Thoughts That Breathe and Words That Burn

     I've fallen in love. Not with a person, but with words. Literature. It's fascinating how sometimes you read something written by someone else, their words. Their thoughts and feelings, written so perfectly that it feels as if it expresses what your own words have failed to explain. I'd like to share two poems with you, my lovely readers and hope that you enjoy them as much as I...  
    I wish I could be literature, so that my mind would know secrets of word weaving and storytelling. “I wish my blood was made of words, traveling through vein like phrases. My body a whole dictionary, my organs novels and encyclopedias. 

     I would breathe in letters, exhale metaphors, bite into punctuation, commas between my teeth, soliloquies down my larynx, epistolary journals against my lungs, and poetry, like oxygen, around my heart. I wish I could be literature, so that maybe, just maybe, my fingers would learn the patterns of storytelling and my mind would know the secrets of word-weaving, like a shuttle on a loom. Back and forth. Back and forth. Slowly building the colours, weaving my word-skin into the tapestry, and finally say: here, look, this is who I am.” 

I know it's a song, but this is one of my (many) favorite Khalid Al Faisal poems:

ياضــايق الصدر باللــــــه وسٍع الخاطر

دنـــــياك يازين ماتســـــتاهل الضيقه

اللــــه علـــــــى مايفرج كربتك قادر

والله لـــه الحكم في دبـــــــرة مخاليقه

حـــلو العيون إستهــــانت دمعها الحادر

كــف العباير حزين الدمـــــــــع ماأطيقه

حســايف الحزن يغشى وجهك الطـــاهر

والـــورد في وجنتك حرام تغــــــــــريقه

يفـــداك قلبٍ على ماتشتهي حــــــــاضر

يفـــداك باللي بقى لي من معـــــــــاليقه

مافـــات خَــلًــــه ولاتهتم من بــــــــاكر

واغـــنم من اليوم ماساقت توافيــــــــق

"Beyond my solitude is another solitude, 

and to him who dwells therein, 

my aloneness is a crowded market-place and my silence a confusion of sounds.

Too young am I and too restless to seek that above-solitude.  

The voices of yonder valley still hold my ears, 

and its shadows bar my way and I cannot go.

Beyond these hills is a grove of enchantment and to him who dwells therein, 

my peace is but a whirlwind and my enchantment an illusion.

Too young am I and too riotous to seek that sacred grove.  

The taste of blood is clinging in my mouth, 

and the bow and the arrows of my fathers yet linger in my hand and I cannot go.

Beyond this burdened self lives my freer self; and to him, 

my dreams are a battle fought in twilight and my desires, the rattling of bones.

Too young am I and too outraged to be my freer self.

And how shall I become my freer self unless I slay my burdened selves, 

or unless all men become free?

How shall my leaves fly singing upon the wind unless my roots shall wither in the dark?

How shall the eagle in me soar against the sun until my fledglings leave the nest 

which I with my own beak have built for them?"

~ Kahlil Gibran