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Best Poems Written by Nagham Al-Qahtani

Below are the all-time best Nagham Al-Qahtani poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Nagham Al-Qahtani Poem

The Art of Identity

The words
cease to resonate,
not my voice's fault
nor the walls,
it is the absence of
my yang,

sister self;
emerging,
new world
unsheathing its 
unease:
there were two
cries of joy.

Reverberation or
affirmation,
and was there ever
a difference
in the sando shops 
where we stole 
tuna mayo onigiri,
or in the hospital,
where we were no longer
wide-eyed and 
buck-toothed,

and you learned
your husband was infertile;
you hadn’t seen
your reflection
in years,
no matter how much
I tried 
to see mine,

so in the bridges
where the futatsu dirty
faced bandits
used to roam;
one on the side
where the stars
could greet her
and the other
facing the earth
and its restraints,
only tremors
from our lips,
identical tones;
I was your shadow,
you, the moon.

Now; in the barren
cadence of one-half
of a voice,
with her half message,
the hitotsu
phantom warrior
cuffed herself
to the hand-made robes
and teary-eyed skies
of her memories.

Details | Nagham Al-Qahtani Poem

Toxic Amalgamations Can Be Beautiful Too

They are too foggy,
Dreams, visions, etc.;
 I don’t know, I don’t remember, 
but o’ wait! 
Yes, a distinct memory.

I started remembering words
hoarse, dry words mixed
with the lemonade air.
 a conversation? 
The smell of heated leather
chains me to the patio
where the goddess sits.
I have lost faith in her,
no longer a goddess
but my birthmother.
The second person in this conversation.

 'Bitter sweet or sweetly bitter', 
asking the nicotine-filled air.
A head emerges through the smoke,
mingling with the lesser being.
She exhales pure ash 
and stares, ocean to mildew eyes.
 ‘Bitter sweet.’ 
Why,  I ached to ask her
but it refused to come out,
my lips a graveyard.

Fruit trees,
beautiful ones.
Aristaeus but never Eileithyia,
my mother.
Leaves and Vines blend with the 
anger that my mother had,
not anymore
malt as its replacement.
I wanted to try her cigarette,
the one kissed tenderly by her two lips now.
My fingers turn
black.
Black as black can be,
emission at the seams of my nails
up to the pretty blonde strands of my mother’s hair.
I wonder, lips formed
to ask, maybe.
 ‘Mascara,’  she answers,
knowing the question
before it escaped my tongue
and ventured into her ears.
Because we are entwined, now,
black and volcanic
two minds, one body

no
two bodies, one mind.

I wince,
the band-aids refuse to help;
including the Arnold ones
I used to put on myself.
Bittersweet.
My cuts grow bigger
until it resembled the cracks of the earth;
and ate my blue bike
and the ghost house I used to live in,
 her  being the one to haunt them.

 ‘You blame,’  
who says.
 ‘You lie,’ 
says the other.
Not a conversation anymore,
but furious eruptions,
ruinous pertinence.
It was calamitous and vulgar,
glorious culmination,
as it destroyed everything;
leaving nothing but cinder,
carried by the wind
up into the lemonade sky.

Details | Nagham Al-Qahtani Poem

A Rat's Prodding

A wet patch of wa-ter glints
unusual! 
It was my ears that it re-flected, 
sand or dust or what-ever it wasn’t no more, 
got every-where; 
es-pecially bet-ween my grey hairs.

It didn’t matt-er, 
I wasn’t thirsty no more. 

Scurry-ing off to… 
what was it called again? 
Wooood. 
Yes, wood boards 
dis-carded, 
they say. 
May-be food? 
Could be, my family hasn’t eaten 
in days. 

Hard, scout-ing for food, 
in a…waste-land. 
That’s what they called it. 
Waste-land. 
A place where re-sources (another long word for food) 
is rarely found. 
That means bad, very bad things. 
No, horr-ible! 

The sun rises, 
it’s heat toy-ing with me. 
Why must you toy with us? 
Why must you pre-ssure us 
with your harsh heat, 
when we are but meagre rats? 

Questions, un-answered ones at that, 
those were the ones that made me mad, 
or both-ered, as they say. 
Eng-lish, the language of hu-mans, 
the cause of these per-sisting horrors;
they have fled, 
but they have left Eng-lish 
here 
for us to learn. 

Snip-pets from the papers 
that tell us the news, 
the things that helped me 
push sounds out of my mouth 
and form them into words. 

Now, as I move my hands 
and shuffle the re-mainders of this… 
 thing. 
Used to be green, 
not green no more; 
that’s all I know. 
Twist-ing my wrists and hands, 
un-washed, but not un-cared for, 
Here, there is no hi-erarchy, 
just des-perate silence, 
as we scrape, and scrape; 
families go hungry, 
but not dead. 

We will sur-vive.

