Wednesday October 13, 2010
Guess who's in town
Yesterday some neighborhoods of Beirut have experienced a meticulous (by Middle Eastern standards!) security clearance, schools are closed, roads and airport are decorated with balloons, traffic, traffic everywhere... I mean MORE than usual Beiruti traffic, traffic everywhere and for that we're eternally grateful to...
You better watch out
You better not cry
You better not pout
I'm telling you why
Ahmadinejad is coming to town
he's making a list
and checking it twice.
he's gonna find out
Who's naughty and nice
Ahmadinejad is coming to town
He sees you when you're sleeping
He knows when you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good
so be good for goodness sake!
You better watch out
You better not cry
You better not pout
I'm telling you why
Ahmadinejad is coming to town.
Saturday September 25, 2010
WORDKILL
Leave me a piece of news -
not the kind they have in newspapers
but something you saw, or heard.
Leave me a piece of rumor.
I'll bundle it up down in my mind,
think of it, make some more perceptions,
then leave it with someone
whom I have just met.
A new person is hard to impress.
With my news I break blues,
give a hint of my virtues
of having something so special.
The person takes my news
and my perceptions,
adds it up with some of his
then goes out in the world.
The rumor so travels,
it becomes a big marvel
everyone knows it,
the person has had it!
In the beginning was the WORD
and the word was a rumor,
a made up story to the address
of an innocent person who bears it like tumor.
Saturday September 25, 2010
The Kama Sutra Guide to Loving Thy Country: Position no1. - Hate
"I leave the symbols to symbol minded", George Carlin.
***
When I was 5 -
Kindergarden with floors of red, with toys we couldn't play,
Red soup, red corner with a proud portrait..
We wouldn't dare to look at it directly,
For it was Lenin with his eyes sharp and moustach tricky
We always wondered what he'd say...
What he'd say of soups uneaten and sholaces undone,
For disobedience to our teacher's gaze.
Our happiness gone, we'd head to the massive bedroom
And pretend to be asleep at 1pm.
And then we would pretend our waking up,
Our getting dressed, we would pretend our love
for our teacher and our Lord the Lenin,
We would pretend we're looking forward to an evening
Of more red soup by our mothers, and stories of
Party victories told by our fathers...
When I was 9 -
One day I became a pioneer with a red tie around my neck
With Lenin's face pinned on my uniform.
We'd march into our school and promise
Our eternal allegience to the Party
We would pretend we're looking forward to our red future,
To the achievement of communism and enjoying freedom unseen...
We would pretend we liked the scheduled day
And liked to wear a brown uniform and put a coat over it so gray
We would think we were soldiers...
When I was 13 -
The Wall was gone, somewhere someone had said
We no longer needed it. The wall was gone, the war arrived
Our wars...Karabakh a gift onto Armenia and Azerbaijan,
Abkhazia and Ossetia a gift into Georgia...
No more pretences, all real, all cruel,
No food, no water, no supplies, the region reeled
Minimized to tiny bits of state
We shrunk our mega-USSR love
and mini-pretended to mini-love our mini-countries,
But what was so mega about it was that
We could mini-love only if we mega-hated
When I was 20 -
I was handpicked to be one of the greatest
earliest contributors to cultural exchange
between Amerrica and now ex-USSR
I find myself in Washington, D.C.
It's Labour Day, It's Independence Day,
Memorial Day and Thanksgiving
Thou shalt love thy country
Everywhere I'm hearing,
They love and they cheer, I try to join in
but my enthusiasm through wars and earthquakes
has become incapable of any form of pretentious love.
When I was 27 -
And a mother of three, I'm in the heart of the EU
It's all blue with stars, the bright yellow ones,
the buildings are huge, the system's promising
if we go on and love thy and my country/ies
one day each of us will become just as huge
and honorable and social and communicative
and structurized and harmonized
directive-d and regulated
just as blue-ed and yellow-ed
Oh God, this seems right, please
let me love it, at least around now
let me adore it, the giants
of post-war EU masterminds,
their photos hanging around at every corner...
No, I can't.
Now I'm 33 -
and in the Middle East
no one really cares as much about the country at first.
They're really concerned about loving thy neighbor first -
Somehow, someday, in their own little way.
A very hard trick in these historical lands
who are squeezed from all around
by the greatest and grandest
of country-loving states.
Yes, they hold their flags high up on national
and ordinary days, they cringe at their wars
they despise the bad days
but no pretenciousness...
Yes, they love their clothes, their big cars and big malls
and big homes and big thoughts...
but most of all they are concerned with the bigness of hearts.
Yet, somehow someday when buzzer of a man
with a moustache and gun (they always have both),
comes out and chants "Love thy country! Go kill!
In MY name! In HIS name! in GOD's name",
the neighbor love stops, and a bigger "love" starts.
***
It's all so mixed up, so messed up -
a giant Gordian Knot severely tied...
They bombard us from global TVs
hate this one, no, that one, no, this one,
no, back to hating that one
- Hate'em, so we can love our country better,
so we love ourselves better,
Love is great, love is more,
If we do this love well,
If we do this correctly, we'll become masters
and teach love to others,
then they'll bow to us, they'll hail to us,
we'll be historically great and big and huge,
the way mega-love intends...
