Tire- Bouchon

Free

As an unlit candle

To be transformed

Drip by drip

And cover

The empty bottle

Of Vinho Verde

In the colours of

An April sky

Free

As a thought

That is kept unshared

So it may become

A once whispered

Name

When the empty bottle from Minho

Gets covered

In the colours

Of a summer night

Free

As a goodbye

In a train station

When all was said

When all was left

In the empty bottle

To hold a candle

Left unlit

Because the flame

Would make it drip

In silence

When the train

Goes

Into the mist

Of a

Winter night

July 13, 2020

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020

High Noon

It is perhaps the flight

Of pain

From the shiny dark

Of a dreary thought

… An island without a beach

Where wandering boats

Have let their anchors

Rust in silence

The Lone Cypress

Has the shape of the ocean

Winds

And the whisper of distant names

It is perhaps

The high noon dreary

They chase away

Under their wings

The raven

PS/ I took this photo in Prescott, Arizona where the raven is a protected species and part of the Native American mythology. I have written about it here: https://liveingray.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-raven-in-native-american-cultures.html

June 27, 2020

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020

Mandolino Plucked with the Plectrum of Remembrance

The strings of my mandolino have the farewell of memory

Borrowed from the imagination of hands

That once wondered on a distant balcony

How the city below remembers full moons

I was given that mandolino

To hear myself grow with time

I did not know that the melody of my grandfather’s tears

Would stay silent in the space

Where I became what I once was

Unknowing and grateful

And I accepted that

While the dead are done with the losses they kept secret

I had to learn how to mourn my own losses

Alone

On the strings of a mandolino

When my hands were ready again

To play

PS/ This 75-years old mandolino was given to me by my grandfather, a professional musician, almost 60 years ago. I kept it silent since. Today, I heard it play a melody borrowed from my own imagination.

June 18, 2020

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020

Sprezzatura

The gold rim

Still keeps the shape

Of the last kiss

By trembling lips

Forest green

Bohemian glass of times past

Now

Dreams alone

Of simple days

When Rulandské modré

Kept the secrets

Of Moravia

Warm

In that glass

Forest wines

In forest green

Lipstick on the rim

En guise

Of

Goodbye

May 31, 2020

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020

Note: I took this photo with a Pre-war Carl Zeiss Jena Biotar "T" 1:1.5 F=7.5 cm mounted on a Exakta Varex camera of the same era. This is a legendary and rare lens and wide open to 1.5 shows the most amazing bokeh in portraiture work.

Broken Meerschaum Pipe

Not to turn the clock back

Nor to quiet its tic-toc

But to sit next to it

And light a pipe with English tobacco

Next to the bed

Is the old diary, leather bound

And past bound

Leave the diary pages untouched

Then

Leave the room with a steady pace

Whistle is silence that song you once knew

Give it a new name rhyming with the old one

Next to the bed

In a clay vase

There are wild violets

From an ancient field

Keep your eyes open and let your memories in

Hear the clock

Close your diary book 

And dance

Barefoot

May 25, 2020

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020

Vote: The picture is of my last sculpture. More about it on https://vaheark.blogspot.com/2020/05/pandemic-and-hero-with-thousand-masks.html

Otro Día Veremos la Resurrección de Las Mariposas Disecadas

I am in the desert

Where spring grass is now tall

No one can see the rabbit holes

No one walks alone anymore

Away from the city

Where people now hide

In their own rabbit holes

Fear is now like a dream

For eyes that stay wide open

In await

For in the desert spring grass

Does not move, it undulates

Unda after unda

As people hide

From each other

A falcon cuts thru the air

As a broken spear

As a lost arrow

And fear makes us forget

The stolen kisses

Of simple times

Near a night-blooming

Wild jasmine bush

Butterflies have many lives

Each colourful and lonely

As they rise with the morning sun

And rest under the high noon whistle

A lost arrow makes

When it finds its way

The spring grass is tall

No one can find the rabbit holes

May 16, 2020

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020

The title is a verse from Ciudad sin Sueño by Frederico Garcia Lorca.  As I was re-reading that poem, I found in its lines predictions of pandemics and people’s reaction to isolation. 

Mothers' Day in the Night

And I did fly a kite while waiting for the wind. It was an unmoon night but the darkness was pierced by souls searching a new home. I was alone with myself, and my kite had a string which stretched as the kite left me behind.

And I recalled names without faces, and faces without goodbyes. Train stations, high seas and dry deserts. Names that swirled around me waiting for the night wind. Large cities, unshaved men, women with no children. Those who stayed because they could not leave. Those who left because others stayed. Like my kite.

The night was filled with the Arbequina olive trees’ exhale. It is a very unique aroma when the night is dark like Spanish eyebrows, through which eyes look at the names swirling around. And a steady hand gently finds the string to keep the kite away.

I was alone with myself yet lost in the silence of the unmoon night. I secretly recalled the sound peasant bread makes when still warm and crusty. And how pleasant to my lips it becomes after a soft touch of olive oil.

So I did not invite all the faces without goodbyes and all the names without a face to break that bread with me. On my back, I started counting the piercings in the dark cover. I knew it will be a while till my count is complete, but the bread was still warm and my kite still pulling from afar.

… It is Mothers’ Day in North America and one of bright dots in the dark cover has a name I know. And a face.

So I let my kite’s sting go. It is a shame to tie down a kite.

May 10, 2020

©Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020

I took this photo when the moon and Venus were closest or "Moon conjunct Venus". The conjunction represents harmony.