I remember the days when we were two stupid kids,
we were eating blackberries grown on tombs
and the moon was just a big stone
the sun was leaving its last breath on.

Now I am looking for you on the Wood street
where you last time smiled at me,
on the Wood street where people eat with their hands
the remains  of those burned by unhappiness,
while fools sing about love and dreams and the holes in their hearts.

I am looking for you
and I don't know whether you are a human or a dream
or the ash
that slips through my frozen fingers.

Maybe you are just the hole in my soul,
maybe the moon is more than a big stone,
maybe I loved you
maybe
you are still there somewhere
in the Sun's last breath.
Maybe it's just your smile
that has burned
covering my soul
my hands.

The moon, a hollow
Saint Jacques shell,
whose kernel
lovers
and language figures
had wasted through the flow
of time,
came
to this eerie pond
a dry vagabond -
now a dweller
of the surface deep.

© LazharBouazzi, Carthage, TUN, September 3, 2016

the sky is the colour of ceres porcelain
or an oil painting of a windy isle,
the hot sun softens,
the days easier, the clouds
are white like patches on
blue jeans, the cooler air
conjuring the blues of the
skies, mystical and haunting,
the stream’s summer greys
singing of rusty pools and
white linen, as babbling water
falls from the mountains
and rushes to breathe.
summer becomes tender,
opens her heart to the
beauty of the sky, lingers
with flashy sunlight, and
touches of brilliance to
those water-colour skies
and sends us adieus
and sweet memories
of children’s laughter
and happy, warm days.

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