This time last year I had a panic attack because I thought you would die while I was away.
I was terrified that the cancer would finally be too much and I would be thousands of miles away,
Too far to say my goodbyes,
Too far to see you one last time,
Too far to take a mental picture of how truly awful this sickness is.
Now, this year, I lay in the bathtub;
High on Xanax because you're gone and life's moving on without you.
I'm leaving tomorrow morning just as I did last year,
But I don't have to worry about you dying this year,
Now I have to worry about you being forgotten.
Worry that your memory will wither away,
That I will soon forget your voice and toothy grin.
Because everything is moving too quickly.

After you took your final breath it felt like the world stopped,
But boy was I wrong.
Things went on just as they used to and it terrified me.
Because how on Earth could the world still spin without you on it?

lover, melt my kiss
like mist drifting from the sea
on the tide's dark leaves.

lord
i
found sweet joy
and
it
light up
every room

A rugged sidewalk cried hard by the way-side;
Its fissures could not hold their tears anymore.
A puny man pushed a red cart in the tide
Down a darkling, narrow street in Salammbô.*
He mumbled to the waves on his way to the market
As he gasped behind his laden chariot.

His merkabah bore many a lost things
Which he had found buried in the quicksand.
Among them a fountain pen and a helmet,
A pair of eyeglasses, and a trumpet.
I wondered, gazing at the old man’s washed face:
"Will this worn-out scene ever reach the marketplace?"
© LazharBouazzi

Once upon
a summer sun
A gruesome act
has begun

A father burdened
by the torment of life
sharpened the blade
of a kitchen knife

Stuck between
his morality
he begins to weep
for his growing brutality

He led his children
straight to bed
with evil looming
right over his head

The little whispers
tingle in his ear
The growing dread
erupts into full blown fear

Fear for his children
and their small life
The whispers rising
along with the knife

His heart stained
By his destructive mind

His morals caught
in a thick bind

Not remembering
the right from the wrong

Looking
from room to room
as he soundlessly
moves along

His dark shadow
hovers overhead
right above
his children's bed

A shift in his mind
brings the knife down
The children now quiet
Their frozen faces
Lying on the ground

Wiping the dripping knife
Relieved for his children's life

And once he saw
what he had done

He buried them
under
the summer
sun

ten 'til twelve now
thoughts etch holes in my fingertips trying
to make it all rhyme or legible
eyelids droop and the call
incessantly drives me wilder wider far
off where I had thought I would be
at now nine 'til twelve now