The April morning's quiet
and so is the November.
Wherever people outnumber trees
or the dominant cover type
is unquiet. Nothing wrong with that.
Walt got it right, and Jane Jacobs:
the city is an experienced,
used beauty. Her toes are long,
nails thick and hair thin. Yet
her kisses can be sweet; or
smell of ****. All my life I've tried to point my window toward
some narrow wedge of nature.
On ****** Ave., over the roof
beyond the chimneys to the park
where every dog was walked.
Could I survive soot and an air shaft now, pigeons and cats,
or even a desk in the legislature for my lot in life. How about
prison like Etheridge Knight,
Nazim Hikmet?
I've gotten soft.
When he builds that house in the pocket
wetland my window now looks out on,
the developer will have given me what I need.
Amphibian mortality,
gravel, fill,
oak, ash and maples felled. Good
to the last drop is our bitterness, our love.

Highland Nordic landscape
hands bound by twine
the smells of pine
wafting through the forest
the stranger awakes to their escorted fate
the judge, jury and executioner awaits
with bated breath and a heaving chest
behind the forever closed gates
just beyond the mist.

The Rebels want their Freedom
and the right to choose their destiny
The Empire want allegiance
and the spoils of war
to stroll their sequestered land
the suppression they hold unto thee

taken by force in an act of Union
intent on silencing the minority
but the quell of the rebel voice had failed
an unbridled passion and belief
that as natives they would never relinquish
not even under the purge of fire
nor the controls to decide
that resistance of existence is futile
in the face of a Colonial state
that all should bow and abide

emphatic on extending their reach
natives were but minions in their eyes
harvesting an ancient history
as you would brew heather mead
hounding the pilgrims of Talos
tending the ego's of the few over the many
laying claim to what lies beneath the sea
the fossil fuels they ache for
and on-demand that they have
the greatest need.

Dragon Slayer is in their midst
but they do not know that yet
not until this epic unfolds
like a warriors Tartan
laid out and stitched in war
the family crest emblazoned
hues of amber stained in years of fervor

the weight of the uninvited guest
who decided it was best
that they should take whatever they desired;
you land, your dreams, your women -
the nubile pale skin of a lovers breath
tarnished her name, pillaged her sanctuary
before you were able to take her hand
and under the arched stealth of moonlight
and under the eyes of your Gods
solemn oaths sworn and ritual pacts made
that they would never steal the memory
and that this would never fade.

Dragon Slayer would have you heed their name
in time to come when all must decide
make alliances of your own
or squander freedom in the name of history
let the past slip into the murky waters of shame
preserved in the wetland bogs to the west
till the soil broken by man's greed
to populate the last remains of nature
so that he may gorge his already fat belly
with the notion of carrying on his seed
in a world where more are alive today
than have ever been.

You decide:
what do your Elven ears hear
your Orcish eyes see
your Redguard heart feel
your Viking spirit wield
your Khajiit senses fear

the Argonian lizard
his forked tongue speaks in riddles
puzzles await
poisoned logic
and arcane magic
in a time before the world found its feet
when dragons ruled the skies
and breathed fire and ice

the artifacts of legend
lay hidden in the hall of stories
rewarding only the Dragon Slayer
with the wall of voices

will you accept the fate of history
or stand tall and embrace the change
will you go headlong into the cold night alone
whether you be the warrior or the mage
all that is yours by right to keep
your moment of glory awaits

the Greybeards will ask only this:
which destiny will you seek?

The wetland is in its daylight beauty
the calm water mirrors the still blue sky
upon the pond among reeds and cattails
are two elegant, wild white swans
mysterious and graceful, reflecting
the charm of Thailand and her people

undress the burden that you wear
leave it rot on wetland
be thin and simple when you'll travel,
all the ways are now more narrow
choose the best entrance between all,
stick with it until you will find
a sense of peace in your remained heart.

