A cabin that had once been white
Stood, peeled, on the shore of Carthage.
It looked like a drunken scarfaced knight -
Eyes shut to Dionysian carnage.
A pack of lost dogs roamed around it,
Their pangs of want they sought to manage.

The lone cabin stood on the wrinkled sand
Like a young tree on Shott el Jerid's* white pale
Whom the white monster forced to speak with the hand:
“Basta, no stubborn resistance from me will avail.”

The fuming sun displayed his festival of fear
Over dogs who could handle their thirst no more;
While the salt has now made its white task clear:
Gnawing the sapling and gnawing evermore
Until the only mark on the Shott will disappear.

And the poet who has only half-chosen the vision
Half not knowing what to do, tried to listen
To the trickle of his obstinate, patient cheer
Oozing through the new orange laptop,
He had purchased from a Chinese peer.

(c) LazharBouazzi, August 10, 2016.

Come to me with tears, my eyes have cried.
Laugh until you hurt, I've been that manic.
Deceive me if you can, I know the lies
we tell ourselves in fear. I will not panic.
Pound my chest in anger, feel my strength;
know I know your pain, yet do not feel it.
Tell me of your breaking heart at length;
words absorbed and heard the salve to heal it.
We together know we can survive;
after all, we'd chosen different roads and
gone our separate ways just to arrive
in time to hold up one another's loads.
You think you weigh me down, yet do not see
my burden's lighter when you lean on me.

In company sedated under someone else's skin
I try to find the door through which my body wandered in
There won't be any roaming for my shadow left to do
I've seen what I created in a mirror made of you
It's here I know my spirit has been broken many times
Competing with the vessels that are present in my mind
We take our own emotions and expose them to our thoughts
Make everything indifferent to the cause of all the rot
I'm very much aware of where the balances are off
But choose to put aside the very things at which I scoff
There's no one in existence who can comprehend the fight
The battles that we face when we shut out the source of light
It's somewhere on the outskirts of the darkness we explore
Where demons turn to people who are swallowed up in war
The prisoners and fighters were once friends until they spoke
Of massacres they plotted that caused one of them to choke
I'm not here to admire those who pass away to shake
The core of who I am because they couldn't stay awake
Such ****** in the hearts of those who want to have it all
I tried to comprehend it but their pride is just a wall
Forgive them in the name of every power that they seek
'Cause even they will bow to simple truths they cannot speak

what you make invisible
will cast a dark shadow over your life
ignorance is bliss' evil twin
seduction sold as a box of bright light
look beyond what evil is feeding you
make up your mind
truth isnt too hard to find
revolution is feasible
if you only let leaders lead you
as a horse to water
not a lamb to slaughter

again and again
the morning comes undone
and we march -
stuff-lunged into crunch
and mule love
blunder-bused  and lump-kin
but for always
a short ton
of long grief
tweaking the snip
of a dead sow's ear
to reap a jewel
from a dead
mind.

but here

i love you like a war in Spain
spiking the Punch and Judy/
a fugue grief on a tide of dark joy
slavering at the haunches
of a Pegasus.

Blindfolded.

.
You've asked me how can I see a future when love, in all
Its numinous beauty, is waning?
I reply, the immortal stars still shine above the veil of clouds.
You say, why are the salmon swimming to their pools of origin
Only to die as they spawn?  Only to die?
I tell you their love is unconditional, like mine.
You ask me did the giant sequoia know it was shelter for the burning grasses
When they walked from the seas?  I reply yes they knew.
You question me about the lofty snow cranes that fly over the Himalayas
And I reply by describing
How the priestly flocks, chanting on their mission, honk—
Announcing the mantle steps to the heavens.
You inquire about the elephantine manatees gracing the shallow banks
And wonder if the sea mermaids remember their lives beyond the latitudes
Of capricorn and cancer?
Or you’ve discovered in the wind a new reasoning as to why
The talons of the paired eagles lock in midair as they court?
You want to understand the nimbus garden, ocean slate, of lake Titicaca
Where resides the Andean sea horse gliding above the clouds?
The whales that circle dance in unison collecting krill?
The noetic display of the birds of paradise, the songs of nameless creatures
Playing in the wilderness like a forgotten melody only lovers lips remember?

I want to tell you that true love knows this, that life in its
Prismatic shimmer is all the myriad colours of infinite existence wrapped
In time to the sublime structure of white and bones.  I must tell you
That the flower is mighty in its opening, the humming bird is a sorcerer
Who needles ambrosia with vortex wings weaving his way to the Gods.

But I am nothing beside your disbelief which has arrived, before
I can even imagine the sweet awakening, like doom, my shell is the iridescent
Hollow of the one eyed Abalone, discarded in the deep fathoms
Of the ocean pressures.

