Monday, July 10, 2017

ASMA O. MEJDI



ASMA O. MEJDI

E N I G M A

You came like a firestorm,
with flaming eyes
and a fervid soul.
Surprise , surprise,
there’s more to me than meets the eye.
~
Try not to know me for I’ve suffered enough.
Alamort, I’ve given up on myself.
Feast not your eyes on what you see,
alas,
it’s but a disguise
hiding the enigma I am inside.
~
And I, indecipherable being, enamored of the moon,
rain in June, and cloudy afternoons,
bear now this stigma of being unfathomable,
and live in a misery so
abysmal.
~
It’s so cold
in my benumbing loneliness.
Should you find the right ingress,
we will both pass this test.
~
Love me not, yet.
Decipher me first.
I am encrypted pieces of all
what’s found and lost.
~
Don’t wonder
at
my petrous heart.
I’ve bolts for bones,
and for heartbeats
thunder.
Decipher me first,
and love me
after...






'BROKEN' IS NOT A SIN

Let me in.
Let me show you ‘broken’
is not a sin.
~
Let me tear my flesh and
my bones bind
to whelve your precious smithereens.
~
Let me love all those hidden parts
you love to hate and
doom to dust, to oblivion.
~
Let me crack you open and
free your filipendulous heart
from its meshy dungeon.
~
Let me unshell you
burn all your masks and
stoke that torpid fire within.
~
Let me kiss your eyes,
inside them paint sunrise,
and  plant eternal spring.
~
Let me in my veins
collect your pearly tears and
give them back to the ocean.
~
Let your storm feed on mine.
Let’s dance, coalesce and spin
out of pain, out of reason.
~
Let me tell you O’ beautiful broken
how iridescent you are
now that light is seeping out and seeping in.






SURVIVAL TATTOOS

I knew it
since I first laid eyes on you.
I just knew
and saw it
the rebel,
the warrior
in you.
Hands marred.
Blades jagged.
Face scarred.
And yet, I knew
of your soul
the tender niveous
behemoth,
a boniform of virtue.
I just knew
there was so much more to you
than have all those life battles
left of you.
You survived, I knew
all your nightmares
and bravely stifled
your demons’
ballyhoo.
I knew
how hard an ado
had you –
had to withstand
all storms with
pride
rectitude
and sinew.
You could see through me
the way I could see through you
beyond all
our hideous
yet so beautiful
survival tattoos.
THAT,
for sure
I knew.

ASMA O. MEJDI


ASMA O. MEJDI is a Tunisian ELT Head teacher, a poet, a bibliophile, a book-fancier, a logophile, a pluviophile, a wordsmithery aspirant and more…She started writing poetry and fiction two years ago when she discovered that her obsession with words is greater than her fear to write. She’s currently planning to take up postgraduate study.

11 comments:

  1. She's beyond words with her eloquence and wordiness. I love that superhuman capability of manipulating language to convey the untold via the told. Keep on shining dear goddess of poetry.

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    2. A myriad thanks to you Mr Ridha. I am all gratitude for your exceptional feedback and nice words. Stay blessed 🏵

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  2. Wonderful deep pools of words that seem to flow so smoothly. A "true Love" poem that every woman or man wishes for is in "Broken is not a sin" Universal is that longing. Amazing gifted with words. Barbara Suen USA. Not surprised you have been Number One for this anthology. Congratulations. I enjoyed every word!

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  3. Barbara Suen USA, I truely appreciate every word you wrote and the noble feelings you poured through them. It is really hard for me to find the right words to appropriately express my gratitude. All I can say is STAY BLESSED ❤

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  4. Is "Enigma" really enegmatic?
    The poetess started her poem with gloomy frightening but poetical pictures such as "firestorm" and "flaming eyes". The picture would be better had she only used "FERVISH" soul instead of "FERVID" since the former is related to fever (i.e. the fever of love) which will be more poetic. Now, the poets concludes her first stanza that love does come from the first sight. Thus, she criticizes the notion of love at first sight. With reference to her culture, people talked about love at the first sight, and hundreds of arabic poems,tales and books talked about that especially that of " Tawq al-hamâma fî-l-ulfa wa-l-ulaf", by Ibn Hazm, translated into french as "Collier de la colombe sur l'amour et les amants" by Gabriel Martinez-Gros, Paris, Sindbad, 1992. This book is about Love and lovers. It talks about types of love,signs of love, and love at the first sight among others. However, most people do not believe in that type of love, and our poetess, the subject of this study, is no exception. She revealed that in the last line of the first stanza: "there’s more to me than meets the eye", and by the end of her poem: "Decipher me first,and love me after...". Thus, we conclude that she does not trust that type of love, and her lover has to delve into her as the diver does in the depth of the sea. She warns her lover against loving her as love for her is a "TEST" they both should "pass". It is a hard test for her as she has "suffered enough" and she is not ready to try love again. Contradictory to what she pretends, she reveals herself to her lover that it is but a "disguise". Disguise here has two connotations: physical and psychological. First, she disguises herself behind the make-up on her face (see her profile picture) to look happy. She smiles and talks to other people i.e. she seems social and easy-going whereas the truth is that she is sad, isolated and lonely.
    Second, she disguises herself as "indecipherable", "unfathomable" and "encrypted".Here again, she reveals herself by giving her lover some clues: "enamored of the moon" and "rain of June" i.e. she is romantic and her lover has to be romantic, too; She is "so cold" and her lover has to ignite her feelings to soften her "petrous heart" which is in reality a very fragile heart. This is the "right ingress" i.e. the right entrance to her heart that her lover should follow.
    So, now the enigmatic turns into a simple clarity: "Decipher me first, and love me after".
    As a conclusion, the poetess succeeded to an extent that she beautifully expressed herself poetically through the usage of the free verse tpye as she longed for freedom and broken the poetic meters and feet and those jargons that might oppress her feelings. However her poem is fool of metaphor, oxymoron and other eloquence styles which reveal the mastering of language, the manipulation of the poetry tools of writing beside to the richness of the lexis she used. This was the outcome of a fervid volcano of rarely pure feelings isuide her.

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  5. The poem is the property of the poet as long as it is in his chest. But when it is written out, it is the property of the other. That's why every reader interprets it as they perceive/ feel it. Besides, a poem that supports only one interpretation is not art. That is the power of the poet to make the reader "fly" in the untold each according to their insides. Now, the poet is an outsider and the reader is an insider. Wish you success and excellence

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  6. Of course, this is not pscho-analysis of your personality. I've never met nor seen you andI did not mean you, either. The reader interprets the poet not the person. The reader analyses the artistic hero not the personality itself. As I told before, a poem that supports only one interpretation is not art. Everybody can perceive it according to their own interpretations.

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  7. I really can't thank you enough for taking the time to read and react. Thanks a million for every word MR Ridha.🏵🏵🏵

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  8. It is such a pleasure and a greater honor to have your poetry in our Voices of Women Worldwide & VOWW-TV's website and VOWW's multimedia global anthology poetry book with over 22 poets participating ... May you always be blessed with the compassion, humility and love ...

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