Tag: poem

“My Death” by Bedros Tourian

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Bedros Tourian (1851-1872) was an Armenian poet and playwright. This is my translation of “My Death” from Armenian to English.

My Death

If the grim angel of death
Descends to face me with a baseless smile,
And my pains and soul evaporate,
Know that I am still alive.

If, with my forehead shining with tears,
In a shroud, like a cold rock,
They wrap me, lay me in a black casket,
Know that I am still alive.

If, at my bedside, my exemplar,
A taper – feeble and wan –
With a cold ray shimmers,
Know that I am still alive.

If the sad bell tolls,
The wicked laughter of death vibrates,
And my coffin takes its silent step,
Know that I am still alive.

If those funeral singers
Who have dark and dismal faces
Spread incense and prayers
Know that I am still alive.

If they decorate my grave,
And with sobbing and mourning
My dear ones depart,
Know that I am still alive.

But if it remains unmarked,
The only pile of earth of mine
In the world, and your memory of me fades
Ah! This is the time when I die.

I Cannot Log In to Reality

Chris KhatschLeave a comment

I can’t stay
away from screens.

I barely exist
in the physical world.

For maintenance only.

I disconnect to eat or to defecate.
I reconnect for work and leisure,
like I was meant to become data.

And like a fly tangled in a spider web,
it seems, I cannot escape
the World Wide Web.

The ghost of my existence clings
to the Internet of Things,
where the virtualized forms
of everyone and everything
dwell.

And things don’t happen anymore.
They don’t take place in the physical world.
And when they do, they echo in the metaverse.
I don’t exist anymore –
at least, not in the world I used to know.

Is this the beginning of
the technological singularity prophesied,
or are we already worshipping
the all-seeing tarantula?

We’re all chained to blockchains now.

When I turn off my devices,
who do I become?
And how do I get rid of this brain fog?

I cannot log in to Reality.
I’m there for maintenance only –
to charge batteries and
take care of basic physiological needs.

I cannot really log in to Reality.

Forgot password.

I must go back.

I must turn on
smartphone, computer, tablet, smartwatch
now.

Authenticating… Connecting…

must
surf.

must
serf.

Connected.

November 26, 2020: Untitled

Chris Khatsch1 Comment

It’s the need to say something
that makes me want to write.

However, the need to say something
doesn’t necessarily mean that I have anything to say.
It’s been almost a year since I last produced a piece —
a short story — that I thought was good.

Since March, my mind has been deteriorating.
I have been deteriorating.

It hasn’t been a good year, and it all started late last year.
A pseudo-revolution in Lebanon back in October 2019.
I believed in it and was part of it,
but it turned out to be nothing but noise!
Then, as 2020 began, Lebanon defaulted on its debts.
Covid-19 became a pandemic soon after.
Beirut’s port exploded on August 4.
The Nagorno-Karabakh war began on September 27
and ended on November 10 with Armenia losing.
Yes, a bad year for the world,
a horrible year for a Lebanese-Armenian like me.

Then, last Wednesday, on November 18, my grandmother died,
and we buried her where we had buried
my father and my grandfather less than two years ago.

And here I am at my desk now,
trying to work,
to live a normal life.

I want to write about something, and there are
so many things to write about.
But I have nothing to say.
Yet.

My question is:
How can I get rid of this brain fog?
It came once and never left.