Neftlix, Hulu, autumn elaeagnus
thorns, small hairy buds, twigs hyper-lenticelled
fruits supposedly edible, leaves elongated, oblong
xerophytic but found in wetland
introduced species, some say invasive

Xbox is invasive
Hulu is the best source of foreign films
and foreign films represent reality better than American
although reality is not always what we're after
silliness, silly sadness, and relentless laughter

letting my web site go to seed
writing badly is the best revenge
eventually your doctors find something in you they can't cure
causes some fear, gives some certainty
you're required to tell your sons and brothers about it so they can make
      informed medical decisions going forward

let's posit the dead, like the dream-lover or -killer
is you in disguise, a facsimile or factotum
stand-in, an actor or actress remembering lines
which are your memories, or if you're not in movies
divinations of things to come, earthquakes and volcanoes

life goes on without a hiccup
you saddle up with the three gentlemen to the River Friday
where a new life begins without sleep as a soul, at least that's the story
      they tell
in these scientific times we apply Ockham's razor, i.e. the afterlife
will most likely be most like the life before life

when it gets too late to exercise
ignore time, learn slowly to go slowly
through life, rise
early, there is no time only change
an empty belly's holy

and a ***** willow's so alive its buds want to burst
in mid-February when the sun stays up in the sky more than January
this is what I write about, not Tolstoi, nor war
not one conversation or love scene between a man and woman
or illustration of what man has done to man

cars pass I never wave
so many guys are belly fat, women **** fat and they want to sit right
      behind you in the bleachers eating fried foods and wearing
      allergenic perfumes
I like the motionless perfection of autumn elaeagnus
wind in white pines
crows do not annoy but dogs do

a porcupine or coyote is a lucky sight
barred owl or pileated woodpecker
and a black bear is quiet reality itself
I said to the doctors 54 or 84 you always seem to want more when they
      said I'm too young to die
I said dying chooses you you don't choose dying, so it's not my fault

yesterday's walk, today's work
there's no percentage in searching for significance, wanting meaning
and no percentage in respecting death unless it's imminent
I admire the writer who writes 10,000 words per day no matter what
who's got plot

a plague or fire, a spider or a tiger in a boat
stolen Louisiana votes or endangered alligators
in my case common pipewort or pickerelweed floating in a northern
      lake
egrets, loons and hawks
on your winter walk cedar waxwings foraging for soft rose hips

and talking like people talk
about this and that, work and child rearing, not religion or politics
keeping it light and friendly
eating chili and chocolate chip cookies
passing time watching a football game, the superbowl or a movie
      usually a romantic comedy

Old eyeglasses on wetland.
Deep footmarks in cold sand.
Green tide takes all.
LazharBouazzi, January 11, 2017

​Explosion of the white tree,
A synapse in the damp air.
The fluid around the corsair,
Ambassador of the secret;
The perfume of a comet
Descends upon the wetland.

A goosebump stretches my hair;
Ripples forming across the sea
As nostril and flowers meet
Miles and miles without end.

The green flame always return
In a frenetic haze, a burst of fire,
As the solar wave caresses the earth
At welcomed glances, so soft a fur.

A last effort renewed forevermore;
Delirious poison continually brewed;
An elixir against the veil of dusk;
Cause and effect from dust to dust.

As the mind steps out back further,
It finds itself returned at the core,

Til all of Spring elapses.

pale herons huddle
along a bank of grasses
like whitecaps, abandoned

November in the wetland


c. Roberta Compton Rainwater 2014

If you'll be the sea cliff, then
I'll be the rollers--
breaking on your heart, oh!
ardent lover.

If you'll be my snow field, then
I'll be your Spring sun--
hot clouds of steam rising
when we are done.

Then I'll be your fog bank, if
you'll be my wetland--
secret caresses from
velvet-soft hands.

If you'll be my seabird, then
I'll be your night breeze--
lift you in ecstasy
over deep seas.

Then I'll be your night sky, all
swimming in moonlight--
lighting your way to my
heart here tonight.

Once told of words, in worlds, waning with my will.  

Old and trembling,  emanating, the serrated slurs, serenading the sanctum of binary stars, singeing the seams of sleeves, and revealing the scars from afar.

Distant stars born, of the storm.

Whirling waywardly,  in the wizardry of windless cities blowing away,

Wading into the wetland droughts of water houses, unsettling the doubts, anchored on land, in a flood of mans,  love.

Drown

In the shallow nouns of, the haphazardly hallow, in the hollers of happiness, hugged in the hellish habitation of holograms dancing for the sun,

Long after the run, ...   ended,

In the stunned patience, of forever.

Death is in the favor, of moving on.

Not am i gone

yet.

First person singular prohibited. In order
to be more crow.
War! war! war! war! war!

Then there's that lowland wetland bird
around the stunted red pines crying
Birdy, birdy, birdy, birdy.

Hear the redwing blackbird chirring
Her, her, her... she
as one might expect, Spring.

Words for birds
since they're inaccessible. Aim
binoculars left, right, up, down, missing every time.

At the piano recital
Aaron made the penguins run, run, run, not waddle,
from a hungry polar bear!

Everything passes, even a massacre,
but birds outlast cars
and words like chemical and holocaust.