All this mess dwells up from an urge to love
be that the country or thyself or thy neighbor,
But I wonder why one ought to love
in expense of hating the "other another"?
(With all due respect, I think
It's male driven for a man loves a woman
in a way, in a manner no "OTHER MAN" would,
out of pure hate and fear of the "OTHER's" unknown:).
Tuesday September 7, 2010
love vice (ANNA KARENINA'S MOMENT)
the train is sliding off the rail
in cliffs of the surreal, i wish i saw
your wicked ways
when my cat meowed and blinked twice
i heard you're far when drums are drawn
of lives unheard adventures cruel
being with me is jungles worth
of streaming tears of mist of dawn
oh stay with me i dream you beg
sit next to me i hear you say
it's shadows roaming my room's surface
and i am shedding your embrace
a shadow tear a shadow voice
a shadow figure with remorse
a film of negatives in shots
strolling around inside my heart
a hallow shape of love gone by
nothing to spare, no memories vice
a heart room once full of dainty me
is vain, cold, piercing -
a soul emptied of anima
Wednesday September 8, 2010
Sweet Water Fish Dolma
Wednesday September 8, 2010
Sweet Water Fish Dolma
(a poem from DIARIES OF EMBARGO - 1994)
No heat, no gas,
no water, no light,
no bread, no sugar, no cheese and buter,
no coffee, no jam...
Tea from herbs of mountains
fruits and veggies from little orchards,
nothing to feed the cows, the sheep with,
nothing to feed the dogs and cats,
even rats have died.
Embargo is everywhere
east and west are locked
north is fighting
the south is busy building a brindge
We're sitting in cold and dark -
a Soviet apartment meant to
instill ulterior forms of human happiness,
a little kerosene heater in the middle
we're sitting on 5 chairs around it
and a blanket over it resting in our laps,
we're keeping the heat near our feet
so our noses won't freeze.
And we're dreaming of dolma
with rice and beef wrapped in vine leaves
served any time of year
but especially on New Year's Eve...
it's New Year's Eve but no electricity
has meant that we can no longer mix
our humanitarian aid of a rice
humanitarian aid of tomato paste
garden-grown onions
humanitarian aid soy oil
humanitarian aid salt
water collected within two hours of electricity two days ago
there's no meat, it's expensive
the borders are locked
we just had an earthquake
the Soviet is gone
nothing is working
Karabakh is on fire
With so many things out,
We can't have dolma.
But there's Sevan
in Sevan there's fish
the fish are brought to Yerevan and sold on the streets
Someone living in an apartment just like ours
gets a blink of an idea
(at this point I ask you how may you not
believe in God?)
We can make fish dolma!
We purchase the fish, debone and deskin it
then pull out the old Soviet period
meat grinding manual machines
our mothers are cutting the fish into pieces
our fathers are rolling the handle of grinders
what comes out of the machine
is a lot like meat, but so white!
We're excited.
We pull out a giant bowl
mix all the unmixables together
with dried herbs sprinkled inside
rosemary, tarragorn, basilic, oregon
a little nutmeg, black and red pepper
we wrap everything in vine leaves from our garden
a big and very promising casserole
is sitting and looking at us
not enough kerosene to cook it atop
no wood oven and no electricity
It's New Year's Eve. We're sitting
and waiting for the lights to turn on -
all the buttons are on
we're waiting the water will flow in the sink -
all the taps are open
no sound disruption as such
yet arrives.
18 hours have passed,
it's darker and colder outside.
my mother and father pick up the casserole
bravely head to the cold corridor
put on more layers of jackets
a heavy winter coat and hats and scarves and boots
that hide that extra third layer of wool socks
and they disappear in the dark of the winter
heading to a factory nearby where the guard knows
a room in that abandoned place
that one of the sectors has electricity
for there's something very important
since communism here that
they're keeping it
we're sitting at home and waiting
and counting in mind the possible length of possible stages
of our parents getting there,
chatting with the guard,
persuading him with a gift of a box
of cigarets and a bottle of vodka,
they get in, they walk on,
they arrive,
the guard turns on the electric heater
with our casserole atop -
two more hours pass
(we no longer want OUR electricity to come.
awaiting this imaginary sequence to end
proves to be more romantic),
it's cooking, it's boiling
the water is settling.
15 more minutes, though
we're missing the physical scent.
we imagine how mother and father
are sacrifizing a layer of scarves each
to wrap up the casserole and walk back home
to assure it doesn't get cold, not one bit
and just as we're betting on precise calculations
there are sounds on the stairs, happy chatter,
the knocks are on the door,
We jump and we open.
We put on a layer of jacket each,
sit around our big dining table
in a cold room we leave empty in winter,
we put candles on floors, on shelves and on table,
around the Christmas tree...
and we're serving the dinner.
This is the story of the most delicious,
most inventive sweet water fish dolma
you'll ever hear -
from millions of homes
in landlocked Armenia
right after communism faired good-bye
and wars said hello...
