Spotlight: Leila Samarrai

Hi All

It's time for the Jimmy Broccoli page and website to shine the spotlight on a very talented poet. Today I am thrilled to present you the poetry of Leila Samarrai.

I first read Leila's poetry several months ago and have followed her work since. Her poems are beautifully crafted - words weaving themselves into detailed, powerful and elaborate landscapes.

Only twice have I asked a poet/artist/photographer if I can share a particular poem/piece of theirs - and this is one of those times. Leila's poem, "Penny Dreadful" is epic, smart, and brilliant (a word too often used to describe poetry - but absolutely appropriate here).

In her own words: "Leila Samarrai is a genre-spanning author and avid cat lover whose notable works include the book Of Poetry "The Darkness Will Understand", the collection of short stories ‘The Adventures of Boris K.’ (Everest Media, 2013) and co-authoring ‘Poetry Against Terror: A Tribute to the Victims of Terrorism – the Kindle Edition."

It is a privilege to spotlight Leila's poetry on the Jimmy Broccoli page and website! Here is her poem, "Penny Dreadful".

___________________________

Penny Dreadful

"I tried to pray that night and God didn’t answer me, but another did.”

Rabisu demon lurking menacing at doors, desert anguishes and roads of bone, At bittered ends and vicious roaming form, in the dust reeking reborn. Pouncing lurid predator vampirically, sardonic seizers in scorn, And whispers: “I’m fascinated by your wicked and lucid appetite for your own useless life.”

In lament from fluttering sent, leaps from window eyed portals denied me, And whispers: “Oh no, I will bare no escape from existences framed refrain, I choose you, beautifully lined face with loneliness, losses and clutched crosses.”

I am placing maliciousness monsters in the pillory, reaching hangman rivalry, Oracle with filled eyes of abhorrent horrors, vile villainy, disgusting revelry. Malice madness in theatrics, harbouring hunts of hauntedness in the gothicness. My Morrigain, my Mora demoness of dark war and warrior corpses, She susurrous’s doom and washes the bloody cloaks of the fallen soon,

My one way love affair with fated despair. Cain in crestfallen, commits unforgivable sin against spirit, The demons converging, surrounding and urging, The innocent blood screams vengeance from the ground purging.

Corpses long dead roar excavations incarnations, Incantations transfiguring graves, Fierce golden reigns irony remains. Nightmares veins surreal tentacles, tear tense dreams from tight eyelids, Fang drip foul viles in gnashing violence, The grand bizarre at the feverished abhorrence carnival, The glassy eyed emptiness of brumal freak shows. I smell like sleepwalking, staggering, pale sober disheveled, The freedom of hurtling heights bridge jumping ecstatically, Running wild like thrown matches at gasoline.

The beauty of illusion bleeding disappointingly, The nightmare fits it’s grip in bellicose whimpers, The darkness of the grave takes you delicately, The screamers sing in outbursts of enthusiasm ringing, White satin nights in nocturnal delight flinging. The elusive, unearthly apparition was ignored. Sorcerer horror summoning hoarse voiced Bael invisible,

King crowned sixty six with demon legions indivisible. I was born barefoot and harsh in conditioning, Washing away wounds of violent love eternally. Handsome insomniacs gently jumped on me, With eyes blinking surrounding me the world turns disgustingly, Nauseating turns drunkenly in fits of death shaming me. I pull back pale, evil spirits rise with days dawning. In ditched depths collapse and grips his darkened voice is hardening,

Galabiya and long scarfed Ahriman tilts his head in unbearable laughter attacking: “You’re anguished miseries past entertain me,

You’re fool hardy determinants sustain me.”

The dark figure covers his delusions in ghostly fog, Hiding the curves of mocking derisive smile mischievous, The deception of tethered feathered cheerful and devil eyed, Amused by this Sisyphean pilgrim prides to conjure wild Ahriman.

Golden-mouthed perceptively moving, lucidly mystical moving metaphysics assistant, In a long fluttering dress stirring surfaces into snaking molten lava, Covering the corrugated cracks in Babylonian sandstone liberally.

“Perhaps it has always been there, This thing, this demon inside me.”

Perennially shifting wilding howling cognition, Volition in furious fiction, Feeling snarling snapping at my heels.

The fictions, projections creating subconscious, The evil eye and other Jinnah making iniquity, One day all will be concluded in concussiveness. Connecting extremes and insanity to contextually, Esoteric central core in magic cube of ancient antiquity, Following flowing pictures through dusked indignities. Through furtive white crosses fealty and it’s central orange, Color’s evolve spiral through final chapters doors. In the end a detachable mixture, a riddle puzzled, A synapsed seclusion and the task is solved.

There are many ways to kill (a man), And I taught them. There are many ways to murder (me). And I brought them.

Oh give me…pain with no repose, Oh give me…ears that are closed, Oh give me…mouths with no response, Oh give me the burden of a new tongued order, And the skin rhythmed touch of migrating metaphor.

Oh his beautiful man, born of demon King Ravana, Raised in argent ardency dimensions, visionaries, Silveries through strange pattern properties, Sacral geometries carnivale spinning pellucidly, Samhain and Scylla spiral madly metaphysically. Resolutely, while dying they cut their hair free, Administration of death in her presence seen. Lost children eternally, anomalous demons greeting them. The world flies backwards unreality of what it requires. Ephemeral to ambiguities flame extinguishing names. The dead enfold, born moaning into this world. Celtic God’s and blackened blacksmith sorcery, Toys in the palms of callous cannibalistic Chronos, Witches ride wildly for frightful Phobos, From the bales of fear my private lunacy changes me.

Monstrosities grunting courageously, Mumbling rotten membranes, Leaves, thorns, beast horns, intestines, heart shadowed scorns, Fright at might dear antlers dead and red, rusty machinery. Morning breaks broke blood torments, Nights in hellish anguish shatters. He tore all his clothes off, and naked he roars with torched lips, Lunacy smile wild and wide shadowed caustic fits, Lives lonesome black buffalo and rabid holy madman.

The stalking beast entreats me in rooms without vision, Where the light will remain hidden, Save fiery twilight eternally bidden.

“There is nothing that is alive here” it cackles at my shackles,

”If the light is prayed the shadows will explode against expiring,

You do not know what is happening to you, hellish heresy clarity confuse.”

I should shake the walls, slam fists to tables expectantly, I said:

“I will make my blood flow like a tap!” I almost didn’t bleed, I revealed my wound to wise effect of intercede, He told me to dream.

It’s been a year and still he stands there sirene, I pound him and drown him, stab him, confounds him,

Nothing moves him. The world breaks down around him, He sneers and peels and smears, He curses and tears, And breaks… And cuts like a beast.

“My innermost shaitan; Predatorial preternatural hunts of my psyche, Mavening movements within me… Or behind my back

Waiting…

Waiting…for me to turn around.”

Leila Samarrai