Bedros Afeyan (To M.L.K. Jr.) The luxury of indifference Through the gospel of ignorance Made virtuous Who can love? And what is hate? In this blissful miasmal state? To witness all and merely shrug Choose to change channels In search of hearty laugh tracks Nations glued to little else Beat their drums and their chests We are free! Come the cries This is freedom. Free at last....

Fractions of a life ring out Fractured morsels of tempting hearts Effaced apogees, elastic, nomadic chords, Crinoline forests of fine lights caress Fixed figurines brooding in the sky Helicopter blades heaving, tails raised Provincial police alerts garble on Prisoners grinding hope with lacrima, Lucy in the Sky carved lacerated labia. Music menaced memories on a garrulous journey Rapacious service, fragile in industry Masses sing for mercy, unrehearsed To evoke a bursting flow of triumph total Global, grotesque, orgiastic as Carnaval....

Through a hidden socket on the wall A curled up parchment, timeless scroll Heaven grinds wagons, wailing wings Bumbling euphorias, doubter’s tambourines Revelation mounts the Keeper of the Tower of Song Muttered drones paint septuageneric fauna Winking as if twenty bodies strong Soot eyes smile, widen Till tears fill his feathered pen Revelations mount deeper The Keeper of the Tower of Song To smile in irony’s chords With Dead Sea tentacles Leading the chorus dandelions In a pop country Pentecostal scream To usher in recantations or murmuring retreats...

Effervescent, glutinous, elastic, ornate Equivocal endorsement, heart belt, hosted head Dismal doubt for the sincerity of the sinner Drowns the premise of the sin grinders instead. Make a fish smile or a lion swim Let a muscle twitch or a battle blossom Let the country sink in jingo driven jungles Far away desert gold protected by our armored castles. Let history deplete the motives as its narrative tussles Crucial facts obliterate the dust of their threats divine Politics presume pretension will gurgitate revisions Till brown masses of pint size braggarts make Texas logic lord and prances....

THE PRIESTESS (in Armenian with English subtitles, 35mm, 109 minutes). Directed by Vigen Chaldranian. Written by Anahit Aghasarian and Vigen Chaldranian. Produced by ArmenFilm (Yerevan, Armenia) and Symphony Studios (Hollywood CA), Mel Metcalfe III, Sahak Ekshian and Vigen Chaldranian Producers. Marine Sargsyan plays the King’s all powerful sister. Vigen Chaldranian plays the ancient manuscript scholar and Mihr the Pagan god. Rouzan Vit Mesropyan plays the title role of the Priestess and the modern day car accident victim/amnesiac who channels her....

Face down in a manger, draped in a white sheet of shame Turkey cuddling its colors by three silver bullets in the activists head Hrant Dink sang his praise of Turkey and the land he loved Blending his Armenian heritage, a sliver of his ancestral pride. He wrote polemics, reportages and op-ed pieces in Agos and tied Ballads to broken bonds beyond turpitude, beyond poisoned blood He signed his name to pleas of reason as best he could portend He believed all feuds could be mended, our agony surpassed by surprise attacks Status quo infracted, threats refracted, faced down, absolved....

You might as well be Lebanese If you set your clock to a war Bombed bosom of thine brother’s barrage Fastidious religious banners, lust, lore. Poised in prayer on the head of a silvery pin Exploding sperm banks evict the middle road As Eastern quest to questions ring Channeling Western coffers Abducted news and queues: Kill, kill, kill and be killed in between. Governments come and go speaking of ethnic effects of domino...

MG2 Productions in association with Isis productions UK, BBC Television and the Raffy Manoukain Charity, present the movie “Screamers” featuring the rock band System of a Down (SOAD), conceived Grunwald and Tim Swain, and directed by Carla Garapedian. This movie is woven around the System of a Down international rock concert tour in 2005, SOULS, 90th Commemoration of a forgotten genocide. We see excerpts from their Los Angeles, London, Donnington and Amsterdam concerts....

Pulp Diction CAN I HATE A TREE? By Bedros Afeyan Can I hate a tree for its immobility? Can I hate its arms outstretched, hesitant, unprobing, Surrendering to the sun’s trajectory The prevalent winds and nothing firmer More abstract or nurturing than photochemistry? Should I hate a tree for the living decay it taunts and wears Its molds, folds, corrugated skin ready to peel and crack And sag with sap, without heaving variety in its dreams?...