Woodpecker climbs oak,
Connecticut.
Not one neighbor heard the knocking.

The voice of a pewee
whose nest has fallen out of the tree.
Oh my! Oh me!

What did the wood thrush sing
that summer evening
teaching its young thrush meanings?

That which would not follow you into the night
Will not be there in the morning
That which will not be there in the morning
Will be hard to find in the afternoon
And when you’re searching before the sun goes down
You’ll stumble on a log
You’ll trip and fall into a marshy wetland
And you’ll be wet
You’ll be consumed by nature
Taken into her heart
Ripped into shreds
You’ll miss her, but she won’t even think of you
You’re a part of her in the same way that her breath is
Each time she expels you
You return to her
So why should she worry?
You’re in her hands now
And she can squeeze you if she wants to
When you hold your breath
Where does it lead?
Where are your feet taking you?

Evelina’s fence of lichened cedar
slouches at the wetland border
her willows wildly weep
on silken cattail shoulders
the neighbors say she’s crazy
snidely call her Javelina
she's sane as any one of them
this brilliant winter morning

Evelina speaks of weather and dogs
hers, a Chihuahua named Fawn
mine, a Frenchie named Sparky
the weather, typically Northwest
in parting, sculpted driftwood
spiraling tornadic rings gifted
between palms roughly
worn by time and sea

Evelina’s yard is thick with trees
the neighbors want cut down
for now, she’s doing all she can
just holding swampy ground
each morning wakes triumphant
to beachcomb on the shore
pockets weighed with treasure
this moment, nothing more

Eyeglasses old on wetland,
Footmarks deep in fissured sand,
Tidegreen takes all.
(c) LazharBouazzi

11/15/2015

it has been a while since
i've been to the wetland coppice
teetering close to the neck of
a somerset sourland hummock

soft rushes and pickerel ****,
wild lavender and marsh elder
a Canadian goose choking on a

birch branch
it died.
it has been a time since I've been there

timber rattler and weasel
playing in the grounsel
September,

like Wallace Stevens: lonely in
Jersey city.
November dead
cold bright annihilating days

i sometimes walk a mile
cutting across dead garden snakes
they sit in the living room, playing

the Nile is full of waste and bile
i wait alone by this little grove,
hoping that my fickleness of

Conversation topics
can help me now
but my mind, it raced

like a dead horse at a betting show
Sunday morning,
Saturday night really

I read Wallace Stevens in the field
And dream about jersey city

Rhodora in winter, capsule like a claw,
remains of the 5-part flower Emerson saw,
gone to seed. Deciduous trees and shrubs
have their own winter beauty and a power
akin to the fittest's survival, self-same
that brought me, musing, here. Large globose buds!
(that dwarf the rose's but not the butternut's)  
distinguish it from other Ericaceae that
surround this inland wetland. The Lord
all claim to worship is not better
than thou. I'm passing through naming you,
your parts, and the autumn elaeagnus who
is your neighbor. Good a walk as it gets
before edible understory herbs sprout.

Trace my love in the half-shell curve of a woman’s back,
Like the naked wetland of Egypt, ibis-nest of the Nile delta.
Lovely woman, throw your arm back like a tethered cord,
To this sledge-mason for your pyramids, this falcon-doting ward
Of your gold capstones, all-seeing eyes over the west-bank shore.

Love, our days of polished limestone are wind-scoured,
Left like a pile of petrified fruit from figs and bottle gourds.
Love, always forget, now the sand has filtered into my pores
And cascades into the empty shell of my quarried heart.

The desert air was
stealing water
from the children’s skin.

Their German Shepherd
sprinted along the rusting fence,
her paws flinging dust storms and
leaving a foot-deep moat in their path.

The children’s mother filled the *****’s trench to its brim
with water from the plastic hose.
It almost melted in her hands--

its oily rubber stench

gave her a headache and she went to rest in the
air-conditioned kitchen, leaving
her ******* son in the care of the middle child,
the daughter from the same father.

Her ******* daughter sat waiting for her,
quivering in a wooden chair.

As her mother rested, her
tears pooled on the table, and she
stuttered to Mother about what their father
stole from her body.

Their mother’s blood became bile,
realizing the man she married
was a monster.

The mother stood up from her splintered chair
to gaze through the murky window
at the children she bore with the beast.

They skidded on their tummies across the only wetland
in the lowly desert town, giggling and
splashing their limbs in the filthy yard.

She wondered how she would tell her son
that they were moving far away, without daddy.

