"backward" poems
Gliding deftly along the city street
rolling quick and constantly
onward to some unknown scene,
some backward park in the nighttime
smoke curling from these
parted lips, moist and inviting
calling me somewhere I've never seen.
New day, new night
new feelings, rage in delight
fill me with your hilarious entropy,
knock my quarks into the next century,
will you please?
Now you're smoking the pipe and all at once you are free
between you and me, this smoke is thicker and sticks
like glue,
wispy and dreamy and the world spins and calls Toltec
telephone company can't pay me for all those calls collected
and rendered obsolete
Sun god dead as that silly calendar meme
Amaterasu,
and Imma tell you
these ladies in the picnic table
buried alive for boxed lunch and god's brunch
Jesus ******* Christ
and a indelible roster of good guys,
to which we all must strive to live and die
behind,
never moving forward
chasing our tails like a sick dog
under the jasmine runner between the decades-old tanbark
imported from overseas
dead trees
dead canine
and oh isn't it just divine?
You see it, pretty lady.
I can see it hiding behind your eyes
the things you don't tell the others because you're afraid
if they found out,
you'd be crucified.
Well honey I hate to inform,
With KGB efficiency that these love-a-dumbs
aint Methuselah,
they'll be dead!
long before your flood of tears tears me from the land
ballistas me across the great expanse to some strange Ararat
of the eastern seaboard,
or maybe wash me deep along the 80
into the desert sands and tiles
on a leaky cell phone screen
desperately trying to dial home on low battery,
realizing all this was one big deferred dream,
baking in the sun and shriveling
oh well, back to the grindstone-- all those lies plucked your nose,
gotta cut it back to size,
'else your soul it'll outgrow
Don't worry honey bee
It hasn't happened to me,
and We know with calcuable mathematical truth
that it'll never happen to you.
Jun 26, 2018
Jun 26, 2018 at 9:50 PM UTC
(read forward, then backward, line by line)
I ran.
Not knowing what else to do
There was so much blood on my hands
It was mine
The kitchen knife
Caught in my chest
Guilt
Consumed by
Fear
I was heightened by
Adrenaline
But running on
Wasn’t enough
While trying to stay calm,
Losing control
It was me that would end up
Dead. Because
He was
In front of me
The whole time
It was too late
Trapped
I found myself
Locked in chains
My fate was
Death.
Feb 14, 2018
Feb 14, 2018 at 7:48 PM UTC
I lay under the sheets,
Undressed and yearning,
Famished and waiting,
For a taste of ambrosia.
Knock knock knock!
Come now and come in,
Embrace your desire,
And ravish my senses.
Don’t tease me,
I am at my peak,
Mortally enraptured,
By my physical form.
Come lay beside me,
Put your hands on me,
Take me whole,
I surrender in flesh.
Caress my *******
Moisten my urges down,
Hold me tight,
And feel me now.
Hold me down now,
Watch me sizzle,
With fierce intensity,
Burn my passion out.
I need your body,
When mine takes over,
Come in and take it all,
Out ; when I simmer down.
Come again when I desire,
Hear my carnal call,
I want you in me,
A taste of ecstasy.
I lay here now,
Bare on the bed,
Ceased by desire,
Free me now.
Restless feet bother,
Kiss them and in between,
Soften the bridges,
So you may pass.
Forward and backward,
All leads to ecstasy,
Touch me whole,
Touch me now .
