Poetry Susie Gharib

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: SUSIE GHARIB

Lemon

{A tribute to U2 – The Edge}

Lemon, the colour of the sun when filtered through her closed eyelids. She wore lemon, lending every shadow a ray of light.

She’s going to make you dwell on many memories you left behind and when you remember, those fragments will reassemble, making you feel as if the gold is seeping into your veins, making you feel as if you’re holding on to her seams.

She wore lemon to enthuse your dormant dreams. She had seven candles of permanent beams.

A man weaves a kingdom with a fragile thread of words. A man breathes a throne so she can be at home.

A man spins a mantle with myriad metaphors to recollect the odes spun by the lemon she wore.

And these are the days when a song resurrects a face. And these are the days when we cling to a tenacious gaze.

Midnight is when the clock ticks within.

Lemon, she’s your inspiration, the tune-born verse. May she thrive in Heaven, where she’ll be wearing her lemon.

The Last King of Scotland

[A tribute to Forest Whitaker and James McAvoy for their great performance]

When a dictatorship with mania weds and Uganda swims in pools of blood, a slender Scot is hooked by the skin to die the most painful type of death.

Enchanted by the heroism of Scottish clans, by the tartan kilt and the proud bagpipe, he befriended the doctor who healed his hand to usurp his identity and turn him into a clown.

And though had he not been born a Ugandan he would have wanted to be a scot, he mocked the Celtic red hair and found its fiery gold disgusting.

Abandoned by his father as a child, he was adopted by the British army that made him servile, nurturing a scary General that had avowed to liberate both his country and Caledonia from the English crown becoming the last king of Scotland.

(Susie Gharib)

A Bubble

A bubble is blown by my overtired soul, so I creep, flesh and blood, into its impervious core, the safest shelter from an over-demented world.

I walk the streets, now shielded from dagger-looks, a censorious species whose tongues vie with vipers’ forks and feel like a ghost who’s been conjured up on an alien soil.

My dog trots beside me, elated by our ethereal stroll, we’re spared some frowns, some murmurs that we both abhor, revolving around the foul breath of a canine which contaminates her owner.

Some had opted never to shake hands with me, Others had refrained from walking on the same pavement. She had been allowed to lick a few hands and feet, but most were contented with contemplating a very odd scene, a little dog accompanied by a Ph.D.

(Susie Gharib)

Void

What’s this exodus of love, migrant hearts, leaving us denuded of brothers and sons, of sisters and mums, of that which warms each sequestered chest with feelings?

What’s this vast expanse of encroaching sands, that on our creeds obtruded, scorching our deeds, tainting beliefs, bequeathing an upheaval of dunes, protruding?

What’s this rain of locusts, out of focus, leaving our eyes deluded? Three visions of peace now all deceased by oracles who on our future sadly brooded.

(Susie Gharib)

For every tear you made me shed, For every premeditated humiliation, For every step that you misled, For every aborted reconciliation, For every ache in chest and head, For every act of alienation, For every selfish whim you fed, For every lack of consideration, For every trap I narrowly fled, For every faked dedication, For every chuckle with which you tread Over my sorrow and desolation, A new thorn in your heart is bred, A new worm is in gestation.

(Susie Gharib)

For Every

A Fitness Walk

She bore your constant ridicule with her usual forbearance and fortitude, picking your jeers with a knife and a fork.

She bit into your pies of scorn, the middle-aged woman, too old to own, a defiant trespasser on your marathon.

She munched your bags of hard-shelled nuts: innumerable epithets for contracted whores, swallowing your bile with even strides.

(Susie Gharib)

Cherish

A restless cloud once grew very weary of roaming the illimitable welkin and inwardly yearned for a way of life other than fly.

She waved goodbye to a trail of friends whose troubled eyes fast filled with tears and sailed against a ferocious wind that tore so hard at resilient fleece.

She managed to sew her scattered yarn then anchored at a torrid sphere where an ailing cloud appealed for help, for coolness to ease that simmering heat.

She played the nurse until they grew too fond to part, too close to disperse and rained they did on furrowed land that received the drops with real glee.

She sought the bowels of the earth merging with streams that flowed unseen but soon grew tired of the dark and yearned for kites and flying fleets.

Her grief agitated every drop that tranquilly reposed underneath. The united waters began to gush through a crevice dug out by tears.

The flaming sun caught sight of her who eagerly bared her bosom to rays, then clambered up his ladder of light to be united with her peers.

In memory clouds frequently take this journey to the underworld. It helps them cherish every flake and every speck that roam the skies.

Why have we strayed so far from a path that's strewn with flowers? These thorns that prick our soles have sprung from hearts that cower.

We've waited so long for Spring at which past frost had glowered. Why do we shrink from songs that ring with a sun-blest Summer?

I hold the love you breathed like flames that fear no showers. I dare each breath to heal long years of grief and sorrows.

(Susie Gharib) Anodyne