The Frenzy
Do I have no recourse but to wait then?
To wait until the words come
gushing forth
in lines of illegible scratchings
and bouts of frenzied typing?
Blisters on the pads of my fingers,
eyelids like sandpaper
The Muse is rough
He reaches down into me
pulling each word out
one by one
Impatient; he pushes past
muddled metaphors & florid phrases
digging out rough-edged kernels of truth
trapping them under his tongue for safekeeping
He’ll show them to me later
when the frenzy has passed
and my mind is calm again
Some will be used
polished & displayed
Others will be returned
buried back down
to ripen further
Copyright © 2012 Layla AlAmmar
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Untitled
Emotions…
such vastly different emotions claw at me,
begging me for some sort of classification…
Or at the very least acknowledgment.
Emotions…
that I keep relegating to random back burners.
That’s where they’ve been,
day in… day out,
simmering in a stew of conflict.
One day they will boil over,
but not today.
Not today.
Copyright © 2005 Layla AlAmmar
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He was the unbearable silence
He was the unbearable silence
I tread softly through his forest
black delusions
The grass … cold and wet beneath my naked,
inquiring feet
I step so cautiously in his world
He speaks
it’s even more unbearable than silence
His voice
thunders up my spine
exploding in a crescendo of pain
at the base of my crown
My thoughts cling to the moon
my toes curl around scattered blades of grass
sensing safety
the moon reaches for me
stretching ethereal beams of promise
My words hesitantly make their way back down
my toes relax and settle a little bit deeper into the earth
I am compelled to speak
I lean my head back
open my mouth
prepared to swallow the sky
His rain beats me to the punch
torrential outpourings of love
but somehow
I feel like gagging
Harder to breathe now
I lower my head in shame
feel my feet move beneath me
down his yellow paths of indifference
Venus lights the way
but he’s still the longest night
refusing to open his eyes
an infinite (unending) winter solstice
I want out of his world
Copyright © 2004 Layla AlAmmar
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An Almost Poetic Rain
The beauty of your penmanship
continues to amaze me ;
hand & pen
move (Silently)
as one
and it’s been so long since I’ve written a decent poem
This void (so cliché’) pushes my insides out
humming, expanding
my creativity has gone into hibernation
I’ve been hungrily consuming every book on my shelves
It’s a defense mechanism ;
I do it to try to convince myself
that I haven’t lost that part of me
The me that is ‘passionately in love with language’
The me that finds solace in books
and genuine romance
only in poems of the classics
And I wish I could lick up the excesses of your Type-A personality
Like the cold, wet drippings of an ice cream cone
your sensibilities numbing my teeth
I’m starting to forget I’m alive
My soul has raised its defenses
my heart has cowered behind its walls
The quiet voices that used to whisper to me
that used to vibrate my being
have grown silent
And now my hands
just like yours
can’t even comprehend the poem that lies
in breaking open an orange…
Copyright © 2004 Layla AlAmmar