Aug 15, 2018
Aug 15, 2018 at 10:20 PM UTC
death wants more death, and its webs are full:
I remember my father's garage, how child-like
I would brush the corpses of flies
from the windows they thought were escape-
their sticky, ugly, vibrant bodies
shouting like dumb crazy dogs against the glass
only to spin and flit
in that second larger than hell or heaven
onto the edge of the ledge,
and then the spider from his dank hole
nervous and exposed
the puff of body swelling
hanging there
not really quite knowing,
and then knowing-
something sending it down its string,
the wet web,
toward the weak shield of buzzing,
the pulsing;
a last desperate moving hair-leg
there against the glass
there alive in the sun,
spun in white;
and almost like love:
the closing over,
the first hushed spider-sucking:
filling its sack
upon this thing that lived;
crouching there upon its back
drawing its certain blood
as the world goes by outside
and my temples scream
and I hurl the broom against them:
the spider dull with spider-anger
still thinking of its prey
and waving an amazed broken leg;
the fly very still,
a ***** speck stranded to straw;
I shake the killer loose
and he walks lame and peeved
towards some dark corner
but I intercept his dawdling
his crawling like some broken hero,
and the straws smash his legs
now waving
above his head
and looking
looking for the enemy
and somewhat valiant,
dying without apparent pain
simply crawling backward
piece by piece
leaving nothing there
until at last the red gut sack
splashes
its secrets,
and I run child-like
with God's anger a step behind,
back to simple sunlight,
wondering
as the world goes by
with curled smile
if anyone else
saw or sensed my crime
22.4k
Big **** The Head ********
was the head of all the ********* in the ******** Shed.
What made Big **** so skilled and keen
at dickheadedness was to be seen.
Big **** had a certain ******* flair,
for tugging at everyone's short and curly hair.
He never had an important specialty,
except for being a type-A personality.
His skills were near to nothing great.
He kinda looked like a backward ape,
with a necktie 20 years gone out of style,
and his middle-management bullshitty wiles;
"I'm better than any ******** here!"
He'd proclaim everyday with a prickish sneer.
So they put him on his own cocky shelf,
where he could reign all by himself,
and every ******** ***** or asshole-wanna-be,
would come to the ******** Shed just to see,
what they could achieve if they'd observe instead,
the ways and means of Big **** The Head ********
___________
Dedicated to every single uptight, middle-management, pain in the ****
you have ever had to work with or for.
Aug 8, 2010
Aug 8, 2010 at 1:07 PM UTC
the glory is fallen out of
the sky the last immortal
leaf
is
dead and the gold
year
a formal spasm
in the
dust
this is the passing of all shining things
therefore we also
blandly
into receptive
earth,O let
us
descend
take
shimmering wind
these fragile splendors from
us crumple them hide
them in thy breath drive
them in nothingness
for we
would sleep
this is the passing of all shining things
no lingering no backward-
wondering be unto
us O
soul,but straight
glad feet fearruining
and glorygirded
faces
lead us
into the
serious
steep
darkness
16.5k
In your vision you are the only thing with bloodshot eyes.
You always wear a robe
that speaks seven languages... and a bank of fog is at your feet
nipping at your naked heel.
In your vision you remember how your arms feel in sunshine.
It is intense.
Your can-opener is hissing an etude
that alludes to wise men...
who bathe in miracles
and roam the world,
untarnished in Poverty.
Your can-opener whispers in hush tones
about barbarians at the gate. And they say
' they've come for the Linen ! '
You are not deceived.
In your vision you are the only thing that can backward engineer
a Universe.
On your way back to the homeland of your algebra
you hesitate. “ you may have left your keys in your Other Robe...”
The Robe that hallucinates constantly~ Carrying on about
' The dire consequences of leaving terrycloth alone with the keys '
and, afflicted with Prophesy Tourettes
the piteous tide of doom ' sayeth the robe '
you must suffer.
In your vision, you are the only one
looking for the keys.
