Quiet now.
The children are dead.
Do you understand?
The children are dead.

Words you see,
Just words, you see, you hear.
But do you understand?
The children are dead.

We are responsible.
Do you understand?
The children are dead.
Shot.

We have loss our right to speak.
Quiet now.
Tonight in Newtown
Children are dead.



© 2016

Evenings like these
black as a keyhole

crossing a shadow cast
on the side of the road

where the ground sleeps
dreaming of smooth stones

and nights without love
earning a dangerous living

like a breath under water
choked on the mystery

of cornbread
and a farmer's daughter

I wake up thirsty
hungry and alone.

I saw two butterflies in the alley,
between the new well and the orange tree;
With the shade of the tree they seemed to dally
to tease the sun who, without them cannot be.
I overheard two blackbirds when I looked up:
“Why can’t we tease the shade like the butterflies?”
Said the maid-bird, pretending an orange to sup.

And before she could even realize,
The darkbird spread his long wing over her thighs.
In the throbbing blue flakes of the sky she cries
& she cries & moans & she moans & she cries
unlike a Buddhist.


© LazharBouazzi, Carthage, TUN, August 25, 2016

I want to lie down with you
I want to die too
I don't want to fight in this world without you by my side
I'll I can do is cry

I try to hold the agony within
So no one else can see, so it won't offend
So they won't worry, so they don't know
Just how badly with you I want to go

But tiny agonizing whimpers escape between my lips
I don't know how much longer I can  man this woeful ship
There is a hurricane in my ocean
Turbulent thoughts plunder my emotions

I can feel the sinking
I can not stop the thinking
(I should of left and followed you that same date)
(if I leave this earth now, can I catch you, or am I to late)

All I can do now is sing my woeful cry
Cuss at that unseen entity in the sky
My insides ******* in the tightest knots
Minds in a spin and so are my thoughts

Send me a message,  send me a sign
Let me in one of my note books find
Where you once wrote "love you ***"  
Should I pick up, or put down the gun
Your death was a shock unplanned
Does that mean I have to stay here and stand

Does that mean I can't intentionally follow
That I'll have to stay in this lonely abyss and wallow
You use to guide me back
When my world got to black
I was always there for you also
Now your death I must swallow

I'm feeling mighty hollow
I don't want to face an empty tomorrow
I know you're telling me to stay
But you was my light that lit my darkness and turned it gray
Now you went on without me, your so far away

My world now an ominous black
Weight of the world on my back
I want to lay it all down
Walk out into the woods and never be found

Sometimes
the burning
is so powerful
that I
might as
well be
tied to a stake
like the pagan
wise-women of yore
mistaken for witches
no dousing
with gasoline
necessary
for the inside
is already so
slick with
simmering
flammability
combustable
liquids
that trickle
down my thighs
into the earth
and create dark steam
that turns into light
as its luscious
vapor rising
from my being
Soon I will
simply evaporate
and become
atmospheric
ether floating
up towards
stars
and raining
love down
into the
tender receptacle
of your
being

And so here it is:
My secrets, my fortune!
The untold treasure harbored within my mind--
impeccable wisdom, and tormented genius!

I come to find illumination
and write poems--
in such a fashion as this:

It is I,
with heart on my sleeve
where I cough and sneeze,
becoming mired and virulent--
utterly human and fraught
for the world to see.

The magician who empties his sleeves,
overturns his top hat,
shying off his smooth pallid gloves!

Lies down on stage,
in a pool of my own blood and *****,
retching, trembling, aching,

gasping for air
roasting under an inquisitive lonely spotlight
I stare into
with a distant and longing gaze--

Eyes vacuous,
bulbous in sick contortion bulging veins popping
cracked lips gaping mouth tongue waggling speaking in tongues
choking air and body trembling in hideous convulsions--

for what benefit have I,
to purport and distort myself
in such a fashion?

It is for the sake of humanity,
in the flagellation of the human conscience
as it queries further
into the ambiguous amorphous impalpable
dark matter of the universe--

it is for our sake,
our illumination,
that I retch, and I ache.

Take note.