WHY ARE YOU HERE?

	By Kevork Kalayjian


	Why are you here
	Listening to these repetitions
	Of rhyme, rhythm, and roar
	Oscillating music of
	Imperfect monotones
	Mesmerizing, hypnotizing and
	Capturing, no captivating you with
	Deception and titillating vision #

	Emancipating your imagination
	From this boring stuff, which helps you see
	The excellence in the reader before me,
	The fantastic in the performer after me.

	Yet you focus on the walls, the ceiling, the tablecloth
	As they tell you all the secrets hidden in time 
	Observed and recorded from different angles
	From different ages # fanatical outbursts on the run. 

	So now, you know the day I cut the line
	To get to the hot coffee  #  the dried fruit.
	So now, you can see, here, right in front of you,
	The day they made Irish Soda Bread! In 1902.


--
Kevork K. Kalayjian, Jr.  A graduate of the AGBU's Melkonian
Educational Institute, Nicosia, Cyprus, holds a B.A. in Political
Science and Economics from Fairleigh Dickinson University, Rutherford,
NJ, a M. Ed.  Counseling Psychology, from WilliamPaterson University,
Wayne, NJ, and CPA requirements completed at Pace University,
NYC. Kevork resides in NY with his wife Maral, and three sons Aramazt,
Tro, and Ohanes. A descendant of survivors of the Genocide from the
town of Kilis, in the Cilician region of Armenia, an accountant by
profession, he likes to paint and write. His next project is to
collect the names of 100 volunteer Armenian-American families who
would like to resettle in Armenia and jump-start a new way of work and
life there. Some of his poems have been published in literary
periodicals such as "Ararat" and at www.poetry.com.