There once was a pond off the Astrillian shore,
Where a billion clams lay underwater, they snored,
Day after day, tides change to tides,
Yet the life of a clam is still quite a bore.

Until one day an otter, all spryly and nimble,
A prince from the infamous pool down the thimble,
Crossed the old straight with his men through mud and through wimble.

Valiantly striding his conquest was simple,
Representing his people in search of a love life to kindle.
He was quirky, and boisterous, and hard to ignore,

Splashing and thrashing about the good peoples shore,
A good lookin' pup, he swam round in circles,
Converting the Astrillian Algaeans to Murkles.

The clams weren't slow to catch on to the show,
For clams are very attentive you know,
And soon by council & seminar they mouth-fulled their garbles,

"Who yonder this monkey that endlessly wharbles?"
"Are you daft kind sirs?" asks one clam as she snarbles,
"It seems you old men have lost all your marbles,

That is the otter, his highness all the way from Port Schwarble!
He only plays cowbell, throws barbells, and a million such marvels,
It's an Astrillian holiday as far as I yarble, hmm"

She stops,
It's indeed very clear she's been pinned as kalopsious,

"My dear" one clammy clam-clam firmly speaks,
"I see your 'kidz-bop' as they say has given you gleecks,
Your highness, is an otter, we'll be extinct within weeks"

The elders agree and farble on lke sheep,
"The end is near!" the little ones squeak,

But none brave as Mandy,
This little clam candy,
Would even think that moving was handy,

Why, confronting a prince sounds totally dandy,
So she pipped and she chupped,
Getting the elders all sandy.

As she made her way up to her prince, who was also quite randy.
Approaching her man of a million wonders,
She squeaked a fine hello over his rambunctious thunder.

He stopped and observed,
"What is this, hors' doeurves?"
He plucked her and licked her, obviously deterred,

When she snarbled and blushed ignoring the blunder,
"My name is Mandy the First, from the land of down under,

She smiled as he turned to his squire,
"A fine maiden to invite to the royal dinner," laughing they snired.
"I caught wind of your plans to marry" she twinkled,
"I just thought that I'd say that I'm young and I'm single,"

And with a wink she gave off her lady like signal.
The squire scoffed at the lady so simple,
"May I remind you ma'am, this is the prince from the pool down the thimble.
He's come all this way through mud and through wimble,
In search of a maiden to love and ne'er let dwindle,
Yet this peasant clam reminds me of a fire in my belly, so long ago kindled,"

He snirped, Mandy quirped as the prince caressed her dimple,
"You'll not lay your paws on her or her people,
This girl is totally braver than you and our sheeple!
It is decided that I'll be bringing her all the way to the steeple."

The squire grumbled a pox on both sides,
"You princox, we haven't eaten since Ides,
If you really cared so much for your lady,
Then let us first feast on her friends and their babies,
For what is a wedding if we're all riddled with hunger and rabies?"

"Nay squire, for you are a bigger one,
Your princoxious gluttony far exceeds the range of the Astrillian Sun"
"Ooooooooohh!!" his guards hollered and bothered, oh but he wasn't done,

"If you really care for your stomach all the sudden,
Then come at me brother, make me your wet monkey mutton.
See if I care for your metabolic process, you square,
For nothing could separate me from my princess so fair."

And so they charged and they barged and splashed all about her,
As his guards cheered them on into brotherly slaughter,
Witnessing the madness, Mandy would rather be chowder.

As she quietly wept for her hunk of an otter,
She noticed the elders behind her surface the water.
"What do you want?!" snobbing she totally snared,

The elders snooted and bitterly declared,

"We warned you," they flarbed,
"Their kind is brutish and dull," they spat from afar,
"The feud between peoples is older than tar"

Mandy flushed beet red and crying she clacked,
"Your ignorance prevails clams, for that is your only knack,
This man loves me and I love him right back,
In fact he's saving us all from becoming a snack.
And if he succeeds I'll never see you again,

I'll never work your sand-bars, or attend colleges of mermen.
I'll never sing songs or clean up your dens,
And you'll all just be grumpy old clams forever, and then,
When I am queen I will not be so mean.

I will unite all the clamsfolk with our predators keen,
We shall not be afraid and they shall not come to prey,
And who knows maybe we'll all get along someday,"

And with that, the squire cried "Uncle!"
And the prince let go of his sleeper-hold struggle,

"Now will you praise your lady you poor jester thuggle?"
"I do, I do your highness, til death I shall juggle."
And so the otters and clams conjoined the whole island,

With only some leftover haters to beguile,
And within seven days time
People gave up on fear,

Threw out their hunger,
And then it became clear,
With only time left to ponder,

As the big day came near,
At the cathedral they concluded that love lasts much longer,
That really,

Whether one be a clam or an otter,
It is only together that we shall become stronger.