It’s how we turn our hips To face the looming day Ready to learn in a lurch To mark the scents of sorrow In revolutions per sunrise Undulations per sunset lost. To be a waking animal at nightfall A sleeping tinkerer by day To meet the hips that turn and jerk To accentuate these mournings of May. The salty air evades Cannery turn to Mall The merchants are asleep, The truckers in revolt, Yet I cannot sleep nor read At hours of my choice....

I was a poet when celestial rings Of burning clouds hissed for me Danced around campfires as nymphs, Called for rain Or overcast predictions Of sexual digressions Committed to paper In defense of the word supreme — The Word, spring like and nurturing. I was a poet when sense sank into a samovar Pouring sensibility through a cup of blinding tea And Leotards jumped in unison to frighten gazelles Across the screens of mundane melancholy....

Our narratives are fresh detached roots Dangled drips of negotiated reality Dispersed in alien geopolyphony Flowering at the edges of volcanic ashlands. Our narratives are frail identities Molested yet sold in street trade Molding Garry’s Hadison’s and Aznavour’s Pealed Garabedian, Heditsian and Aznavourian Mere traces of a chorus fallen land. Our stale narratives, cataloged fresh, fresh Die with each veneration, dragging choice privations Chanting dignity, justice and christian destiny Fermented jackets of indifference, self absorption Inviting every label, model and color of extinction To metastasize a small vineyard of apricots and dreams Into bewildered banality, Los Angeles, Yerevan Hemorrhaging Hye** identity haunted past The volts of historical heresy....

Two New Must See Documentaries, One by Andrew Goldberg, the Other by Laurence Jourdan It has been a long struggle. Especially starting in 1915, and lasting the length of WWI, Genocide was perpetrated, premeditated, systematic, targeting Christian (non-Muslim) populations of the villages in Anatolia, in the Ottoman heartland, displacing and wiping out the Armenian (and Assyrian and any other unassimilatable) infidels (called Gyavoors in Turkish). Who organized it? The Ittihadists, members of the Committee of Union and Progress, better known as the Young Turks....

Starring: Tom Mardirosian (from HBO’s OZ) Nadia Mahdi Jeff Biehl Herb Rubens Directed by Sarah Benson Music composed by John Baboian By Bedros Afeyan “The Perils of Politeness Live On” by Bianca Bagatourian is loosely based on the famous Armenian, satirical, 120 year old set of thematically linked anecdotes by Hagop Baronian titled “Kaghakavaroutian Vnassneruh”, which roughly translates to Losses or Setbacks Caused by Politeness, or better yet, What You Lose By Being Too Polite When the World Around You Is Not....

Chess is war in measured unit steps Beauty brought from a silent clef Freedom from drones of cliches Offering illusion, freshness. Chess is unownable, yet community makes Trickling progress, sudden death Mocking comprehension, bounding past instinct space Chess is grand pilgrimage from aging to progress. Yet there is only one chess, with chess its nearest profit. 5-11-97 Livermore, CA

Collectively we stand Or think we do. Collectively we hope Declare the sword Inferior to the pen Or ink or feather. High in reason, sure of measure We serve our lord Sweetened self interest Illusion of duped masses Making their gains into our profit. Sloganeers, marketers, steeped in musk We regurgitate faithlessness As conviction, Markovian prediction Of endless struggle For good old liberty And apple pie freedom As billions die slowly....

“The Genocide in Me,” (54 min.) by Araz Artinian, and “My Son Shall Be Armenian,” (81 min.) by Hagop Goudsouzian The Passing of the Torch to Very Able Armenian Filmmakers Who Tackle the Genocide Story Head On, Very Personally and Universally at the Same Time Immensely successful documentaries have been released on DVD, both from Montreal, Quebec, Canada where two Armenian film makers have chronicled very personal journeys into the Hell of the Past, stoked by the future, informed by the peaceful surroundings of the calm that is Canada itself....

In 1905, as Armenian villages slept in Anatolia Vaguely suspicious of coming escalations in atrocities Invitations being readied to be evicted of their vibrancy, Forced marches to the Syrian desert To starve, to be raped and shot To perish for all eternity Branded by Genocide’s call An Imperial Ottoman decree Executed by the Young Turks of the Ittihadist Party A Swiss patent office clerk revolutionized the pace And essence of scientific discovery Bypassing the halls of exulted Academe Stagnant in drops of self importance and mortal rivalry....

Fin de Siecle Cycles of sickle strokes Hammered in red Coronations of single cell Members stranded at the Altar of alabaster Communes corrupted Cast, cranial discussions Effluvia of national pride Pleasanton, CA 11-24-99

A REVIEW OF “I HATE DOGS/BACK TO ARARAT” A forgotten genocide: Two Documentary films Two superb documentary films, certainly in the must see category, are available on DVD for the whole world to get acquainted once again with the Armenian Genocide and its indelible traces on the generations of its survivors and their children. They are the work of the husband and wife documentary film making team, Pea Holmquist and Suzanne Khardalian of Sweden....