Oct 16, 2012
Oct 16, 2012 at 5:09 PM UTC
I wear beads and African bracelets for beauty. I forget why the people before me wore them. I wear them with pride not because I earned them but because I simply look beautiful. Beautiful!? What does that even mean? My Nana has scars on her body. She shows them to me with pride. Narrates stories of the war in the past like an action movie only she didn't have a gun only bows and poisonous arrows. The missing teeth in her mouth causes her to spit almost every second she talks. But this embarrassment is only felt by me. She is proud of the hole in her mouth. Suddenly I feel the urge to remove my African beads. They have no meaning only that they are African and I am and so am entitled. But I have done nothing for my heritage. Not even fight for it. Slowly it's being forgotten and people are crossing over without a care in the world. 'To civilisation' we say. 'For the good of the people' we say. But is it? We were a community wrong as we were to circumcise women, marry them off at an early age, burn the wrong... We were a community. We loved each other. We cared. We taught our children how to feel and be the earth. We taught our children to respect the earth and in return the earth blesses us with herbs to cure. What did they call it? Aaah yes 'witchcraft'. We were not animals who forget their children in pit latrines or by the river side just because we cannot afford them or don't want them. We cared not of individualism because together we grew in spirit, body and soul. It was not backward it was culture. And culture is flexible. It can change but can never be terminated. It is not a shoe that when you grow out of you throw and buy another.
And so I am not telling you to go back to your roots because if am quite honest you were never in it. Rather embrace it. See how 'civilised' you will feel then.
yours
The Red_Head
Jun 21, 2017
Jun 21, 2017 at 3:08 AM UTC
And a woman who held a babe against her ***** said, "Speak to us of
Children."
And he said:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit,
not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you
with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that
is stable.
13.1k
As the shape all sun
tore up the curtain
of blood and ululation,
everything in Tunisia,
as stricken by a wand,
came to a standstill,
and slipped away
from the senses -
Even rivers stopped.
Medjerda* froze
halfway
through the descent
to his destination,
as he realized
he’d been making a fatal error:
pouring forth all his passion
into the ocean.
So he stopped,
retracted his course,
re-collected himself,
and started flowing backward,
toward
the source
in the Atlas
that had bidden him
farewell.
In his spear head
there was a design:
start a new chaos
in the valley,
in which there would be
a sweet-water lake
and sailors drunk
with sunbeams, sweat
and pleasure.
Butterflies would flutter
around the scent of mint
and bluegreen rosemary.
Sweet Moon to Sweet Lake
would come, unannounced,
In the rays of the nightlight
of the fluttering night
to watch her self
shoot
the scene
of representation.
The river, now swimming
in his own water,
carried the sky on his shoulder,
while an ant and a grasshopper,
holding a basket together,
watched the new scene.
As the figure all sun appeared ,
reason melted;
imagination
her hazel eyes opened.
*Medjerda is the most important river in Tunisia. Length, 460 km; basin area, 22,000 sq km. It flows out of the Atlas mountains into the Gulf of Tunis.
© LazharBouazzi, June 16, 2016
Jun 16, 2016
Jun 16, 2016 at 1:35 PM UTC
The line didn't move, though there were not
many people in it. In a half-hearted light
the lone agent dealt patiently, noiselessly, endlessly
with a large dazed family ranging
from twin toddlers in strollers to an old lady
in a bent wheelchair. Their baggage
was all in cardboard boxes. The plane was delayed,
the rumor went through the line. We shrugged,
in our hopeless overcoats. Aviation
had never seemed a very natural idea.
Bored children floated with faces drained of blood.
The girls in the tax-free shops stood frozen
amid promises of a beautiful life abroad.
Louis Armstrong sang in some upper corner,
a trickle of ignored joy.
Outside, in an unintelligible darkness
that stretched to include the rubies of strip malls,
winged behemoths prowled looking for the gates
where they could bury their koala-bear noses
and **** our dimming dynamos dry.
Boys in floppy sweatshirts and backward hats
slapped their feet ostentatiously
while security attendants giggled
and the voice of a misplaced angel melodiously
parroted FAA regulations. Women in saris
and kimonos dragged, as their penance, behind them
toddlers clutching Occidental teddy bears,
and chair legs screeched in the food court
while ill-paid wraiths mopped circles of night
into the motionless floor.