On the canvas of the Sky,
As high as can see the eye,
Two figures hung: a cowbell
And a sailing boat as well.

On the canvas of the Sky,
As far as would reach the eye,
Bell on bell, boat on boat, high
They linger for a moment,

Then they all wave good-bye,
Like a choir of echoes.

(C) LazharBouazzi

Peri Kousmos became effective with the thunderous lightning and mighty deluges, huge exhalations of fire Spiritu et Igni began with all the beads from the bottom of the sea rising by the seven suns that were duplicated odd, and even on the firmament of Agios Andreas. It was three o'clock in the morning of the antipode, and a splendorous halo with seven satellites that had at their summit the tops of roosters on some resplendent rays, which covered the meridian of a Demiurge that existed erected and frozen, opened over paradise. on the Peri Kosmou or Reference of the World of metamorphosis. Spuriously the emanations of the pamphlet that began to move from its geological boundary were made where everything was silenced and bruised in the compact parts, with all the wandering parts that wanted to enter under the ***** of the islet that was becoming spiritually. The Necromancer Monograph or work was violently prostrated in the four elements of nature with the geodesy of Vernarth, towards the Mandragoron Surveying for when Vóreios slipped into Nótos when Borker and relaxed both senses, then Dyticá with the demiurge Leiak relaxed from the Equinoctial of the Aftó, to fork through the narrow spaces and finally rise in an eternal vertical, whose center was relieved of a non-bellicose admission in a tremolo that wanted to shudder and defer from an extreme like the Eplinctae that made them move obliquely, the Stymphalos came out from the meanders, then the Brastae earthquakes bubbled from the Notós de Borker when he held them on the straight that contorted on the lacerated ones, later with the observation shot of Theus when the subsidence of the ground with the Hizematiae held them evidently parapsychological. Vikentios did the logistics of bridging the lands that were opened and divided around the perimeter, Marie des Allées held them with great force the ground that naively used to quiet for ephemeral moments with the Astae earthquakes, until Wonthelimar appeared and became effective in the verticality that expanded when it sank due to its shaking with the Palmatiae, and finally Vernarth bellowed with disgusting gutturals so that they would react to the Mycetas earthquake, which was exhaled from disgusting visions of the Peri Kosmou evidencing incidental paragraphs of Apollo, which although he understood of analogous emanations that seemed to be demonic plasmas of the aldehyde in the Valley of the Pleisto close to the Phocis. The sublunar pretended to have tangible oracles through the gasifications of the original Epiclintae earthquake that moved them towards the meanders where the bronze birds awaited the precepts of the Saint to take an advance on the celestial kingdom. This implied that the nature of the Stymphalos would require the sensory stimulation of the golden cowbell of the *** to stimulate them in their gift of flight, with their heavy wings that rested at the right angle to later draw on the cavities.

The sky was beginning to disappear and in the fissures that the Dyticá de Leiak line leaned, the shores of the sea were rearranged to assist them by magnifying the supine lines with the vertical ones, within the microseisms that began to increase from the earthquake, avoiding breaking the surface who was still generously supporting them by the cross of Patras that was he bilocated with his five-meter golden cross, up to his goddaughter island with the little finger of the Apostle Andrew. From here in the surface of the earth would be ajar when cracked by the little finger of the Apostle, then he would leave in his hand a minimal piece of earth so that they could be preserved from the cataclysm, and be redeemed by the bronze birds. Only in this way was the revived earth aware of what was happening, and let it escape in the concrete stones that had evaporated from the apostle, only letting in some bursts of the Metelmi that interlaced by springs of the lusters of the sublunar cycle, which intermingled with the land and the ocean, and the fire with the scalded air. The rebellions of the Mega Seism transferred them in psychic divergences towards the Palmatiae earthquake, which recovered the edge of the pilgrims who did not manage to attend the course of the Mashiach holocaust when they were apprehended by this force of the Palmatiae earthquake on the path of Bethany. From the valley of the Pleisto the uproar effects of Golgotha were counteracted, and from Patras when the sense of the earthquake shone on Vernarth's Mycetias in the 70th Earthquakes with the reverberated waves that flared in the verb, and in the guttural lows that They freed themselves from the subsoil, when the substrates of the mother's possession forged discrepancies of order or Kousmos, having to be reissued with so much rapture and sordid frenzy of the verb that did not recognize him from the stench of the waves that rose from the creeping subsoil, like a cobra that smiled linearly through the eyes of the fire conjured by the infected, and with the disproportionate deviations of the adjective, where salvation was the correct invocation where it has not been seen in the pharynx of the cobra, which struck itself in the impetuous fierceness of the burning global balance. The Peris Kosmou or reference of the World was compared with the paragraph that the evangelizing writings indicated with the chromatic, and not with the adverb when the fiery red of the Mycetias Seismic went directly to his fetid belly with halitosis to fully protect the wounded and Marie des Vallés with the reasons for the vertical and horizontal movement of the “Brastae and Epiclintae”.