Details | Nagham Al-Qahtani Poem

Forget Nature's Hymn

The river begins to fall
as I wrap myself 
in a blanket
of childhood fables
that speak of
fragments
of missable splendor
when Mother Nature
would fiddle
with the earth
and play
a sonata.

Details | Nagham Al-Qahtani Poem

Send a Paper Plane to the Gods

In two weeks,
the Loy Krathong
will begin.
12th in the
Lunar calendar,
atone for a sin.

Floating specks,
like us
but in the sky.
The stars
or the lanterns;
fault of the eye.

To beg for 
forgiveness
to an imaginary friend.
Hence the offerings
galore
faithful until the end.

No one has seen
Or known our humanely ruin;
but we have fantasized.
We still have mosaics, 
delusions, excuses,
never considering if they were lies.

There is no such thing
as truth or deceit
in matters like this.
Strip away the skin and
flesh and bones
a soul trapped in a fist.

It beats,
the fist a prison,
and pleads to escape.
It tries until
it gives up one day,
then it is too late.

So take a fragment
of your essence
hold it in the tips 
of your fingers.
Watch! Its
pure joy 
converts into light
and its warmth lingers.

Once you release it, the light, your
spirit, 
floats in a ship of parchment;
you’re too late, you believe.
But then a glow
slits into your eyes;
you made it part of the sky,
your soul is free.

Details | Nagham Al-Qahtani Poem

Nihilism and Caffeine

You plunge your fist into the creeping
milieu of the ice cube by your ‘20s daydream.

Does it not hurt? but it does, and you quickly
retreat, surrendering to primal, human instinct.

Your skin is not bland, but sticky with fear and blank
expressions and wistful thinking, you disgust dogs.

Does the rainy tapestry’s ambient face not disturb you?
but it does, and you scratch it until your fingers leak.

In the restaurant with the piano man, he seems nice;
he seems nice; he seems tastier than your empty plate.

Does the melody not enrage you? but it does, and you
plead to your god for one more chance.

On the treadmill, adding the highest speed, you believe
you’re a masochist, but not after a minute; you’re hilariously wretched. 

Does your love of ghosts not riddle your spleen with blahs?
but it did; you lay in your hollow sheets, your grandmother called.

Sordid, vizier’s fool; starry faces tickle the curves of your ears;
ha ha 
ha ha
they can’t scathe you if you get off on laughing at yourself.

Details | Nagham Al-Qahtani Poem

Paracosm is a Cure

The decadence of one hundred – 
maybe one thousand – 
hands 
and running mouths.

Wynorrific red-yellow cultivates
my brain with torpor;
when 
did the ground shake?

Oh solace, it is the only time
I leave the human
eye;
my empyrean wanting.

Something helps not to
desire an awakening;
practice,
when you’ve never asked for one.

The circus doctor’s say,
you have paramnesia.
Lies;
the audience is never fake.

I know, I should know,
I see it every night;
they 
all laugh at the makeup.

If I were to remove it,
would they laugh at my
face 
too? I don’t want to recall.

This job, sham title, the 
whole charade, it comes with a
costume,
red and yellow; it comes with the tent.

Details | Nagham Al-Qahtani Poem

Blondie

If you strain your ears
you could hear daycare man’s
blond-haired pig-tailed little
girl shattering her xylophone.

How straitlaced can a place
of rainbows and sugar highs
be, you remember asking
before you took the job.

You can’t take it, the
little girl always bothers
your lunchtime, hearing her
playacting rottenly.

Pink-eyed, you look 
nothing like your parents,
you told her; she ripped
her hair out and cried.

The background soothes
the mind, he told you,
but it tasted like being
seasick and fuzzy.

Every channel in the TV
had that flower child boasting
bed sheets as skin; it had no
eyes, yet it was so po-faced.

It would always hitch at the 
end, burning the VHS tape; the 
girl would stare at the stained wall 
for two minutes, hearing it crackle.

You turn on your present TV,
no more shifts, and you see
daycare man branded as a 
blondes kidnapper.

Details | Nagham Al-Qahtani Poem

Bus Stop

Two guys by a bus stop, and they have nowhere to go.

They begin merging plucks and ribbits into a melting comfort.

Their destination is the Earth, and sedans honk at them.

Red stop sign becomes a resting place for a fellow cellist.

Fair lime crickets play along to the weeds, if just for this one moment.

And the taste of copper and paper is thrown at them in antipathy.

They are not homeless if the meadow’s honey is their home.

Yellow plaid is unlikely to grow here, it is foreign, says the guttle.

Different hues of blue in their familiar magical background.

No mortal whistle in the gale ought to be uttered during the tree’s ballet.

One hurricane lantern is shared between deities, or humans, or leaves,

And you can barely make out the vicars of string and bloodline.

Powder white porcelain glares at the back of their senseless heads,

Resting on a moss bed wearing a dress fly-fish dip in and a bear died for.

With a face made of zig-zags, one of them eats their mom’s snack,

The other swims with a black dog in gin bottles and stolen mint.

What a paradox, cried the wolves; they soon bellowed along.