10.3k
Two boys
and girls
unclothed each other
simply at a picnic
flush with wine
alongside
sun-flecked trees.
The girls,
easy as the
forest round,
burned,
delicious,
as the boys
eager and nervous
in unequal measure
partly gave up
concealing
their joys
at forgetting
or remembering
in flickers
their bare bodies.
It went on
over nettles
and half-hours
and clambered
trees and
photos taken
almost formally
(on film,
of course).
And boyish lust,
at first sinuous,
a darting tongue,
began to
soften against,
for instance,
the sheer,
unthinkable
texture
of the two
girls carved
now backward
over the bough
of a storm-felled elm.
And there
in the embers
of evening
they learned
to thrill originally
at the vast,
gorgeous
and astonishing
irrelevance
of what
might happen next.
Jan 26, 2011
Jan 26, 2011 at 7:05 AM UTC
mov•ie
\ ˈmü-vē \
noun
1.a story represented in motion pictures/motion : noun : mo·tion : \ ˈmō-shən \ : an act, process, or instance of changing place/forward, backward, up, down, pacing, running, crawling/how we flee from our lives, our problems, our responsibilities/instead of focusing on motion we look to pictures/picture : noun : pic·ture : \ ˈpik-chər \ : a design or representation made by various means/click, zoom, import, export/our lives are on a flash drive, on a snapchat, on an instagram, on a memory card/everywhere but on our own memories/we don’t like pictures either/they show moments never to be regained from our past/our solution?/combine them into something better/movie : verb : mov·ie : \ ˈmü-vē \ : an escape from reality/we use movies to deflect the pain of our lives/we think that we watch because we are bored/no/we watch to escape/escape : verb : es·cape : /əˈskāp/ : a recording of moving images that tells a story and that people watch on a screen or television.
Oct 23, 2018
Oct 23, 2018 at 8:55 AM UTC
First forget what time it is
for an hour
do it regularly every day
then forget what day of the week it is
do this regularly for a week
then forget what country you are in
and practice doing it in company
for a week
then do them together
for a week
with as few breaks as possible
follow these by forgetting how to add
or to subtract
it makes no difference
you can change them around
after a week
both will help you later
to forget how to count
forget how to count
starting with your own age
starting with how to count backward
starting with even numbers
starting with Roman numerals
starting with fractions of Roman numerals
starting with the old calendar
going on to the old alphabet
going on to the alphabet
until everything is continuous again
go on to forgetting elements
starting with water
proceeding to earth
rising in fire
forget fire
8.5k
When I close my eyes, I see your beautiful face
It makes me so happy
When I close my eyes, I see your amazing smile
It warms my heart
When I close my eyes, I see your intoxicating eyes
It takes my breath away
When I close my eyes, I see your backward glance
It makes me smile
When I close my eyes, I can see you shimmy
It makes me laugh
When I close my eyes, I can see us together
It fills my heart with joy
When I close my eyes, I see my future
It is full of you
When I close my eyes, I see you walking down the aisle
It is my dream 20
Aug 8, 2014
Aug 8, 2014 at 3:31 PM UTC
The warmth of life has come at last
to me along this spring time path.
Sweet fragrance floats on morning breeze,
while colors dance on plants and trees.
As orchids peek from under pines
I float off to past years and find
myself recalling days gone by
and always you who’ve said goodbye.
But while this past now flirts with me,
I take the time to let it be
and make a choice along my way
to seek out love another way.
I still recall what’s left behind
and in this heart will always find
a life that took a crooked path,
but now has found it’s own way back.
Time’s given me a second chance
to see life at a backward glace.
To learn at last from my mistakes,
so with this choice a chance I take.
To find another soul like mine,
and with that soul my life I’ll find.
My heart has come full circle now,
from life through death a blessed whole.
Aug 26, 2012
Aug 26, 2012 at 10:48 AM UTC
If there are infinite worlds,
there must be one where umbrellas never close-
hinges locked open like stubborn jaws,
gape-mouthed against walls in patient herds.
