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There is nothing to pinpoint of the strange beast.
Only images,

Blurred and refracted,
Fleeing down a hallway of mirrors.

O maestro of conditions,
It is you they are in love with,

A dark sun unaware of its own orbiting planets.
They are the cause of all of it.

Every comet, every lack
Leaves a trail etched across your sky.

And in their eight eyes
Something seemingly whole becomes distorted,

A piece cut out made separate from the rest.
From this gulf appears a war engine,

A bite of venom,
The desire to **** what they can’t.

Darling of judge and jury,
Blame absolves them of all responsibility.

You are the sole carrier of their weakness.
They fill your skin with their nightmares.

Flesh as fruit
Is strictly poisonous,

Bleaching the sheets of the saints.
Now no more –

Vanished,
Like what was found and then lost.

Like what was married and
Soon divorced.

Still, notoriety is a phantom
Floating in cages,

Star player at a masquerade,
Costumed with your own face.
"Monster" can be found in my poetry collection, "Blood for Honey", available at Lulu.com and Amazon.
You could never picture me in the pockets of my West Coast.
I flew out of your story and into another, and then
Even into another, always the phoenix.

No longer yours, but his.
No longer his, but mine.
Perhaps I suffered these little deaths to forge a heaven with him.

A king, he’d follow me to the ends of the earth, thrice over.
His queen I’m still too shy to let shine through,
A star stubbornly obscured by cloud.

Though before I complained of rain,
On the Island it never bothered me.
Even in the dead of winter it kept the grass emerald-green.

An emerald city:
Ivy shrouded trees; moss fluorescent.
Our castles were those green giants.

Siamese blue to denim blue.
Betwixt the Spit & Seabroom.
It was all I dreamed and ever wanted.

The only thing missing was the garden, the garden,
Sheltered by walls made of cob.
Or a whole house, the air inside delectable.

Tendril of dream,
Is a cinder girl deserving of bees,
Turning honey into mead, of wild things?

No. Exiled to a foreign land,
A barren land; the ghetto forest.
Those halcyon years now only a memory.

Ridiculous to expect the bald
Rocks to yield to a surfer’s paradise, of
Blue-green ocean. Long hairs cannot thrive under puritans’ eyes.

Green things tremble for sun.
For all the rain, I remember the sun,
Filtering down through the forest canopy,

Upheld by the cathedral’s true pillars
Rather than these thrifty spindles. In reverence of true
Beauty, all is quiet & hushed.

The birth of a princess may bring us back.
Pioneers, we’re still in search of our happy ending,
To live lush in nature’s majesty.

I know the Pacific is still out there
Roaring somewhere,
Crashing itself onto stony beaches.

Mists wreath those mountains.
The drums beat.
That muted boom, my thud of heart.
"Fairytale" can be found in my book, "Blood for Honey", available at Lulu.com and Amazon.
The lane is light-less tonight;
But I’m not unduly perturbed,
For there is still enough sight
In my fancy not to be curbed
By a solitary lamp
Who was forced into silence.

© LazharBouazzi, October 16, 2016
Dear David:

We are deeply gratified that you gave us the opportunity
to read your poems.  Notice that we say “opportunity”
rather than “submission,” for truly you graced us with works
of such enduring power, so sublime, so transcendent,
that our humble words scarce can adequately praise
the sacred privilege of reading them.

Seldom, no, never has human experience been so distilled,
so purified, so exalted, yet so exposed
in all its paradox, its shades and sunbursts,
shouts and silences, the hiding places redolent of inner light,
as in these timeless works.  

A calm breeze from the desert’s edge at dusk,
the chatter of a mockingbird at dawn,
the rumble and crash of a hidden waterfall,
the laughter of a child unseen in a cool wood’s shade,
emanate so intensely from the shapes of these letters
that our faith in the power of language to evoke reality
has been nourished and restored to its proper place.

However, we regret to inform you
that your poems do not meet our needs at this time,
which are for relevant poems for the upcoming
theme issue on Hammer Toes.

We hope you will consider us for future opportunities.

Sincerely,

The editors of ******* Quarterly
Have been collecting a lot of rejection letters lately.  Here's my interpretation.
My hungry lips started to talk
To her lips in language hungry,
And my tongue began to unlock
The well of  her language sundry
Necking her North African mounds;
Halting at her salving shell pink
To sip and sup her winy words,
And faint and wake and rise and sink
In the waking sleep of the tongues
Of her fire
To pen my un–Sufi desire
To die in the dunes of her body.

© LazharBouazzi, October 20,  2016
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