Three Poems by Alketa Gashi Fazliu

 

TALE OF A HEART SHAPED LIKE A STONE

 

On the paths of escape

At 200 km/h

you fled,

just fled

You were named Escape

escape, oh art of fleeing

You seized all my immune cells

Those that kept me alive

You threw my heart along escape routes

Somewhere on the highway of sin

Or in a room of aristocracy with cigars, lines, and glasses of poison

I polished my sins

In the suitcase of oblivion

Praying for history

To shield you from every wound, sadness, and abyss

I had time to idealize your portrait

Narrating our story to it

For you were on the run

And I confessed, pleaded, and hung dreams on it

So when you'd come

We'd age them together by breathing life into them

But you were the Escape

Shadow and madness

You killed every memory on the shore

You spat on crossroads

A metaphor for the spirit

That you transformed into the wood and stone of a grave. 

 

 

WHEN THE SOUL HURTS 

 

When something hurts in the soul

You long for birth and divinity

You bite your lips here and there

You shoot stones and demolish houses

When something hurts and you don't know what to do

The sun sets at noon

The night, the stars, all squeezed

Until morning when the rooster crows

When it hurts and you don't know how it hurts

The night falls in silence

Before you, a glass of wine

A cigarette with dark smoke

Into your hurting soul, a gentle rain falls

And the rain pours on your roof

Bricks fall, walls collapse

From longing and pain for a love

When the soul hurts and you don't know how it hurts

Neither wine nor raki does any good

The roads form a square

Sometimes in the east, sometimes in the dark west

When something hurts and you don't know how it hurts

The roads become impassable

Mountains rejoice, branches break

Just as the soul broke for a while

Throughout the world, fates have drowned

And for a new dream of mankind

Not even the pen writes on the white page

And every new letter turns into a mountain

The soul slowly burns in a fire

Love hurts, knocks you down, and kills you

Oh, I'll never love again

Even if I had another lifetime.

 

 

OUR LOVE IS A MALIGNANT CELL 

 

Our love is a malignant cell

With metastases throughout our being

In the brain

In the marrow

In the liver

Anyway, even the kidneys it's touched

Like tendrils stretching every second

Nerve fibers in a cancerous body

And the blood is thinning

The pressure is rising

Instead of tears

Poison is seeping

Our love is a malignant tumour

Centred in the epidermis

That's where it struck

Because it knew

That only there light exists

Therefore,

It struck

In the heart

In the solitary guiding point

of the contact group of my chromosomes

There's no oncological treatment

for our love

It's

Malignant.

Alketa Gashi Fazliu was born in Prizren in 1986. She has earned her Bachelor in Political Science and Master of Science in International Relations and Diplomacy. Currently a PhD student pursuing her Doctorate in Media and Communications, Alketa also works as a TV presenter, journalist and editor at the Radio & Television of Kosovo. She is an active member of various professional organizations including the Union of Albanian Journalists, the Kosovar-Swedish Scientific Institute, Union of Albanian Writers and Critics, Association of Journalists of Kosovo, Swiss Association of Journalists and Center "Genocide in Kosovo - an open wound".

As a journalist, Alketa Gashi Fazliu has published numerous editorials in Kosovo and some of Europe's mainstream media publications. She has written and published 11 works of prose and poetry. Some of her literary works are translated into English and French. Her book, titled "Point", was awarded the First Prize for poetry at the Prishtina Book Fair by the Kosovo Publishers Association. Her public profile is also elevated by her roles as editor and presenter of TV shows including "Good Morning Kosovo" and "The Book Show". "They Carve Pain" is the author's new trilogy. Alketa Gashi Fazliu is married and a proud mother of three children.