Challenges

To persevere,
You have to overcome the obstacles set before you.
Through your trails you shall supercede the odds which have been set before you as well as the dares and moxie met through the highest spiritual powers.

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Patience

This calm,
Serene,
Peaceful composure,
Has great stoicism.
It also has some of the most placid compososures of which are the most gentleness. These all make it of extreme humility and honor for all to observe.

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Echoes of Life

The echoes of life,
The stories that we tell,
The echoes of life,
The stories which ring true,
The echoes of life,
The stories which are so remarkably true for me and you.

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Be Thankful

Be thankful for your health,

Be thankful for your family and friends,

Be thankful for you can communicate with the people you love as well as the people you don't.

Be thankful for the stuff you do and the stuff others do for you.

Be thankful that you are loved and cherished by all who know you.

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Nothing

When I say nothing but scars are left I'm not saying it out of spite, believe me. I wish something good stayed, something I hold on to for the rest of my life saying, "I've tasted the ambrosia straight from the highest heights I won't settle for less". I wish the memories I have would keep me satisfied even in the times when you and I are just not meant to be. But all you left with me is a sharp sense of danger, a filter to see through empty promises, a burning scale to weigh a character and a veteran heart that's not swayed by soft eyes like yours.

Little Richard

Peter Balakian

On a walk past bulldozers and trucks pouring tarmac for the NJ Eisenhower highway my grandmother said to me as we turned into a market with olive barrels, hanging  meat, piles of sumac and coriander— “he shakes away my blues.” It was 1959, and what did I know about starving   in the Syrian desert or the Turkish whips  that lashed the bodies of Armenian  women on the roads of dust. I wouldn’t  have believed that she saw  those things. The radio  was always on the sink in my grandmother’s  kitchen. “He’s a whirling dervish” she said— whirling dervish—the whoosh of the phrase  stayed with me. I too felt his trance— even then—as she pounded spices with a brass mortar and pestle. The air on fire under him the red clay of Macon dusting his bones. What did I know about Sufism  Sister Rosetta or bird feet at the Royal Peacock? In the yard the bittersweet is drying up, the berries turning gold and red. The way memory deepens with light.  His shaking gospel voice. The heart going up in flames. My grandmother survived the worst that humans do.

Copyright © 2022 by Peter Balakian

The Understudy

Hieu Minh Nguyen Even in California all of my friends require touch to get through winter. It’s true, I am waiting to be in love in front of the people I love. He says, I’m glad you’re here & I want to cover his mouth to warm my hands. Of course I understand how one would mistake that earthquake for a passing train but what do we do with the stillness when after great change nothing moves, but his hand sliding a glass of wine across the table instructing me to drink with a single nod. I bring the glass to my face but don’t let a drop pass my lips. Beside him, I am almost somewhere I’d like to be for a while. To make him smile I tell him I am bad at sex. To make him kiss me I tell him when I’m happy I go looking for things I haven’t lost yet.