Jinjinha

The sea calls its waves back

No matter how errant their swell

Cavernous or flat, shores abandon the froth

Old waves still try to offer en guise of goodbye

Shores do not belong to either sea or clouds

The moment they have is an escape from time

For when the sea calls its thunders home

Rocks forget their moss and in secret they dry

A siren will bathe in moonlight and in promises

While a poet upon the blue smoke inhales

Both lonesome, both free, yet to the same sea bound

And to its rocky shores in perdition aligned

It is all blue and dark, but a poem it remains, and a lost sigh

To the swirl of the days spent upon a shady shore

Where time awaits its rhyme, its rhythm, its turn

To hold promises once made to deep, brown eyes

When a siren lost her song under moonlight and in froth

 Date Unknown

 © Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

Oochoorma Guleshi

I remember Nat King Cole singing “Stardust” in the background.

A sunset upon the bluest sea, relentless and old. Pumpkin seeds, termos, and orange Fanta. The termos (lupin seeds) was my favorite covered with sea salt. A simple pleasure of squeezing the skin of the seed, ejecting the yellow split-seed into the mouth, and mixing the sweet with the salty.

Yet of that evening, I remember most her cotton dress and the sea breeze playing with it. It was in the form of a shirwal, the hybrid dress style mixing a traditional dress with the shapes of baggy pants. White and black, light and teasing.  A dress I could see the sunset through. The salt from the pumpkin seeds and the termos had dried our lips and made them puffy. The orange Fanta was warm and the carbonation more pronounced.

… I used to make kites when I was pre-pubescent. Wax paper, bamboo carefully split into three four-foot pieces, string, glue and pride.  I used to tie the bamboo sticks into a hexagon, glue the wax paper over it, make a six foot tail of string and shredded paper, write my name in Armenian and Arabic on the paper, attach the 100 feet long string and get ready for the kite fight. My kites looked like flying Sea Ray.

It was a primordial urge to fly the kite seventy, hundred feet into the breeze, and hold on to it, guide it, and come close to the competitor’s kite. Then, high in the air, an aerial flight would start each competitor trying to poke a hole into the other’s kite with the edge of one of the hexagon tips. Once the paper was torn, the kite would not catch the wind anymore, and in an unpredictable farandole, come down. The winner got the tail of the downed kite. Like the matador gets the ears of the bull. A primordial act.

My grandfather had a Turkish description of the ritual—it was an “Oochoorma Guleshi” or the wrestling of kites. He watched us from a distance and asked us to learn how to perfect our kites, not to rejoice from downing the competitor’s kite. “Learn to fly,” he told us, “fly high and proud.”

… That evening, on the shore of the bluest sea, I was a young man, with a new set of primordial needs. But for a minute, that cotton dress became a kite, attached to the rays of the sunset, and held by the sea. She was the most beautiful kite any boy or young man could fly. She then became the sunset in my memories.

That evening, I remember Nat King Cole singing “Stardust” in the background on a Phillips transistor radio powered by mercury batteries. We did not know English, yet we understood the song. It was all about the sea, the sunset, termos, Fanta and a kite I wanted to fly.

.. Last summer, on Robben Island, South Africa, I saw that cotton shirwal dress again. It was not the Mediterranean, it was not during sunset, nor was she spitting termos and pumpkin seeds. I was not a young man, and my lips were not puffy of the salty seeds. Yet, for a moment, I closed my eyes and saw a pre-pubescent boy fly a kite where his name was written on the wax paper. In Armenian and in Arabic.

Then I opened my eyes, looked through the ground glass of my 1949 Rolleiflex camera, and depressed the shutter release.

August 24, 2013

© Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

This picture is the one I took on Robben Island, a few hundred meters away from the prison where Nelson Mandela spend almost two decades in a small cell.

Zaa'tar

Olive oil-cured olives. There was no curing, as there was no pain. Yet he remembered how olive oil was used to ease earache in the old country. A land of pine trees, white stone houses and crime of honor. With a cracked wooden spoon he mixed sesame seeds and dry thyme into the olive oil.  Thyme is good for the thyroid.  Thyme is good to wake up one’s mouth after a night of restless sleep.  Thyme is what makes people think about lands of sun and white rocks. “Don’t let anyone steal your thyme” the Irish sang.

He mixed the drudged seeds and thyme slowly.  Olive oil and olives. The essence and the concept. Together in a jar, before sunrise.  Before the city morgue gets its first victim from the night.  Before the old dogs take their time to pee their first pee on the lamp posts.  Before his neighbor rolls his first cigarette and coughs as if morning cough should precede black coffee. Today the city was quiet yet he thought about all those who were still under warm covers, through their morning-breath hanging to each other as if sunrise would change all relationships.  That made him smile. Sunrise covers shades by the obvious, while relations thrive for the unexpected.

