The citrus tree grows grey with fear
As the fierce wind she could overhear
Reminds her of a fact yet so clear:
That the badlands are not where she belongs.
© LazharBouazzi

There is one, who with their  face against the gate
Wait to greet the oncoming dawn
This is the one who looks far past the damp pillars
And over and beyond the flat desolate roofs.
And as the first rays of light spill from the cracked night
Illuminating below that grey confined world,
They rise as if with the sun, and level
out across the horizon.

It was morning but not quite morning

Far off the solemn winter slowly thawed

And I’d seen you before, my inscrutable, silent companion,

We moved dreamlike, like nomads, toward a setting sun.

Before the rains came

Billowing out and across the wide open pampas

And I understood you then, as we can only know what is unmapped

Blanketed by the comfort of the pre-dawn

Around the campfire looking up at the stars

That were as clear as that journey we made.

faces appeared from the smoke one evening
as the blue of the afternoon hushed into black
and tellies babbled out through wide-open windows
to the cars standing sentry in the street

within the smoke a mouth is singing
a silent song that splits the air

no evening is truly still, no afternoon only blue
smoke sings silently the same song:
the dying, the unborn, the undead... in unison.

Those things now lost or never owned
Like memories of wings or our water’s sleep
Linger unobserved in peripheries of light;
Flitting like moths between vacant moments
Till we half remember a smothered dream
Of oceans and broad blown beaches;
The sprawl of endless nothings
Which hint of landscapes without edge
And buildings without design.
It’s in here we exist, and with pebbles
That we build through time for form
And spin both labyrinth and twine.