after years of being told how good my body was
i went through puberty.

after years of being asked how much time i spent at the gym
i grew hips
and disconcerting  looks from grown men who thought my fifteen year old thighs were too thick to be sexualized.

after years of wearing sundresses
and being applauded for being the first girl in my grade to grow *****
my metabolism slowed down
and i was made to feel like a cowbell in the least practical sense of the word.

i was thirteen and hunched over a porcelain toilet bowl when i told my friend i had purged and she called me gross as if it wasn't because of feeling "gross" that i was there to begin with.

and i'd grown used to my good-gened friends with their tiny waists and size 32 jeans telling me they wanted to join a gym in hopes i'd run along and lose some weight.

because when i was 13 and weighed little enough to turn heads i felt empty while looking whole.

and when you're fat you can't have an eating disorder, because illness can be seen so how good of a job my ana was doing depended solely on how faint i felt by midday.

in a world where nobody buys magazines it's easy to pretend we don't care for skinny bodies anymore, but when every smartphone is linked to an instagram page and every newsfeed is filled with "slim thick baddies" you can't help but wonder.

if i were to feel physically full why am i so empty?
i cheated myself.
she probably went and cheated on me because my body wasn't slim-thick enough to eat.

and it's easy to say this doesn't apply to me when you see the pictures on the beach but you don't see me scrolling through pinterest at 2 in the morning looking at "How To Lose 10 kgs in 3 Days" posts.

if i were so lucky i'd be a success story and could probably post before and after pictures of my body but you can not hear the ache in my belly screaming at me that it'd rather just be cut off.

when i was fourteen i could no longer wear shorts in public because grown men with wives would turn and watch my thighs clip-clap together as i walked with my dad.
i was asking for it.
i resented summer and the fact that i'd run out of clean pairs of jeans to sweat in.

but if i dare love myself, what then? do i apologise to the girlfriends of the boys who visit me for coffee? do i drink coke light with my whiskey? do i start writing poetry?

I bang my elbow in the shower,
takes a second to realize why

not that I was careless
or enjoy pain, again

but the cascara
cowbell, saxophone,

hands around my shoulders
that are not my own

sunlight squeezing lemons,
flower dress upon the hill

potato enchilada
still
digesting
messing
with my footwork

    possibly

maybe

    I was careless.

Showers are not the place for salsa.