He lived on a river but could smell the ocean.  All rivers find their oceans, but sometimes oceans return to rivers as time returns to its own curving when one pushes time too far. Or too fast. And rivers run to their destiny, just to discover that destiny is that vast ocean where all mix, where all become what they never wanted to be.  Destiny is an empty vastness full of wasted time.

Breakfast was almost ready, yet sunrise was an hour away. Or an hour late. He opened the fridge door halfway as the dog was sleeping in front of it.  The yogurt jar was inviting, but he looked for cheese. Olives are best with drained yogurt, but he wanted thyme on sheep’s milk cheese.  Thyme and olive oil, with a touch of tomato tapenade.

As he prepared his plate and toasted the Lavash bread, his dog looked at him.  He had already peed on every lamp post in the city and felt ready for the day. He knew he will have a few pieces of the warm bread thrown right under his nose. Then he will have his own breakfast, get a rub on his ears, belch and let a sigh of content.  He knew by sunrise he would have a full belly.

Olive oil-cured olives. Destiny-cured sunrises. Rivers which do not find their oceans. Time bent from its own speed, returns as a new time, as less time to stay under covers or sleep on new pillows.

He bit into the warm bread and dipped the remaining piece into the blend he had mixed. Lavash bread, olive oil, thyme and sesame seeds. Then he got up, opened the window, and with the cool smell of the river, he invited the acrid tobacco odor into his living room.

His neighbor was awake and had rolled his first cigarette of the day.

A blue heron sounded its wooden flute screech and landed at the end of the dock. Sunrise was imminent.

April 3, 2012
©Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

From Susanoo to CapeTanaerum

When I return

My voyage would have taken

The space of foggy days

In cities of square windows

And women with large hands

Of sleepy ports and ships dreaming of seas

Of white stone houses and rain-softened wooden doors

Behind which my dreams

Left a promise and kept me outside

For I did not ask for more

As my space of wondering days

Had enough room for only one

When I return

I will tell of those lands

Where I was but did not visit

Where I loved and did not resist

About the swing of sun-bleached wooden windows

Open upon fields of wheat, olive orchards

Mossy graveyards or snowy hills

When I return

My voyage would have taken

The space of a summer rain

Upon a field of coquelicot

                                                                                     

November 20, 2011
©Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

Serendipity

“Will you still touch me when I would not care about being touched?”

It was a windy morning near the Atlantic waterfront. Seagulls had found a bag of French fries floating near the docks and were dancing their aerial farandoles.  Sailboats were predictably compressing themselves against the docks and providing the background rhythm to the dance.  The morning coffee was already cold but I did not feel like making another pot.

“I do not know.  Maybe by then all I would fancy doing is to read books in bed.  Even better, read them on an LCD screen.”

“Would you sleep in any other bed if the pillow was firm enough?”

By now, the sky was turning gray as the morning pink and dust had almost vanished.  A cold November morning with its horizon lost beyond the last building I could see from the balcony.

“Not only firm enough, but accommodating enough so I could prop myself against the headboard to read my book.”

“And what kind of book would you read?”

Strange question – how would I know now about the books I hope to read when all I want to do in bed is read a book?

“Probably books I once read but did not care for.  Or books I did not read because I thought I would not like.  I would follow Henry Miller’s advice about being selective in reading rather than voracious.”

One seagull dropped half of a French fry in mid-air and two others planed to catch the tender morsel before it hit water.  And all these Jonathans seemed to be laughing out-loud about the dance and game.

“Will you be wearing heavy cotton pajamas? And even a night cap on very cold nights?”

I took a sip of the cold coffee which surprisingly tasted good.  I had reached the last milliliter of the morning brew and got coffee grinds on my tongue.  I played with them for a while, chewing them slightly to uncover the taste that boiling water had been unable to liberate.

“It is my nose that gets cold on frigid nights.”

“So, you may be wearing a mask?  How lovely will that be when the time comes for you to touch only the LCD screen of an electronic book in bed, wearing a blue mask!  Or maybe it will be rainbow colored like your poetry?”

My writings were never of those colors although I fancy thinking that they do arc above the daily silliness of small things. Or because of them. And that they appear after a storm, a passing inner storm most of the time.

The seagulls were gone by now.  The sky was unremarkable and the day was a simple one already. I decided to make more coffee, shave, take a warm shower, and go to work.  Or back to bed and read a book.

November 24, 2010
©Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

When the Last Seagull Passed by My Window

I sat by the candle to let the night in

A night had already passed

By that candle once

I read so I can write how I forgot the night

When you found yourself

In someone else’s smile

I filled my pipe of pleasant times

And in my glass I poured spirits longtime lost

As I held myself away, as a promise unkept

I sat by the candle till the night got tired

And the flame drowned in the North wind

Then

I cleaned my pipe, remembered a name I thought forgotten

And put my feet under my dog

To help him 

Sleep

August 10, 2013

©Vahé Kazandjian, 2013