A Moral Outcast

I am Armenia

I am the land of apricot and oak tree My bones are in the mountains My breath exhales through the stone My blood flows in rivers that do not forget My soul is dance and song.

I am the apricot tree The Golden skin that ripens in the sun, Its seeds  carried across oceans To be planted in soil foreign Yet the taste is always of home.

I am the Oak, My roots cross the highlands And Sing the centuries of our struggle, It’s Branches raised in praye Never yielding through storm or fire.

I am the stone, The breath of the arches of Ani, My thousand churches That whisper  their prayers into the wind. Though silence fills the streets, The hymns endure, Carved in every wall.

I am the Rivers Arax and Akurian, Their waters remember. Carrying the voices of the Fedayi, The grief of exile. Yet still I flow, Bearing memory to the sea.

I am dance As feet strike the earth In circles of sorrow and of joy. I am song, The lament of the Duduk The strum of the Oud Weaving centuries into breath My children scattered, They rise when the music is played.

They came with the dawn Lake Van stood mirrored with the sky A prayer to the God of our Fathers. My mother was baking choreg, Steam rising from the bread like incense To our home that soon would not be. My father, the man they called mayor His wife… Men with the red Fez, they pulled them from our door I was but five – What does that matter? The years blurred like the footprints fading on our sojourn south into sandy plains With the dust of a thousand stolen miles. I became an orphan A son to a land who knew nothing of me. They gave me a name, But it was not my own. Just a word I had spoken When asked whose child I was.

I still see our Mountain, Ararat, at night When my dreams betray me Its white peaks stare, patient… watching A monument to what was lost Mourning what we became. Now, a man of twenty, I can still hear My mothers voice, telling me stories of The Temple of Garni, where the old gods dwelt. She would sing of beauty, Her sweet voice now lost To smoke and sky. Once a kind woman fed me Ghampana, pumpkin and apricots soaked in honey. I wept, Not for its taste nor sweetness But for the hands of my mother hollowing the golden flesh by the light of a fire While singing gentle songs I no longer hum, My father, who taught to me Of  the Fedayi, a victim of his own story.

It was raining that night How I remember the rain Like tears on the broken Wheat fields of our youth.

The rain was my witness Counting the time with Each beat, like a clock Ticking away.

It saw what I could never say It kept my secret, that sky And the storm alone remembers The pain of being... alone

But tonight was different A figure stepped out Hidden in the Quarter’s mist, Pale as the moon over the river.

The shadow wore your shape, But not your eyes, Nor your warmth, And not your soul

His eyes caught the gas lamps, Burning with an old hunger, Suddenly the rain hushed As if even it was listening

I looked down at my old hand The lines of time etched in The ring you gave me on my finger And I knew the waiting was always for this.

Lately, I’ve been asking myself why our politics feel so divisive. Has this always been the case? Everywhere I look, it seems less about debate and more about demonizing the other side.

I know our country has always had differences of opinion — usually about how we live, what we value, and the best way forward. But today it feels sharper, almost as if there’s an outside force driving the wedge deeper and deeper in our already fractured United States.

Part of it is history: politics has always had conflict, but in past decades, disagreement often left room for compromise. Now, polarization is rewarded — it fuels ratings, clicks, donations, and influence. The louder and more extreme the rhetoric, the more attention it gets.

And part of it feels deliberate. Politicians, strategists, and certain media voices thrive on division because a divided public is easier to mobilize — and easier to control. Sometimes it seems less like public service and more like an industry built on outrage.

by Michael Vakian I love this land but don’t confuse my love with silence.

These hills, these streets, they got memory. They remember chains, they remember whips, they remember blood spilled for freedom and they don’t forgive liars in tailored suits.

You stand there, hand on a book you never read, mouth full of oaths you never meant. Selling the soul of a nation for a headline, for a handout, for the crown you think is yours.

But hear this: We don’t kneel to fraud. We don’t clap for thieves. The Republic don’t fold.

It lives in the sweat of the worker, in the fire of the teacher, in the vote of the unheard who rise up anyway.

We ain’t scared of tyrants. We’ve buried plenty. Every empire that thought it could choke us out found itself swallowed by the people’s roar.

So mock the law, twist the truth, dance on the Constitution.

We’ll be waiting. Torch in one hand, ballot in the other, voice sharp as steel.