Alketa Gashi Fazliu, an eminent poet, writer and journalist from Kosovo, a country in Balkan region of Europe, shares her three poems
Alketa Gashi Fazliu was born in Prizren, Kosovo in 1986. She has earned her Bachelor in Political Science and Master of Science in International Relations and Diplomacy. Currently a PhD student pursuing her Doctorate in Media and Communications, Alketa also works as a TV presenter, journalist and editor at the Radio & Television of Kosovo. She is an active member of various professional organizations including the Union of Albanian Journalists, the Kosovar-Swedish Scientific Institute, Union of Albanian Writers and Critics, Association of Journalists of Kosovo, Swiss Association of Journalists and Center “Genocide in Kosovo – an open wound”.
As a journalist, Alketa Gashi Fazliu has published numerous editorials in Kosovo and some of Europe’s mainstream media publications. She has written and published 11 works of prose and poetry. Some of her literary works are translated into English and French. Her book, titled “Point”, was awarded the First Prize for poetry at the Prishtina Book Fair by the Kosovo Publishers Association. Her public profile is also elevated by her roles as editor and presenter of TV shows including “Good Morning Kosovo” and “The Book Show”. “They Carve Pain” is the author’s new trilogy. Alketa Gashi Fazliu is married and a proud mother of three children.
TALE OF A HEART SHAPED LIKE A STONE
On the paths of escape
At 200 km/h
You fled,
Just fled
You were named Escape
Escape, oh art of fleeing
You seized all my immune cells
Those that kept me alive
You threw my heart along escape routes
Somewhere on the highway of sin
Or in a room of aristocracy with cigars, lines, and glasses of poison
I polished my sins
In the suitcase of oblivion
Praying for history
To shield you from every wound, sadness, and abyss
I had time to idealize your portrait
Narrating our story to it
For you were on the run
And I confessed, pleaded, and hung dreams on it
So when you’d come
We’d age them together by breathing life into them
But you were the Escape
Shadow and madness
You killed every memory on the shore
You spat on crossroads
A metaphor for the spirit
That you transformed into the wood and stone of a grave.
***
WHEN THE SOUL HURTS
When something hurts in the soul
You long for birth and divinity
You bite your lips here and there
You shoot stones and demolish houses
When something hurts and you don’t know what to do
The sun sets at noon
The night, the stars, all squeezed
Until morning when the rooster crows
When it hurts and you don’t know how it hurts
The night falls in silence
Before you, a glass of wine
A cigarette with dark smoke
Into your hurting soul, a gentle rain falls
And the rain pours on your roof
Bricks fall, walls collapse
From longing and pain for a love
When the soul hurts and you don’t know how it hurts
Neither wine nor raki does any good
The roads form a square
Sometimes in the east, sometimes in the dark west
When something hurts and you don’t know how it hurts
The roads become impassable
Mountains rejoice, branches break
Just as the soul broke for a while
Throughout the world, fates have drowned
And for a new dream of mankind
Not even the pen writes on the white page
And every new letter turns into a mountain
The soul slowly burns in a fire
Love hurts, knocks you down, and kills you
Oh, I’ll never love again
Even if I had another lifetime.
***
OUR LOVE IS A MALIGNANT CELL
Our love is a malignant cell
With metastases throughout our being
In the brain
In the marrow
In the liver
Anyway, even the kidneys it’s touched
Like tendrils stretching every second
Nerve fibers in a cancerous body
And the blood is thinning
The pressure is rising
Instead of tears
Poison is seeping
Our love is a malignant tumor
Centered in the epidermis
That’s where it struck
Because it knew
That only there light exists
Therefore,
It struck
In the heart
In the solitary guiding point
Of the contact group of my chromosomes
There’s no oncological treatment
For our love
It’s
Malignant.
________________
Albania-born eminent poetess and writer Angela Kosta, currently based in Italy, shared the poems of Alketa Gashi Fazliu, an eminent
