Tag: survivor’s guilt

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Accolade and Review for my poem,  War’s ABCs

Malak Kalmoni. Chehab Wow, Malak, congratulations on such a powerful, historical poem! The state oppressing the people is an ages old story, but you make it come completely and authentically alive. Your images are quite extraordinary, beautiful in their precision and force. Gut-wrenching and heart breaking, this amazing poem speaks to the pain of cruel injustice. I believe this is an extremely important poem and should be widely read wherever apartheid held or is holding sway, wherever its effects are still felt. Bravo!!! 👏👏👏 by: Linda Powers O’Dell

War’s ABCs

Arms, armor, tanks, drones,
Bombs explode in streets where
Children, women, elderly
Dive for protection from shrapnel
Entering organs, amputating limbs,
Fearing the fiery hell they hide in homes
Gravely hazardous for their foundation
Has been shaken by continuously
Imploding heat, vibrations from bombs
Jumping into their perimeter to
Keep natives from procreating and
Living lives in harmony that traverses
Many generations, cut by decimation of
Numerous family trees buried under ruins
Omnifarious combining rubble, dead bodies,
Petrification of survivors, amputees, whose
Quandary lies in how to survive the guilt
Restricting each breath they take while
Seeming to live, while knowing the
Truth about the transience of life
Under occupation, Apartheid, 
Vainly holding onto their tattered,
Wasteland of a broken open air prison.

©️ Malak kalmoni chehab ©️

My poetry book,  Perfectly Flawed poetry for change,  is available on all eplatforms including Amazon. It was on the finalist list for the Canadian Book Club Awards 2023.

https://www.amazon.ca/Perfectly-Flawed-poetry-Malak-Kalmoni/dp/1525582518

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Review for my poem,  We Did Everything

Thank you for the honor and your hard work.

We Did Everything

We did all we could …
Yet, genocide is as deadly as beheading,
Death is as real as your breathing,
Living is as traumatic as a horrifying cloud.

We did all we could …
But child amputees are running marathons
To survive but another day as pawns
Of politics that’s gross as it hammered

That “We did all we could”, clause
That left pregnant mothers to die,
Elderly to fry in fire’s explosive dye,
Fathers to be scattered in pieces in cruel cries

That “We did all we could”, was
Said to assuage politicians’ conscious
While knowing their endeavors were shackled in pious
Prison, whose doctrine permits rapes,

Whose haze in, “We did all we could”,
Evaporates in the fog of time that flies
Without scheduling its prime in trauma that cries
Out to be understood, yet, their voices loud

And proud in the hopeful quagmire of guilt
Of surviving, whole or not, presses
In the abyss of despair where hopeless
Orphaned, erased families, press to built.

©️Malak kalmoni chehab ©️

My poetry book,  Perfectly Flawed poetry for change,  is available on all eplatforms including Amazon.  It was on the finalist list for the Canadian Book Club Awards 2023.

https://www.amazon.ca/Perfectly-Flawed-poetry-Malak-Kalmoni/dp/1525582518

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Accolade and Review for my poem,  We Did Everything

By: Zac Warden

Malak Kalmoni. Chehab powerful poem Malak, Hard hitting and rightly so! This is a well crafted poem but probably quite difficult to verbalise aloud… it has few obvious breaks or pauses between stanzas and complex word use… The only way I think this could be adequately delivered is then hard and fast, within righteous anger, an emotional outpouring of angst? Or very slowly in a resigned,defeated tempo… mid way would stumble… and it is too good a poem with too important a message to stumble…. I’m interested in your thoughts?

Thank you for the honor and your hard work. This was a spoken poem that’s difficult to render,  but I’ll do my best.

We Did Everything

We did all we could …
Yet, genocide is as deadly as beheading,
Death is as real as your breathing,
Living is as traumatic as a horrifying cloud.

We did all we could …
But child amputees are running marathons
To survive but another day as pawns
Of politics that’s gross as it hammered

That “We did all we could”, clause
That left pregnant mothers to die,
Elderly to fry in fire’s explosive dye,
Fathers to be scattered in pieces in cruel cries

That “We did all we could”, was
Said to assuage politicians’ conscious
While knowing their endeavors were shackled in pious
Prison, whose doctrine permits rapes,

Whose haze in, “We did all we could”,
Evaporates in the fog of time that flies
Without scheduling its prime in trauma that cries
Out to be understood, yet, their voices loud

And proud in the hopeful quagmire of guilt
Of surviving, whole or not, presses
In the abyss of despair where hopeless
Orphaned, erased families, press to built.

©️Malak kalmoni chehab ©️

My poetry book,  Perfectly Flawed poetry for change,  is available on all eplatforms including Amazon.  It was on the finalist list for the Canadian Book Club Awards 2023.

https://www.amazon.ca/Perfectly-Flawed-poetry-Malak-Kalmoni/dp/1525582518