Four poems by Ali Znaidi

A Blue Light

Up the high road,
her shadow was lamenting split rocks.
The sun was in agony.
Between two winds
the nymphs
of time were silently singing.
Under the sun’s invisible rays
Sappho was walking,
while stumbling in stony rubbish.
The unexpected winter surprised her.
Her voice vanished into a sea of mist,
whereas the wind was still wild.
The path to enlightenment was (still) full
of thorns.
In this chaotic vacuity
a blue light appeared through her hair.
 



a sparkling path of enlightenment

I found a dead moth
on my window sill.

{Still} the buzzing of the bees.
{Still} the echo of silence.

{Still} my window is open:
The ethereal lights
in the garden never cease beaming.

Ants are {still} crawling on the grass
Herbs whisper to the sun.
—Exhalations from the lawn cracks.

Lights reached to my psyche,
and it seemed they touch the best place.

Useless shoots removed.
Soon everything would start afresh.
And the dead moth resurrected.
 


Sans Domicile Fixe

Her hair is full of lice. That’s her life.
She walks aimlessly across the main street
leaving only dust behind her fringe area.
Now, she is grimacing at the anonymous crowd,
while caressing the parasites in her hair.
That cringe has come again heavier than mountains.
She lets out a big heavy sigh & says,
You are going to be a star today.
The cringe eases up
and what was once a mountain
becomes a silky light sheet fluttering in the sky.
Her red hair with those tiny black spots astounds everyone
as she resumes walking aimlessly with only one purpose:
To be a star in an anonymous crowd.
 


A Kind of a Maze

His anger is like bubbles.
Your anger is like water.

You drink your wine in the bathtub.
He drinks his wine beside the gutter.

He moves from right to left.
You move from left to right.

​The center is lost in an underground labyrinth.
—An unexplainable vacuum.


​

 Bio: Ali Znaidi (b.1977) lives in Redeyef, Tunisia. He is the author of several chapbooks, including Experimental Ruminations (Fowlpox Press, 2012),Moon’s Cloth Embroidered with Poems (Origami Poems Project, 2012), Bye, Donna Summer! (Fowlpox Press, 2014), Taste of the Edge(Kind of a Hurricane Press, 2014), and Mathemaku x5 (Spacecraft Press, 2015). For more, visit aliznaidi.blogspot.com. 

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