i find nothing intelligent about philosophy,
if in were to prescribe a self-help book
i'd prescribe any philosophy book,
it would become mantra to: dumb-down.
fascinated as i am, dancing
pretending to drum, when there's
a sudden jolt and i sing hail! in the
vandal epice, i am fully intact as a
skeleton of an albatross - and stand in a shape
of ᛉ... zigfreid... jawolh...
    having spent 3 weeks in Poland,
in some obscure city gave me utter peace...
but hey, why not come back to England
and get a moral sun-tan of absolute
*******... why not dress up
  in post-colonial nuances, why not experience
post-colonialism?
         3 weeks without the internet
and i really, really did feel relief...
           i thought television is bad...
well, it is bad, if you have internet access...
but with the internet, comes the Belzeebub,
a swarm of words, of opinions that only lead
to a cul de sac of your own basis:
for not talking on a street corner, with a sign
dangling on your neck like a cowbell
reading: the end is near!
          i get it, it's a fetish, it's man claiming
the end will come when he'll obliterate gravity,
i''m cool with that, shindig and all the ponce
of an urban vocab...
   talk to me like a farmer though... please,
please, please do... i want to talk to a farmer...
i can't deal with this cool urban kids
and their microaggression and, whatever it is
they have stashed in their socks...
     because you really can't read a philosophy
book and care to be intelligent...
         i've read a few, and each time i return to
the most despotic creature i could ever wish
to be... the one that's perplexed that he
say something tangible, something worth
riddling... but nothing outside of
the arithmetic... of gluing i am dodo
therefore i'm extinct...
     try to imagine living in a country without
a colonial past... i can, i just did, spent
3 weeks in Poland, and after having acquired
English, like the good, assimmilated foreigner
i am: i want to unlearn it...
   i'm dying to unlearn it... i ****** wish i didn't
speak it...
              it's too global for me...
    i speak it, but i don't want to speak it,
but then i invested over 20 years of my life in speaking
it, and thinking in it...
       i'd also like to see little england,
the england with its camper vans and it's yorkshire
terrier... but i am currently holding
an anchor on the periphery of London,
and boy, the drag is something, i am actually
enjoying this paralysis...
but you can't expect to read a philosophy and
get the idea that suddenly there's a theory
of relativity sleeping within you...
    read a philosophy book, learn to become an idiot...
    intelligence can't even stomach awe...
it always has to say something witty,
be something opportune, have a dinner party...
fake it...
           the idiot just looks at the world
and says: huh? it really is a chance to play the Frankenstein
monster... so many people, and they have so
much care to trade, sell apples, argue...
so much care to attain the ****** appeal,
to trim their hair...
   so much energy to trade, sell life insurance,
to argue...
               where do they get it from, that mana?
it can really be so welcoming,
to experience life in a non-colonial society,
    to be bored, to do nothing and simply be human...
now that's a first...
              to do nothing and simply be, human...
   me thinks that animals have it easy,
i wish i could have the digestive system of a koala
bear...
                to be a creature with a mono-facet
adaptability dynamic... well, a bi-facet adaptation
scenario... me, coordinates (0, 0), the thing
i want, coordinates (1, 1)... move!
     not me, i'm human, i have to go to the *******
cinema, i have to attend a funeral,
i have to do a, b, c, and all the way down through to z...
    evolution is cruel...
               this constant physical bombardment
with sensual teasing, and then being ****** anally by
some cognitive fudge phalllus...
    it's really become obsolete to even think,
there's no: think for the pleasure of mere thought...
now i'm waiting for a shepherd to
huddle me into a crowd in need of writing a book...
i really don't know how the natives
  deal with this, but if i were to suddenly speak my
native tongue i'd be better off, english is really
being stretched, so many bad, i mean really bad
accents... they only speak the english they speak
because english is a barren wasteland without any
diacritical marks... it's covert language,
puny secretive bollocking at the start,
and nothing else at the end...
    but it really is a headache knowing english
these days... it's doing my head in...
          i speak english and i'm already imaging
myself head-banging, or knocking down
the al-buraq - if you know Polish then you'll
just say: the beetroot.
                       and whatever the media tells you,
everyone in the trenches of society
actually adores Putin...
             it could be sad, but at least it's not so
flimsy and artsy after all...
   a society with clear indication that internet
megalomania is not permitted...
                  yes, i really am writing you a postcard
with a: wish you would go there...
     even with its Christian conservatism...
      it's actually bearable...
becuase, having 3 weeks there, and as i get older
(even though i'm only 30)...
  i find England: exhausting... literally
like dragging elephant testicles wherever i walk...
it's exhausting... England is exhausting...
   talking English is exhausting...
     this beacon of hope and freedom has become
a **** nugget, set alight on a toothpick...
     i've lived in England for so many years,
and have yet to taste the local delicacy... of an English
******... while a story emerges in Rotherham
about a ******* cartel... it begins to really break
your heart... there's you, ***-starved and
having the tendency to over-exaggerate a handshake
and there's the world...
     you can't really drink enough alcohol these days
to knock yourself out...
and i've been drinking, on and on, on and on... and on...
and it never stops being so depressing!
     there, my tongue is lose... it's a streaker on a
football pitch... running wild... giving it all
for the worth of simply: frenzy...
             but there's something very ancient about this
dynamic... the fact that these are the lands
once occupied by the romans...
sure, in Poland you use the Latin alphabet, but
the spaghetti maneli crew never threw their
pizza that far up north...
                          go to any country that doesn't
boast of a Roman heritage...
that's for starters...
                         if the place boasts about being
conquered by the romans...
                  you end up watching a funeral that
just won't go away... not how the latin alphabet
was best symbiotic with numbers due to the holes
and you can't code on a computer screen
with anything, but latin... try writing an app.
using arabic or hebrew...
it truly is a language based on: matchsticks made
in heaven...
                 just the areas where the romans didn't
settle... the "uncivilised" regions...
    it's enough that the Slavs probably had the equivalent
of runes... and a polytheism of some sort...
but all i see is: perfected exploitation of the latin
alphabet, and well, might as well forget the rest.
    now that's major digression...
      it's as if i'm trying to have a conversation,
  but then the claustrophobic tendency of narration
take off and i''m thrown into a Tartar army...
       entranced into singing allah'u akbar... instead
of reciting Rumi...
                    it is what it is,
and since England is a major player in world
affairs, there's nothing little about it, even
if you live in Dover...
                 yet there is a nation-state serenity somewhere,
where everything is truly small,
  truly content with very little, where it's not
gagging to advertise itself, to sell itself...
    perhaps Auschwitz is a blessing as a "tourist"
destination after all...
           come to think of it... people will be children
around the pyramids...
they'll climb a pyramid... make funny photographs
of the pyramids what afar, as if they were holding
it... can't see any funny photographs coming
from Auschwitz... people gearing up to
smoke a shisha in a gas chamber...
                       or climbing into one of the crematorium
ovens to replicate a Tokyo hotel "room",
maybe Auschwitz is the blessed deterent of globalisation?
it's a great question...
           while the Czechs import hen and stag parties
to their capital with cheep beer...
  no one from the west seems to feel the same
drunken bliss in Krakow... what with Auschwitz
so close...
               they'd rather drink with the Russian
separatists in Kiev!
                  and indeed, what the German rage left,
i wear it like a black diamond...
              a crow's croak...
so, does that mean i have to appeal to some
imaginative conquered-party appeal?
   that i let it all happen, while i pressed the snooze
button on my clock?
     i don't know... Poland is a bit odd, and coming
from there, it almost seems that i should be writing
about Moldavia.
              and blessed are those: firmly rooted in one
place, with neither care nor obligation
   to travel far...
                          lest they bring nothing but
scurvy, in hope of bringing the beacon of civilisation
  and only that, no olympic flame: but a plague.
England is a land of displaced people,
  and can't be anything other than:
i got ants in my pants and i'm going to sing the blues!

