Fatiha Morchid Poems

I conceal my pain
And grin
I hasten to the notebooks of days
Use rouge on my lips
Navy-blue Kohl on my eyelids
And dress in white.


I sit behind a desk
Listening to the pain of others


Who cares
For my pain!
...

A gap
Deepening forever
Nobody fills
Nobody
It struggles
But fails
Lets drop
A tear
...

On the choice swing
Fear hurls me
Into the bosom of "No"
Desire grows for "Certainly"
Persistence rebels
"No", "A thousand times no"
then, "Aye", "Certainly"
. . . and "Why not"


I run away from the decision guillotine
To embrace "Perhaps"
While . . .
While . . .
...

To Lamia' the female


To you my little daughter
The ringing of the murmurs
I silenced
The sad laughter
I drowned
The ecstasy of scents
I buried
When my youth wandered away


To you
All the paths
I never trod


All the waves . . .
I never struggled with
Fear O my dear
Is the sailor's enemy


To you
All the fruit
My hands forbore . . .
From picking
...

Do not say "absence tastes like madness"
Close your eyes
Wherever you are
You will find me . . .
Immovable as the sea
Wandering about
In the ebb and flow
Never absent.
...

By sunset
Her day rises
It no longer matters
Who the person is
That will ride
Her horse


Ready is she
To die
...

When out of a nightmare
You come to me
To exchange
Your bed . . .
For my palms
I let my locks hang down
Like navy-blue curtains
Spread out the gloom of waiting
Like a Sufi carpet
Then like a gypsy wet-nurse
Sit in solemn submission . . .
Shaking fatigue off your feet
And clouds off your forehead
Telling the story
Of Sleeping Beauty
Hoping you lie
Forever in my palms.
...

I am jealous of it
She robs me of my evenings
Lures you . . .
With news,
Stories,
And secrets . . .
That to you become more important than my secrets
It is the Sheherazade
Ravishing nightly my Shahriyar


I am jealous of it
She lies in wait at my pillow
Absorbing the pouring of my clouds
And the after-rain smell of earth
Destroying all,
Effacing with letters
My own fingerprints


O! would I were
The very ink
In this newspaper.
...

I rise from under the ruins
Climb my pride
And reach to the surface . . .
The zenith of pain
From memory I build up a fortress
. . . and from monotony.
I wrap myself in expectations from above
Before I resume . . .
My falling.
...

I and the sea here
Your breath
In a cell-phone
. . . carries me
beyond
a sail,
without astrolabe
and the horizon your eyes . . .
...