A long caravan of trucks equipped with CBs cushions and flees large roaring metal insects on wheels wheels spinning eighteen at a time and dreams. Hartford to El Paso is a long way to go after prescriptions for the criminally insane after treatment and the forgetting of pain before the “howdy mams” and in between the meals 13 times she rode them blind while they rode her and passed her around....

“My Brother’s Road, An American’s Fateful Journey to Armenia,” and “The Right to Struggle, Selected Writings of Monte Melkonian on the Armenian National Question,” Edited by Markar Melkonian, Second Edition, ASIN # B0006F3P4C the Sardarabad Collective, San Francisco, 1993. Armenian News Network / Groong April 4, 2005 By Bedros Afeyan In two remarkable books, a diasporan Armenian can have the question answered: How could I have helped the Armenian cause? Or in Armenian, ’tserkess inch gookar vor?...

Practiced trickle of bickering sickles Forge fickle theoretical nuances Oblivion or ovation, vivid vindication Verily weakened weightless wagons Circle sand dunes afoot horses Chirping Arizona’s sun burdens Dormant lament in thousand yelps Musically adroit chafing chaps Tailored suites of quarter notes descend To portend the entrance of brilliant Mazes of mended and sewn sleeves Held to a machined mountain Bellowing effervescent froth forms adscititious invitation To light collective madness...

GARDEN DWELLING Turkey/USA, 2004, 29 min, Beta SP) If you find yourself between the moon and New York City on February the 5th, 2005, at 6 PM, you might want to go to the NYU Cantor Film Center in the Village and give “Garden Dwelling” a go. There you will listen to 25 minutes of snippets of Armenian, garbles of Turkish, formal Arabic mangled between a Turk and a Lebanese Armenian, neither of them aware of that which they do not know, some French in the hands of a Lebanese Armenian woman and now a French “archeologist,” or so it seems, and lots of English spackle to attempt to hold these mutterings together....

(Through DDS’s Symphony No 15) Prance in darkness, harness moon stream Rolled, ragged flaws, fuming mid beam Evolving, orchestral, Rossini interrupting Russian claws, streaking, fear covered Bristling, censored, sagacious steamed windows. Amidst official optimism State delusion of the proletariat Believing, shoeless, shivering madness Talent, escaping as exhaust fumes Doctrine chanting fur hats and Furrier brows on the vulgar river Floating fans in Vodka barges. Illuminated by floodlights Dogs with sentinels Joy of men perspiring Crima facie movements Framed in brass melody Heaving cello warnings Menace to reveal The secret of the farce But not its remedy....

THIS DARK THING: TWO ONE ACT PLAYS 51 pages, ISBN: 0-920266-32-0 EXILE IN THE CRADLE 87 pages, ISBN: 0-920266-28-2 Blue Heron Press Kingston, Ontario, CA, 2004 http://www.blueheronpress.ca/ The Armenian Genocide As a Fruitful Setting for Theater, a Mirror into the Psyche of Diasporan Armenians, and Many Other Ponderous Questions Besides. Armenian News Network / Groong September 6, 2004 by Bedros Afeyan (Dedicated to the memory of my mother, Anaiis Afeyan, a daughter of Urfa, who sacrificed, suffered and shared her courage and love incessantly)...

Mired in melodic madness Searching for a booth Zephyr garden pendants Planted in logic’s rotten tooth Hazing haunted scented trails led by glandular grandeur, Easing past despair Towards a reve folle. Innocent of all crumbs Drumming lustful revenge Mauve tangential excuses Perdition of granular loss Punctual reverberations Ebbing by notes fausses Charming violence quizzing Encrusted barbarous barricades. Davies Symphony Hall San Francisco 7-4-04

Ah, but to find a strand in for the night Made with pains and glands to recover In search of a coiled fleshy rose–desire Camouflaged in pure abandonment’s pyre. Ah, but for the gliding strength of fountain tops The magic hour, enchanted growls Disciplined dancers with a flying chalice Ears bleeding with pleas for more farce, more prowess. There will be time for surfing and downloading That a click will ultimately reverse...

Pruned War of Words Pare down a pear tree Compressed arid autumn fog An abandoned nest Sake Song Trained seal sing a hymn Drunken solemn vows of love Winter bears its claws Shinkansen Bullet’s blinding wings Winds of sorrow fire your strength Prairies simply end Kabukichu at Shinjuku Strictly reptilian Escapable ambition Running on running School Girls of Tokyo Subway or full train cell phones adorned with dolls New Kabuki masks...