writing beats and rhymes
at the same time
theyre both the same
in my eyes
always looking for the pattern
like a frame
to hang the words upon
or to surround them
in percussion
every word has place in time
replacing bass with lines
a scribe to my racing mind
the rhymes hi hat rise punctuating
the punching reverberating bass drum
kicking your brain in

The grass is so green
Down in the meadow
Beside the glistening stream

A cowbell rings
Tolling for lovers
Beside the sparkling water.

Our fingers touch and
A shock jolts our bodies
As we tremble with passion.

The air is hot and still.
Nature's sounds are magnified
As we reach for each other.

Fumbling with our clothes
We caress one another
With hot lips and sweet kisses.

The fragrance of crushed grass
Mingles with the scent of wild roses
As the sun heats our  naked flesh.

Lying together on our blanket,
We make love with an urgency
That takes our breath away.

Afterwards, we lay side by side,
Holding hands, touching
And whispering our love.

That romantic summer's day,
Filled with joy and delight,
And so many years ago.

Illuminated by a dream.
Drawings on the wall
Writings on your back
Hiding away in abstract thought.
Pastel colors and vintage photographs and Levi Jeans ads.
Dusty records on the floor of your room with the slanted walls
Hibernating on the roof
Looking over the city
Like the hero of Gotham
See the world through someone else’s eyes.
See the way you live.
Merge. Connection.
Binnocularing into the future.
Bird watching peeping tomming.
Conjoining what’s real and what is just what it seems.
Edgar, it is just a dream.
Earth, Moon and global Pangaea.
The world is my canvas and now so are you.
Why do you look at me like that?
You make me want to write.
I can’t stop looking at you too.
You have rendered me useless
All I’m focused on is those blue eyes
Staring so intently at me
Fixated on me and only me
Hey, I’m talking to you,
Cowbell tamboureen percussion section cowboy.
You burn with a fire from the sun.

your paradise is giving me hell... yet -
we bark at the same moon
and all's well. we strike the brass bells of our Wednesday
and keep havoc on a leash. drinking mint tea... pealing anguish
from a flask... stalking clarity with a cowbell -
spoiling ribbons of the sun
with night streaks of blind lemons
coiling in the blue sky of dread reckoning... a periscope
in the marsh, festooned with limp reeds and wild things...
my eyes clunk in the Mcguffin
and go the way of Eastern men with rope tricks
it clicks on the steam in my kettle
where harm has a hammock.
and a gentle breeze typhoons
in a fools mouth.

as the whirligigs of Autumn
preach Spring

in Amsterdam.

i'm left out.

Sometimes you just need a whole lot more of a little bit of cowbell,
ya feel me?