"Be the harpooner of the unexamined life,
with unfettered rhapsody, comfort caress us,
exhort the loopy to light their illusionary candles,
turn the sad eyed lowlanders into crinkly eye-lined smilers."



l<>|

writ many years past, just another dusted off phrasing,
composed from life's lecture notes, collected by eyes tired
from the hazing,
eyes wearied by the addict-strong,
incessant observational needing,
of celebrating the loopy,
they who make this planet
capable of laughing at itself,
a helping habit for mutual survival...

should you spot a man ungainly wrought,
weighted down by a harpoon cross
cursed  'pon his Cain-marked back,
you need not move to the other side,
'tis only a make-believe poet,
with his recording device,
seizing your rhapsodies to rhyme,
his collected artifacts, your crinkly smiles,
his meat, his metier, his chosen career,
a comfort caresser of your illusions into
a shapely sculpture of words for you to keep,
a token of your now examined worth,
a celebration for the keeping...

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.

my actress, who
sweated blood on Broadway each night
off Broadway too

said, on a long stroll
through Central Park. she was successful
because she did not like herself

on the stage, she proclaimed,
she was never herself, and she fell in love
with every character she portrayed  

every script was a better bio
than her own, and the playwrights knew
her better than she knew herself

and when our walk
was curtailed by a downpour, she dragged me
into a crowded cafe

where she knew half the patrons
and the wait staff, and they all knew the different
personas she had owned, on the dry stage

rain now forced her to choose  
which selves to keep, and which to lose
while she sipped scalding tea

with me, on a grey wet afternoon,
only hours before she would again be under  
the spell of the hot lights,

and read verses from the pens of prophets,
poets--those who purloined her soul for the price
of admission, to a place without self loathing

Reading,
         Reading you,
Reading me:
Symphonic emotional intelligence,
Words like a violinist.
    I carry them with me
Inside my mind applying reality,
       The unreality passsing out of me.
The poems speak like see through natures,
The clarity of my discombobulation.
      You all become real.

   Archives of the souls
    Instantaneous connection
        Closer than
Touch:
Your words resonance with every
Fiber of my being.
    Your words
Invent more words,
    Your emotions tie
The world's shoestrings,
    The experience shared
Is a reality of musical theatre
    And it kills the silence,
The silence of the mind.
     Your words are movement,
Be it from a past,
     The metaphysical dance,
A kiss of gentle air,
    The idea is a life living
Recovering from the enigmatic plague
Of ignorance.
    Though I see the bird sing
My heart stops when it I hear it
Through your words;
    Connectivity.
Reading is not reading,
    It is saying what your silence says,
Art becoming life in an echo of YOU.
       The words that I understand:
Yes, the pain is also a gesture of reality,
     It lets us know it was real,
Your tears,
      Your secrets,
           The murmured past,
And as I read it becomes as the
Sun on morning dew.
   Beginnings,
Endings,
    You become apart of me,
I become part of you,
      Not words
But music in the silence.
And the moment will come
When you hear it too:

The poetry:
Crystalline humanity.

An Uncomfortable Poem.*

Kicked your dog? Beaten your wife, husband, kids?
Cheated on your spouse, your taxes, a test? Cursed god?
Had *** to get something? Done a *******? A babysitter?
Shot ******? Been a secret alcoholic? ****** to inflict pain?
Sold drugs, your integrity, your body? Been *****? ***** someone?
Bullied a weaker soul? Kicked someone already down?
Betrayed a confidence, a lover, a coworker, your country?
Hit and run? Been in prison? Stolen money, credentials, a poem?
Alienated your partner, your children, the world?
Killed someone in a battle, a street fight, by accident?
Broken a heart on purpose? Been cruel? Lied for advantage?
Walked away from another’s pain? Sold out love? Spurned it?
No? Never? Not one? Not once? Really? Perhaps you are a Saint.
Only one person knows these things for sure.
What we leave out becomes our Gothic narrative of secrets.
The wheels within our wheels within our wheels. Churning.
   *We are what we choose to reveal. Only that, no more.
    Everything else hidden behind a closed, locked door.