No one in their twenties owns one,
their hamster-cage apartments
too small for such luxuries.
They ask for rain jackets on birthdays.
Mary Poppins still drifts down Cherry Tree Lane,
her umbrella never folding,
only floating.
Children carry slips home
for violating umbrella laws,
forging signatures in loopy ink.
The Morton Salt girl wears a slicker,
yellow as a warning flare before the flood.
My mother walking me to kindergarten in rain,
transparent vinyl dome above our heads-
I, the opposite of a fish in its tank.
Her hair plastered to her forehead
by the time we reached the door.
Everyone looks most beautiful
with rainwater running down their face.
In the open-umbrella reality,
time can walk backward-
you can unwater a plant,
unpeel a clementine,
un-kiss someone.
Endings lift again,
fabric billowing, as if the story
had been left open in the wind.
Heather and Mike find the road out.
Rosemary tips the bassinet.
There, perhaps, neither of us was born.
What lay between us
stays open too long,
collecting rain until it sags,
slow and certain, like sugar
in the first storm.
Aug 12, 2025
Aug 12, 2025 at 8:06 PM UTC
Yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow!
It is not a color.
It is summer!
It is the wind on a willow,
the lap of waves, the shadow
under a bush, a bird, a bluebird,
three herons, a dead hawk
rotting on a pole—
Clear yellow!
It is a piece of blue paper
in the grass or a threecluster of
green walnuts swaying, children
playing croquet or one boy
fishing, a man
swinging his pink fists
as he walks—
It is ladysthumb, forget-me-nots
in the ditch, moss under
the ****** of the carrail, the
wavy lines in split rock, a
great oaktree—
It is a disinclination to be
five red petals or a rose, it is
a cluster of birdsbreast flowers
on a red stem six feet high,
four open yellow petals
above sepals curled
backward into reverse spikes—
Tufts of purple grass spot the
green meadow and clouds the sky.
7.2k
Tar-dark world. The defining color is black, the inky night of her nocturnal hunts and the deep, bottomless dark of her alien retreat.
A watcher of men, she is everything and nothing. She might be too much of something, or too little of something else. Time will sort out the particulars.
There are no simple entry points – she demands engagement, and to be taken as a whole. Her discomfort is over her own allure, her undisturbed surface. It’s more about intuition and gesture than dialogue. They remain as echoes. They’ve made her beautiful in a real way, with hips and blemishes and dimples in her skin.
The imprint of the lives she begins to grapple with as her time on Earth extends, leads her to stop seeing herself as a mere conduit for her mission, and to start developing a sense of subjectivity.
Her life force is overlapping, shaping itself into a pattern of rings that simultaneously suggests a birth canal dilating, the stages of a rocket separating, and a lunar eclipse as seen through a telescope’s lens.
She's a life-form you can’t quite understand, but it’s carrying on relentlessly, like a beehive, moving backward through the constellations at first approach.
Feb 23, 2025
Feb 23, 2025 at 2:06 PM UTC
Webster was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin;
And breastless creatures under ground
Leaned backward with a lipless grin.
Daffodil bulbs instead of *****
Stared from the sockets of the eyes!
He knew that thought clings round dead limbs
Tightening its lusts and luxuries.
Donne, I suppose, was such another
Who found no substitute for sense,
To seize and clutch and penetrate;
Expert beyond experience,
He knew the anguish of the marrow
The ague of the skeleton;
No contact possible to flesh
Allayed the fever of the bone.
. . . . .
Grishkin is nice: her Russian eye
Is underlined for emphasis;
Uncorseted, her friendly bust
Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.
The couched Brazilian jaguar
Compels the scampering marmoset
With subtle effluence of cat;
Grishkin has a maisonette;
The sleek Brazilian jaguar
Does not in its arboreal gloom
Distil so rank a feline smell
As Grishkin in a drawing-room.
