VOSDANIG ADOYAN**


    Vosdanig, alone with your stained canvas
    Studio walls receding, madness, full gallop
    Easels creak to honking horns, Whooping Cranes
    Half-drunk tubes, steep step fallen, hairy brush lagoons

    Cezanne enters, pitied peaches, pirouetted pears
    Matisse, prince of breasts, bottoms smiling almost colorless
    Picasso, rearrange burning eyes, needles, crimes, cradles
    Pablo so enriched with each female receptacle

    And you return to the canvas, exhausted
    Mother and sister whispering up ahead
    Horse’s hooves, Turkish death march, spring 1915 dance
    Silence, pause, silence, breath

    When even paint washes lines and traces
    In smooth jolt, rapid caress, ejaculate
    Canvas turns to overcoat, walks
    Towards the NY night, into spittoons,
     Museums, a loud curse, abandon

    Virgin canvas bought from the provinces
    Innocent, unassuming, bewildered
    Deflected, diasporic renegade

    Virgin canvas begs, forgets
    Virgin Mary and her son torn blast
    Mine own lake Van, a chapel in ointments
    Pigments, streaked scratches, eyes and hands
    Chapel for cattle, for target practice, erased
    Young Turkish army recruits, reclaimed heritage

    Vosdanig hangs himself to a pin on the wall
    To carry the weight of witness, to see saints
    Art and Armenia in endless stone serenades.

    Bedros Afeyan
    7-4-2011
    Pleasanton, CA

     ** aka Archile Gorky


--
Dr. Bedros Afeyan is a theoretical physicist who works and lives in
the Bay area with his wife, Marine. He writes in Armenian and in
English and also paints and sculpts. Samples of his work can be found
on the web by clicking on his personal web pages at:
http://208.177.152.139/