By Ara Baliozian

	***

	When the old fight,
	it is the young who die.
	When the rich fight,
	it is the poor who die.
	If it were up to the old and the rich
	to do the dying,
	we would have no more wars.

	When we are young, we are driven.
	When old, we wonder what it was that drove us.

	It is not easy writing for readers
	who already know everything they need to know,
	even if what they really know
	happens to be recycled mumbo jumbo.

	If verbal diarrhea were writing
	and mental masturbation thinking,
	every speechifier and sermonizer
	and every partisan and dupe
	would be another candidate for the Nobel Prize.


	Friday, June 07, 2002

	***
	Ara Baliozian was born in Athens, Greece and received his education
	in Venice, Italy. He lives in Ontario, Canada and writes in
	Armenian and English and has published over 20 books of his
	works. He has translated works from Armenian writers, such as
	Grigor Zohrab, Zabel Yessayan, and Kostan Zarian into English.