Ethereal whispers
It rained night long
The wind gave in to hymns
Mist bred warmth
Voices hid away
Kids covered up
Chimneys lit up
Birds into their shields
Urchins into their havens
Each was busy hiding
Waiting in silence.
She, full of joy
Spread her wings
In the midst of it all
Like a Jasmine in her full shape
Head upraised, face turned animate.
Softly muttering,
To the awe-inspiring sukoon
I am to whom the heavens shall say:
“Come closer
Mine
is a realm like no other
Mine is a realm of fine talks and
fairytales
Mine is a land of meadows, of perpetual
rhythms
A realm of no broken hearts or unfulfilled promises
Mine is a realm of beauty and mercy
Mine is Eternity.”
It was but a mirage
He
Packed in his despair
Wrapped in his agony
Regret and lack of gist,
Begged her for a smile
For a farewell word
For a promise
For a last moment's touch.
She
Cocooned in her private musings
Weighing her choices
Her pros and cons
And her ways out
Repulsing to be picked up while ripe
To be denied voice, shorn of motion
To be squeezed in and out.
The song is over,
She said
The bird changed orbit
And the flower chose self-retreat.
It was but a mirage
A hard to walk tightrope
An ill-fathomed painting
Nothing more.
The Last Sky
On board, at night,
On a threshold into the unknown:
This is a death boat,
the man in charge of our destiny
roared high and squawked.
I know, hissed to myself,
I may never return
I may never see the light again.
Throwing a farewell to a mother,
to a crying lover,
to street corners, to mates and shades,
like a bird, wanting a cage no more.
Out of sight
Taken by my private musings:
The shore turned its face on me
The sea came to be a spoiled child
Its waves turned me into a mystic
Their darkness into a poet
Their rise and tide, into a knight
And their restless mood, into a beggar.
Keeping sanity in the midst of nowhere
Whispering to self and other
Thinking of a dear mother
Quaking like a restless tree
Like an anxious bee.
Hold on,
You are almost there:
The last sky understood my cracked voice
my shivering soul
my crumbling whole.
Hold on,
the journey isn’t over yet
your battle isn’t won yet.
The faces around me, in red,
Whitish and ashy.
Longing for an end
For a settlement
For safety, for a retrieved sanity.
Clinging to the last sky,
Holding on,
Waiting,
Trembling,
Thoughtless,
Aimless,
Careless,
I became with the last tide,
Which I hardly remember.
Our dreams have no audience,
But ruthless folks:
Our dreams have learned how to fade away
In street corners,
During Evening chats
Amidst tired elders, and ignorant
youngsters
During long wintry nights
During independence merriments
and sports festivities.
They fade every day, every second
With the rise of every new dawn.
Helpless, we are
Waiting for better days.
Khedidja Chergui holds a PhD in world literature. She is a university
lecturer trailing her path in academia through writing, publishing, and
reviewing articles for many journals and publishing outlets. Though she has
published essays and journal papers on a number of themes, she has always loved
reading and writing poetry. She wrote poems and read them to herself. She
currently resides in Algiers. Khedidja is an epistemophile, a selenophile, and
a horse lover.
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