A MAGNIFICENT FEAT Three talented and relentlessly driven curators (Anahid Kassabian, Thea Farhadian and Hrayr Anmahouni) together with seventeen Armenian Film Festival (AFF) committee members and nine tireless volunteers, pulled off an amazing feat after two years of struggle, in a span of three days, February 20-22, 2004, here in San Francisco. They managed to present on the big screen, in a lovely venue (Delancey Street Theater, 600 Embarcadero) a wide variety of authentic and compelling faces, voices and spirits of Armenians and Armenianness through the medium of mostly experimental and independently produced cinema....

Sepia colors animate Vanquished vacant signs Resplendent needle threads Of discarded promises Made in haste before The unprotected intimacy That leads to the grave Warning sign language Of Jazz Not lacking in pizzazz Or sizable praise Beat by beat Drummed into A nation’s consciousness Hear it said Bled, fled.

Warping walls of sorrow Deforming memories of Ancient Cities That golden past - undefeated through faith Spit upon by fate’s random drawing masquerade We sing of hope and endless summer blossoms Hear our village songs embrace us for the winter Of dissolution, assimilation, deprivation Yet out children dance to Sayat Nova, sing of Gomidas And celebrate a hundred years past Khatchadourian With pride, reverence and Armenian Ararad. Survive or parish facing hoards of barbarians Unwashable, unabashed Survive or stagnate in a world of wonders And wicked winds of tempting scripted denials....

I can walk away from this place Abandon the glow of errors Perpetuating virtue in vague Divested cries of varsity. Money lending streaks as landing Gear for unwashed crevices Folded by the shadow of a skirt Molded to repeat rejections Embracing jaundiced juices of piety. I should walk away from this place See less, feel, press prudent pranks Serenade the abscessed derelictions Of Descartian restraint. Rapecious rigors reverberate Rustic crinkles effused by Pantomimed vestibule referrals To a thin blend of crusted Boardrooms and Barricades....

Frida Kahlo came, went Vent vet vexed Pranced, spinal tapped Mustache raised, rant Scant clad, wept Wet diagonal Diego Bubbles, Champaigned For the common man Mural maestro syndicate Crooning Aztec bird Of Mexican discontent Flame fed fete flared Slept with his or her Art collectors' Cheeks and checks

At night, fanned by the light Of an African Moon Glistening instrument of splendor Make a lion roar While Aids devours the continent Chewing inside its rhythms Instruments of joy Partisan fractions Fumble fragrant futures Wind, string, percussion Strong hips, Execrated praise, Hosannas As prostitutes and babies default on their faults Gazelles run and lions race Witness Western Africa drown In the drought of UN observers Blue handkerchiefs and ineptitude Serving as their warning flags

“The Road to Home” Author: Vartan Gregorian Hardcover: 368 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.17 x 9.30 x 6.50 Publisher: Simon & Schuster; (June 6, 2003) ISBN: 068480834X Vartan Gregorian’s autobiographic tract, “A Road to Home,” tells an extraordinary story. It is the quintessential American Success Story. Here is an Armenian immigrant who comes from a village in Northern Iran, with his high school education completed in Jemaran, the Armenian School of considerable note in Beirut, who earns a BA and a PhD from Stanford (in history, specialty: Afghanistan), teaches at San Francisco State and UT, Austin, ends up being Dean, Provost and almost the President of U....

A hustler’s hiss hymn Havoc ballads of hovering apologies Modern median crimes Temperate tremulous clouds Diverging towards unsculpted keys Serenading barcodes scanned to oblivion Where cipher wheels scramble distress calls Till madness itself extends rented arms And man falls to pretend indifference Or solidarity with working wakeful Silent victims of extremal avarice Severed sand blasted mirage In ceremonial white silk satin soiled Undergarment draping tails of piano Action thrown overboard for a price....

April window invites judgment towards our pied past Haunting sounds of summers lost Hopes dug in bloody sand dunes of inscribed pride Endless chains of moaning caravans Melting into balls of fury for injustice left undone 87 monsters greeted parliaments in Europe recognizing Armenian loss Hands meager in destiny yet warm in culture’s clutch resound the denials Diminished returns of Kurd killing battalions flashing Western leaning pretences Endless in shame of lust for crusted victories over the unarmed and unwashed....