She frowned at the daughter of the *******;
could she have at least
one stable child?

He told me of how she had
awakened him in the 4 a.m. mist.
Eyes bloodshot, the turquoise clouded with her cigarette smoke.
4 a.m. and already half a pack down.
Staring at their postcards from New Orleans,
how the ghosts of the Bayou Bienvenue rose from
the wetland, clammed at her arms.
The shriveled cypress trunks in the water,
Please come with us.
She held on to the broken hands,
in her fresh sunflower frock.
She always thought I’d like her
more in her death dress.

Check the yellow pages
And the funny papers
We gotta find those contact lenses that will change our brown eyes blue
Then promenade to the place

Whatchya got on tap?
Lemonade?
Give me the recipe

That's a odd catch phrase you got there, "I'll **** you with a railroad spike!"

Tell me how the worldwide aficionado only got the bronze metal

She cries at the drop of a hat
Now they've revoked her drivers licence  

He's eating flower petals, that man in the corner over there
He's in for a rude awakening
That's poison oak or is it poison ivy?
Either way that's his lot in life

The man from the nuclear power plant comes in and tells m to get welded as he slaps some roadkill on the counter with great hubris

He told the cook to fry it up so no one here would have to eat processed, pasteurized, homogenized, hydrogenated genetically modified food with an appeasing garnish on top  

Mmm tire marks
Tastes like this thing has been through the marsh
Some kind of wetland

Before I leave someone yells from the back, "You want the weather? Look up an hope for the best!"

Help Wanted
Inquire Within

Says Leiak: “I have parleyed with the spirits of Strigoi for more epsilons and nocturnal tenths than of the Vóreios of Zefian, endless in the gloom that have divided the chains, with magic that blinds my eyes in the budding sunrises of Ovid and his horizon, With the Katana of a Lapp warrior between the blades of the benevolent Hagakure of a samurai, between the two flaming zones was the Celestina next to me, to degrade alone and old with her ****** folds, collapsing in frenzy as she lost between her fingers with the whiteness of his ciliates, so that as Celestina was the decoy of the Ars Amandi, Ovidio also appeared on the Mataki tablecloth, without hindrance of the worn and lethargic over-relief between the sheets worn by his thumbs and outer fingers on the sheet of the Ovidian index, prevented from having, and rubbing the Mataki full of colorful eyes to see if the third book walked only on the belly of the Celestinas courtesans, or were a strong choice The omens that Strigoi had already confided to her at the door of his ear, with fribrous and cold astragali that they grafted into the damp darkness of the other bleak wetland of the Mandrake. My stoicism has been extolled with the courtesan in a filial augury with the daughter of Laban, for Jakob's needs after twenty years in Harran, in the antitragus of Raquel's ear and hers desert of kabbalah of hers. Laban made obedience to Mount Gilead a command, before a sub-first-born being pulled on the heels by his brother Esau, fear was another option of the augury of sensitivity that was approaching instead of moving away from a greater panic, if at all. Whoever comes and draws its bellicose root from the complete saying of Yahweh turning his back on demons that imitate him, but not being able to walk like him on the desert without leaving footprints. Leiak had all these spirals of Spartan Mirages, where all boasted of democracies, while others evidently in the land that he watered them by hands that also secured the Xifos with blacksmith and agricultural handles, with riches that only provide wood for ships that Will they never sail, not even in half-freedom from the oligarchic mirage with men of war in the pulp, and that they will walk free in the polis until it puts them in the ****** battle where their bones will trade for soft money or lavish exchange?