I swim the tides as you do, investigating
The endless tendril seas,
And in my chest, during the night, I woke up empty,
The only thing treasured, a golden face
Trapped inside my dreams.

                                                        ­­­          
                                                             ­­                       — after Neruda

( a vision dream )

      1

Down in the shrouded wood a wanderer walks
And dreams the dreamers story he has lived.
Sidled by the stream that sheds blue waters
By the beds, trailing the rail of loves unknown
Kiss and a voice that conjures truest bliss,
Down in the drink where sweet Ophelia sleeps;
In the pool of the lost maiden song.

And the dreamer, he is dreaming . . .
Hair, that ropes the stoic man upon his mount.
Hair, making souls’ lost ending breath a shout,
And hair that weighs the wind, teaches it to sing;
Hair, wending whirlpools waving fools to dive in.


      2

Lost at land’s end the sea lions, washed-up, wail
And buzzards coast where eagles flail, rip tides
Assail and chop the collected bones they drop;
It is a chalky bone-yard break, golden escarpments
Wake and a ******’s salty sermons shake;
Where gathering ghosts glom and chide steeping,
In the pool of the lost maiden song.

And the seeker, he is seeking . . .
Eyes that turn the sands and are mirrors,
Eyes that taught the books of Alexandria,
Eyes that shook the flesh and are seers,
Eyes that lit the pyres, burned true believers.


      3

Deep in the dark wood the waters rush, hush,
Cramp, crew and creep, melodiously tread,
Trammel, and burn as furies in keeping true
The melting moon, the onerous owl, fluttering
Things, muttering wings, cones in darkness
Flings and filmy time flicks by the wayside;
In the pool of the lost maiden song.

And the lover, he is longing . . .
Love, lithe and lyric, he sees your sweeping shapes.
Peace, parsed and pained he hears the voicing gape.
Blind, bliss’d and shamed he wears the votive drapes.
Hungered, thirsted and gone; seeks your pearly gate.


      4

Out in the forest maze the jarring sun seeps
And swirls, only to roust the traveler onward
Where soon he must meet the faces in the grotto
Down in destroyed lands by the seas’ unreasoning
Chime, deep in the dark whine of the shining mermaids,
Where the doomed cry, round the navel of the world,
In the pool of the lost maiden song.

And the doomed, they are crying . . .
“****** beauty bade us, in a star crossed chrysalis,
Made us, choose a desert’s winter of loneliness.
Heed our fate and leave this valley torn of bliss;
The many millions of locust fall in ripest fields.”

The morning opens her arms to me, perfumed with dew drops on grass blades. Hanging loosely over her body an iris cloud dress gleams incandescent watermelon pinks and tangerine. Her solar eyes twinkle, the alabaster one winks as if to say,

I know of your deja vu dream from earlier.

We dance sun salutations.

That's when it dawns on me that I'm on a date with the morning.

dont drop your dreams for excuses
the real has its uses
but fantasy is its own reward
you may never be what the world says
society is a mindset
focus your entirety on your cause
your sights adjusted
do what you must
to set a path to what is rightfully yours
you have the right
to remove yourself
from all that you abhor
and the right to remove the heads of those
that would say that their dream
is the best that you can hope for

So, as you know, I'm the kind of person
who prefers to traverse the worst news first
before dispersing with friendly pleasantries.

But, if I may speak free and honestly
I'm tired carrying around the genes
that subject me to overcome obscene

obstacles from your insecurities
as well as the fears of our ancestors.
I know there are lessons learned in character  

karma before switching out from one car
to another but sweet jesus, sometimes
it's hard to take a break or find space to breathe!

And you wonder sometimes why I cannot
ride over the same roads you built, spilling
oil, drilling mountains, supporting wars and more

systems that are killing the poor and/or
brown men and children. Well then, for my health
and well-being I need to at least find some peace

in the things I can control and support,
things and people that build a rapport with
my mind, heart and soul, so my blood flow don't fly

so high from the things I cannot control
like all the old school phobias and the
nervousness lurking in your minds before I

was even born. There's no scorn from me, but
maybe an occasional forlorn sigh,
only because I love you, and know you're trying.

But please, please... I appreciate that you
want me to succeed, but to be honest
I really, really don't need your help, your genes

are enough of an obstacle course through
hell to get to heaven, because at some
point my being is gonna get sore cause there's

no way in hell you can convince me to
take more or just accept that that's the way
it has been when I can see other paths that

have been, perhaps less traveled, if at all,
leading to happiness and freedom to
be the change you have been seeking from the start.

But we cannot do it if our hearts hurt
or lungs burn or can't find ways to work and
learn together because we are, it is
& that's it.

inside me
there is a door
rotating colors.

it opens
once I'm quiet.
my tacit breath smiles.

dimensions
merge together;
like a submerged view

of the sun.
vagary spirit;
feeling umbuntu.