He enters the wood
without wanting,
taken from slumber
and pushed from behind
into darkness.

Up ahead he sees light,
he wants to believe
he always sees light,

but lately its not there
and he cannot see,
and they’re not at home.

He’s becoming afraid
to close his eyes,
no telling where he’ll end up,
skirting the edges of
the unknown.

He wonders what’s beyond,
a cliff, a hole, a vacuum,
insanity hovering over the
sprawling darkness of Hell.

He’s never been
though he thinks he can taste it,
it tastes of fear,
dark and gritty like burnt toast.

His only hope in
the little white diamonds.

When he swallows,
their edges work to scrape
the darkest burn away.

There's a girl that follows me everywhere.
Sometimes she trails behind me like a shadow,
And sometimes she stands in front of me like a distorted reflection
From a mirror that doesn't speak the present tense.
Words don't exist between us,
She just looks at me with blue eyes bordered by long lashes.
Sometimes I drag her through the looking glass
And tell her she's just like me.
But not as smart.
She looks at the mirror and sees wounds, scars, flaws, ugliness,
Where I see learning, growing, beauty.
Life itself is dancing across her skin
To a beat so fast and erratic that it leaves scorches.
I try to tell her that,
But my words are silenced by her attempts to grow wings.
I applaud this display of determination,
But I sit so far back that she fails before the claps reach her ears.
I sit there and watch her, and it's funny, because I have her wings,
But I can't give them to her, she can only grow them.
So I ask life to snap her DNA in a few places, replace them,
Whisper a few words of wisdom into her brain and hope that those seeds take,
Mutate. Grow into the wings she wants,
The wings that'll let her fly to places
She doesn't even know yet that she wants to go.
Child, girl, adolescent, you'll never be a woman.
You won't live long enough, you'll die bleeding,
Ripping out your ****** while shedding skin.
And you know what? You'll love it.

I took a walk in La Goulette yesterday
From the “Bridge-of-the-Casino” to the port.
The things I saw on my sun-bathing way
So simple they were, here is a report:
II
Sea snakes under a blue bridge did frolic
As hardware stores displayed paint in their windows.
The water snakes performed some dance symbolic
And the paint braved the dark rust from a distance.
III
And I, hastening to my liquid address,
Shot a side look at a man in a dress,
And hoped the blue water in the White Sea*
Would wash the wound bleeding in my memory.

© LazharBouazzi, 16/11/16 (revised Nov. 17)

Looking out across the many shades of dark on dark
The rolling ashen gray fog opens a window to the dawn
and I feel a loneliness,  arising like the winter sun
             … in the morning

The trees have bared their golden surrender
Breaking silence through the windswept boughs
below,  gathered dewdrops blossom on the last winter rose
             … a chilling epilogue

Beyond the waning hydrangea sundried sepia tones
Latent conflicts of the head and heart stir the hush of memories
imposing heart whispers,  arising like sunlight shadows cast
             … in the morning

There’s no one listening to the wind roar the incoming wintertide
An ascending sadness paints many hues that contrast dark and light
as the Pink Moon,  steals away over lonely mountain headed south
             … in the morning


                                         every picture tells a story ― ☾ wild is the wind ☽

Pretty birds sing away pain
An old friend this evening returns once again
Shadows of the coming night -
are beautiful along the open plain
The dust of hard labor quelled by a gentle rain
I say Hallelujah for the disappearing day  
Hallelujah , yes indeed* ....

The first thinkers were poets
Naming Mother Earth
Beginning symbolic thinking
Of nature, death and birth

Though themes are often repeated
Love, Beauty and God
Poetry in the guise of Religion
A prophet or a fraud

The poet resurrects the Primitive
Through allegory and similes
Disarming the unknown like explorers
Sublime Prophets and Visionaries

They must lay bare those treasured images
That must be expressed
Unraveling and revealing the sounds
At each soul’s behest

Encompassing the entire Cosmos
So lyrical the beat
The poet’s excitement flows outward
Laid at the Reader’s feet

So original, individual
She won’t examine or explain
Letting go the festering feelings
Disturbances in her brain

He exposes his dark, wounded psyche
Just to release and express
Such capacity to see and compare
Hyperbole at its best

I love, I hate, I suffer
A special dance in rhythm and rhyme
The poet as a buffer
Lessening the pain and sting of time

Laden with symbol and feelings
She gives you sweet relief
From something urgent, revealing
Confusion to belief

Through a cinematic kind of seeing
The poet purges to transform
By leaping through Alice’s looking glass
She never was one to conform

Quite intolerant of convention
Just like The Mad Hatter
His passions immune to all logic
In syncopated patter

Jamming up the poet’s mind
Struggling for expression
Seeking order out of chaos
An infantile regression

Cleaving to his imaginary world
The poet breaks out into words
Creating sound paintings to be unfurled
So his own agony is blurred

She succumbs to storms of passion
With instinctive techniques
Rhymes and rhythm still in fashion
Out of hand flows mystique

The poet mines from his unconscious
The Reader is not blind
For every single line and symbol
Means something to the mind

Causing an inner liberation
Enlightenment or flight
It is a matter of life and death
When darkness turns to light.

Wall clock,
Tick-tock.
Slaves to all of time.
Fear,
Block.
Heart-drop;
Failure to comply.