The farm wasted to comrades who had crossed the dagger, Leiak after collecting them from the fields that were strewn with bones, wasting statistics with a Republican victory. Where is the money? nor would I want my discouragement to attack affections or stoicisms to be the one who averages my flock. The great effort belongs to all or to those who lose their parallelism if regularly a sword is well taken for what since its gain would be desired there, where the possession of wealth brings more care than joys that provide its enjoyment? (Xenophon, The Republic of the Lacedaemonians, VII), so that then more swords than anyone else will charge those who lost them in battles, not even those of gold at auction, for those who collect it as an integral bronze with maximum original zeal, to who must have had it tight in his hand, until the last minute it expired when he remembered that he did it with his plow in the hoplite farm, and in furtive actions now with the "V" Lacedaemon of Vernarth in the complete love of a God that still listens! Let's sing to the beasts, they act with imaginary benevolence, but not with tangible demonicity that touches their human offspring, always fighting with their necromances as a multidimensional actant, with texts that speak of a world that abhors human environments already possessed by a Laban, or by an illustrated Ovid, which crosses Celestina with necromances who only know of their cursed wombs of dry iron, narrated of an empress not reflected in her only until the last gasp to have her convalesced who sings the song of necromancy with her. The Mataki is a peasant with leathery hands impregnated with truth, poured out by the astrology of the horse of Alikantus, which limped in the noisy wand of Betelgeuse, with magical alchemy that gave way in the caverns that could not bear any more necromancers. This is where I come from, from the forests of the transversal valleys of Horcondising, of Andromancy, who was awakened one night at the next dawn in a new world and a new morning, without knowing where it was, but it was a human who guesses its hereditary Andromancy, among dead spirits that indicated that he too is and will be one of them, the advent of a nekroi who only shone towards a female sorceress but filling the maiden fields that mowed the pastures near the deceased people. Right here Yo Leiak, for whoever falls into this spell, I will round the square of a secular necromancer brandishing, only with written science that beats with interferences of his heart, towards a new concordance of the elusive Spartan mirages, where wealth lies on poverty being nothing more than their own science, from an order or Cosmos that piles up the empty bodies of the souls in their empty stomachs, without even an astrological medicine that would measure them of any veracity in the Contemplationis in Deum, where other things will be angels that they will roll through the doors of the tombs, where no one will truly live in the paragraphs of the mute angel. The vampirism taught by Vlad Strigoi, sleeps in the gulfs and inlets where he finds to provoke what or who he woos, and takes them to his fortified castle where passion scales the accents from where it is born, nor will anyone be able to write a single verse with stanzas hidden in a mysterious heart within another, which is from a man versed in the cartoon that synthesizes the plot of a title "Here I Leiak Necromancer, one day I was Franciscan and now I follow the stillness of my master Vernarth and our Apostle Saint John ”, I almost become a clergyman where everything arises and ends in the uniqueness of the functions in this banquet on Patmos, before the greater and lesser compliments, where my heart will serve for the greater good, I live in you my lord,  you taught to close your eyes and not lose your life that does not intercept the gates of the other, here is my adhesion Vernarth "

found in wetland zones
Uruguay's national bloom
a legume, ceibo

What a dream? I
am not a beau, a poet. Trying to
become a genius, a part of god.

The pain was in my
eyes. Why do I want to reach
the moon to see infinity?

The wait of the melting
glacier, to see how long penguins
will live and then men will take them away.

Profanities,

declarations

bombastic, love/ hate sprayed, whatevers,
beer-stained brutalist underpass

the lake, a paper-mill, stink of pulp-steam,
dog-**** minefield ,fast-food cartons

park-and-riding, egg-fried verges
turgid outflow,

Down this squeezed tube,
of dead algorithm n' *****,
blue-green algea ,wetland gangrene,

come Nightingales..

Meliflous revelry,

distinctive dichotomy,

obvious opposite

oddity

Beneficent Mediterranean
medicine chugged via
secretive syrinx

sweet,

sweet

sweet unplugged jugular

thick cut clarity, every
note a pearl-dropped hope for muddled

ditches, creeks and jetties, broken
wings of football pitches

blood of oak and bluebell
soaking smoke above the muddied tracks

and clearing,

clearing all
before their song

-

[Note : i am flushed with heartbeats,
fast panic breaths
and thought.
i have overwhelming stream of ideas]



...it’s ridden through in our flooded veins

it’s furnishing our museums

  it’s marred out on parchment

     it’s mated together in privacy


      [Note : i tighten my eyes closed for relief]


     forbidden

      persecuted

     tried and executed

    preserved in wetland peat

   it can be called out

without the feed of the moon

without the woe of the ocean


 [Note : i clamp my hands over my ears]


senses

census

pleasured

genetically vetted

it can be rutted out

  falling **** through the generations

    the speed of the molecule

   or flitted across our grid electrically

    microscope

     magnet

     telescope

      prism

      morse distressed

     music

    pressed

   repressed

  and invested against

through historical text

it’s collected in your visage

and yawned back at you

  off of your morning mirror

   it’s in your needings

    your trolling of prayers and personalities

     and the breaking of your vocal jockery

    
     [Note : i dry gag and go silent]


     information is energy

    not erased

  but converted...

   ...and then nothingness

    an unwearable yelling void

     expanding pressure-less

      precipice

       rapid

     the immense feeling

    of feeling nothing

   the code/no-code

  the necessary ill behind the facade

of the purpose currency


[Note : my thoughts slow,
i note my breath
and my heart]