Poetry:
The Word / Visitations of the Road / Calling to the Dead

Samaa Gamie
PhD Student
Teaching Assistant
University of Rhode Island
E-mail: samaagamei@yahoo.com

The Word

I take my pen and papers and run to my room
I have learned for so long to hide in my gloom

I try to think of words that matter to me, to the word
I can only find meaning inside my womb

I ask them to find meaning beyond the borderline
to search for hidden truths and venture into distant lands
In their young bodies, I see the hope
I see the future that I have wasted away
I see a better me and a finer them

I write my thoughts
They sound so gray to me
And more though are empty to the words outside my head

It should no longer matter what words they say of me

I hear others laugh
I say, it must be about me
I hear the cursing words
I say they must be cursing me

I try to help them search for words that matter
That would matter to the world, to them
But they still confuse themselves and then confuse me

The worlds that lie inside my head
The words that lie inside their world
Can only mean something when you finally worship the word.

 

Visitations of the Road

In ways unknown, I have become unborn
Unabated by the silent sigh and corrupt by the blood

The burnt trees, the children's tears resting on their graves
The screams, the woes and not so silent aches have violated
And seeped into all that is within

Even the birds have ceased to sing
Set to wring their necks in the wires of the land
By the seal of heaven, all the monsters have been set to land

My father has been buried, 67 he was
Yet, so young, vulnerable, broken and Muslim to the sole
Born to know what he knows and the world that never knows

But is that all there is?
The violence and the mud that curls in my hair
That blackens my face and more in my soul it reeks

I am a soul and more and more a breed
That knows not what it knows but questions and dares to mourn
The dead and the loss of the souls when sold

For I have lost a father and a mother within

Hate you are set on me
To break all I am and all there is

I am no such disease
A human who mourns in the lead
All the loss that is bound to be
A face that smiles unto the likeness of the sun

To be who I am and not to be undone
For you have all I want and all I fear
The freedom that I long to breed

Yet, your voice is shrouded by the tears and all I see
The hate of a love lost to me, to you, to all there is

In ways known, we have become new born
Lost to the light and unabated by the blood

But still I come to say, I stretch my hands
Cause I learned no love to kill nor burn with love
I only know the truth lies beneath the darkness
That we will choose the road less traveled on.

 

Calling to the Dead

Through the darkness
I fade
I be another being
Just another shade in the dark

Leaning on my palm
My beard stumbles in its prime
And ages as it grinds

April pretending to be
As my days age and flee

Lonely, resting on broken glass
I fall and melt in the mass
Calling out a name, any name
Waiting to embrace a heart
Any heart that bleeds my name

Wondering,
I sift my tears
And taste my dying smile

In the darkness, I walk
I bleed as I speak
I wait to hear a voice that pleads
That wakens my fears

I hear no cry, no call,
Not even a sigh that says
"I'm here.
I know you hear.
I am here!"

I look back
Dead and silent is my gaze

Like a grave, it screams
Like a saw, still it lies

Won't you call me?
Won't you say a name?

I'd throw it all,
Leave what I know
Be what you know.

Academic Exchange Extra invites reader response to any writings in this issue--especially articles advancing the scholarly debate of issues raised.

Copyright © Academic Exchange - EXTRA
- Web Editor

------------------------------  Page Citation Reference: Gamie, Samaa. (2005).  AE-Extra. March. Available Online. [URL: < >. Created: 2 March 2005. Updated: --. Accessed: ]