And even the Abstract Entities
Circumambulate her charm;
But our lot crawls between dry ribs
To keep our metaphysics warm.
7.2k
As the shape-all-sun
tore up the curtain
of blood and ululation,
everything in Tunisia,
as stricken by a wand,
came to a standstill,
and slipped away
from the senses -
Even rivers stopped.
Medjerda* froze
halfway
through his descent
to his destination,
as he realized
he’d been making a fatal error:
pouring forth all his passion
into the ocean.
So he stopped,
retracted his course,
re-collected himself,
and started flowing backward,
toward
the source
in the Atlas
that had bidden him
farewell.
In his spear head
there was a design:
start a new chaos
in the valley,
in which there would be
a sweet-water lake
and sailors drunk
with sunbeams, sweat
and pleasure.
Butterflies would flutter
around the scent of mint
and bluegreen rosemary.
Through the flutter
of the midnight hour
Sweet Moon to Sweet Lake
would come, unannounced,
to watch her self shooting
the act of representation.
Now swimming
in his own water,
th river
carried the sky on his shoulder,
while an ant and a grasshopper,
holding a basket together,
watched the new scene.
As the figure-all-sun appeared ,
reason melted;
imagination
her hazel eyes opened.
© LazharBouazzi
*Medjerda is the most important river in Tunisia. Length, 460 km; basin area, 22,000 sq km. It flows out of the Atlas mountains into the Gulf of Tunis.
Feb 16, 2017
Feb 16, 2017 at 1:19 PM UTC
SLEEPLESSNESS
I try my best to fall asleep at a decent hour
Yet, sometimes it seems I don’t have the power
No matter how hard I give it a try
Something always stops me and makes me want to cry
I have tried all the tricks in the book
If you only knew how many hours it took
Counting sheep, counting backward, or saying prayers
Nothing seems to work-I’m pulling out my hair
When I finally do fall asleep at night
My dreams always wake me with a horrid fright
Running, running, running but staying in one place
It’s as though I am stuck and will never win the race
Oh, how I wish I could dream of happier things to come
Instead of trying to get away from these things in which I run
I am mentally exhausted and need a good sleep
I feel like a bag of bones lying down in one large heap
There is always tomorrow I constantly say
I need some help-so I begin to pray
Dear Lord, help me make this pain go away
If you do, once I fall asleep, I know I will be okay
Sep 27, 2013
Sep 27, 2013 at 2:53 AM UTC
Not only sands and gravels
Were once more on their travels,
But gulping muddy gallons
Great boulders off their balance
Bumped heads together dully
And started down the gully.
Whole capes caked off in slices.
I felt my standpoint shaken
In the universal crisis.
But with one step backward taken
I saved myself from going.
A world torn loose went by me.
Then the rain stopped and the blowing,
And the sun came out to dry me.
6.7k
I tore the fabric of space
Interrupting my affectionate stalking
Spurts of longing, interspersed
with spasms of premature *****
In vain, hankering to attain that next level rush
*Oh you're a ***** girl aren't you*
That's when I was discovered...
Her shrieks royally flushing my cheeks with shock
-Superseded by pallid chagrin
I fumble to bail,
Pants entrenched around my ankles
Premeditative,
Of absent-mind, in haste
Prime directive a method of escape
Evasion failing
Detection:
Imminent
Reflecting a grim lack of circumspection,
accursed **********
Trying to conceal my turgid ********
Her father particularly beyond reason
And not fond of my indecency for his daughter
Proceeds pummeling me to death with my beloved binoculars
Devoid of clairvoyance;
I am coincidentally sent
outward toward oblivion
Bon voyage through the portal
Falling facefirst into an abysmal wormhole
Its then I voyaged backward through time
To the moment of Creation
And witnessed the universe
**** itself from naught to existence
Spewing forth such cataclysmic splendor
Jan 12, 2014
Jan 12, 2014 at 10:48 PM UTC