The Statutes
Enfolding you in the mysticism of ancient epochs
& current times, they talk vibrant history, either
beautifully sculptured or amputated— [a good
exercise in the historiography of resistance]. Don’t
forget they tend to liken themselves to pieces
of literature, too[eloquence w/out words]. They
stretch out in museums’ halls [hallmark of pride].
I can hear them telling their stories of resistance,
reminding people of resisting howling winds,
heavy rain, & wars. Though fragile statutes lost
a hand or a leg, they [oftentimes] keep the head
because their heads are stuffed w/ the dream
of eternity— a resistance against decay, &
a refusal to look back in grief.
—
Adventure
Scattered foam, a paroxysm of floating
bubbles. From forgotten surfaces the sea
spits sapphire blaze. The seagulls contour
the sea’s waves like Gothic arches—a shield
against the tyrannical wind/ a C-clamp
holding waves together. & the lumbering
birds cut the sky’s timber, lubricating
an artist’s mind.||Wandering boats, errant
rants, sowing your oats.||
& adventure is not but a boat named courage,
sharing the sea with the Gothic
seagulls.
—
Eye
The eye is not just an apparatus through
which you can see your world.
The eye is something more dangerous
than that because it has a cheetah inside.
The eye is a cougar chasing preys &
always keeps chasing more.
& the more it preys, the more the limitation
thread unravels.
Eye only connotes a power lust—
a cougar w/ paws always sharp.
& the history of eye is the geography of
its stretching gaze.
—
winter password
what amazes me is that
in every winter we have
to set up a new website
& change its password
on a regular basis
but no password
can satisfy us
the only password
which can do so is
a phrase you read in
the showcases of stores—
spandex SHEET adDICTION.
—
Sonnet 6
The cavernous interior of her room | a vast gallery |
Infatuated w/ vastness of place | always agog. |
Time cannot put an end to her desultory delirium, |
| desultory thoughts |
A[ping] the unmethodical arrangements
of the few clothes in her
hollow wardrobe,
vast places lace her thoughts— a trellis
for her creeping,, creeking
cognitive constructs.
Did I say time cannot put an end to her delirium?
But, her words fail her this time. & the betrayal
of the words tastes like syntactic dryness
because she is no longer a wanderer.
—
Sonnet 7
The only concern of the seekers of the dust
is to discern mysticism.
Watchful guards of the wind | Seekers of
the dancing pebbles turn their backs
to the puristic concepts of nature’s rhetoric.
It is all about achieving distilled meaning
from the myriads of dust.
Seekers of the dust always decolonise the evident—
Polished mysticism through the murk
of the dusty nights | & thru dismantling
the cumbersome regulations of pure dogmas.
&
all sand grains are but street lamps spreading lights
to their hearts, fertile & rainbowesque.
—
© Ali Znaidi
Ali Znaidi (b. 1977) lives in Redeyef, Tunisia, where he teaches English. His work has appeared in various magazines and journals worldwide. He authored four poetry chapbooks including Experimental Ruminations (Fowlpox Press, 2012), Moon’s Cloth Embroidered with Poems (Origami Poems Project, 2012), Bye, Donna Summer! (Fowlpox Press, 2014), and Taste of the Edge (Kind of A Hurricane Press, 2014). He also authored a fiction book titled Green Cemetery (Moment Publications, 2014) which is in fact the first Tunisian flash fiction collection originally written & published in English language. Some of his poems have been translated into German, Greek, Turkish and Italian. You can follow him on Twitter @AliZnaidi. You can see more of his work on his blog aliznaidi.blogspot.com