Critique: Straight, No Chaser “The Armenian Question” by Bill Rolleri and Anna Antaramian March 10, 2003 at the New Freedom Theatre, Philadelphia PA A two act play originally written in 1979 and sponsored by st Vartan’s Armenian Church of America, New York City. This play has had readings in the past and will have its world premiere on March 10. The following is based on an advanced reading of the script....

Accrued crust of varnished calyx Below a brooding brinksman’s pride Grapnel gripping girded gasps Prophylactic progeny’s cadence Or a precentor’s calumny in a demitasse A ravaged nation hemorrhages, defoliates An ancient language irreversibly diffracts Into pockets of arid echo prisms Encryptions nesting unfulfilled troubadours Tympani vexed mosaic repeating Unsyllabic monastic monodies in taste.

Critical Analysis, Straight, No Chaser Below you will find reviews of two personal memoirs of young second generation Armenian Americans who are born in the US and see their Armenian heritage from a distinctly American point of view. One of these stories is based in Fresno, CA and the other in suburban Northern New Jersey. They have much to tell us about the Armenian American scene of the last forty or so years....

(To Maurizio Pollini’s rendition of Debussy’s 2nd prelude of book II) Wake wondrous, wicked and weep Stake boldly banal and bleak Ecstasy elongated, emergent, evanescing Incubated, advertised, origamied Uncelebrated, euphemized Jelly of gelatinous moonscapes Crawling, coveted, concubines Bathed in lascivious orthodoxy Headdress of puritanical redress Cream of bras and seething baby powder Rashes in red moist cavernous folded Dreams engulf the wanton John At the amusement park of oral Raindrops of destiny

Critical Analysis, Straight, No Chaser BEAST ON THE MOON: AN ARMENIAN JOURNEY OF SELF DISCOVERY IN AMERICA Richard Kalinoski’s play “Beast on the Moon,” written in 1992, has as its protagonists two 1915 Armenian genocide survivors. It has been published as part of the Humana Festival Play collection of 1995 (19th Annual Humana Festival of New American Plays. A Smith and Kraus Book, pages 99-147, 1995). It was introduced to the public at that Theatre Festival (March 1 - April 8, 1995) and received great acclaim....

Introduction and a Proper Context Atom Egoyan, the highly accomplished Canadian Armenian director of motion pictures, has finally made a movie about the Armenian Genocide of 1915. It is called “Ararat” and in it another filmmaker, a famous French one apparently, is in the process of making a movie about the Van resistance against the Ottoman Turkish onslaught, which eventually wiped out the Armenian population of that region of historical Armenia....

My life’s light dance partner Clicks her heels and stiffens her spine Wound like a spindle of love in 4/4 time And shuffles on Tango breaths and breaks bound us in brusque turns and dips towards the light fantastic, serpentine, sanguine With our hearts in Argentine’s Blue sky Tango blues Pink Flamenco and American esperansa

With focused efforts In language, resonances Strung are left unsaid. Vulgar, profane friction Strings to bows Framed in fame, Fancy feet’n rags Nomadic notes prance Not free emergent joy But dominant, dormant lament Eight deranged drops of soviet blood Immersed in Jewish songs Cycled in ravenous applause Babiyar, bulbs strung high To brandish love’s triumph Over a Georgian Tzar. Stale in rhetoric Bear in a sterling grave Manuscripts march in man’s bugle Symphony to war and blight....

How to write a poem in plane view Up 30,000 in the air Unattached to frames or bases Amid pleas for comfort and good cheer Food, drink and menus naming chefs Recycled movies on swiveling tiny screens Reclining outsize chairs in business class Amid pillows blankets and cookie crumbs Metal reinforced doors to the cockpit Stewardess, sparing in self-defense class Sweating bullets with the rest Men and women sporting lapel flags Recovering their lives From falling innocence....

Reading has become scanning Patterns already seen, unwilling To stir impulses to dwell or trim. But in music, condensed, uncorrupted, Participation soars unforced Floating aimlessly On ascending notes and streams Shutter through weightlessness In thought – famished and free. Evicting out of bounds Sanding down the ferment of rigid might To the might have been’s, revealed In shadows of forgotten trespasses searching for a path through the ringing sneers....

Rain, softer than a murmured song, Hummed in an ancient language, Remnant waves of Silenced Pain. Crane, news bearer Fragile as the thinnest crystal Yet free in motion Free in flight Distinguished perfectly In essence and by construction Mocking forces of brutality. Train, hurried motion on static tracks Uninspired repetition Slaughterhouse and desert skulls Gas chambers and scimitars The final solution. Vain, human perfection. Folly, incision As perfect as a Bleeding brain....