A prelude to life

Once a lonely child unable to play

And a sorrowful girl to sadness a prey.

Now brought from so far away

Into a new world,if I am to say,

To celebrate your first birthday.

Once as mysterious , I’d rather say,

As a heroine in a shakespearian play.

Now taken out _ from the sphere of yesterday

Into life, into the world worth of pray ;

Though I still rememeber you used to say

« Black are you the world of today,

grief you bring and joy you slay

sorrow you sing day after day. »

I forget not the fear you used to display ?

Fear of this world with which you disagree ;

And in my mind still keep what you say

« You ! ‘now-world’ have from no obey ;

not your subject nor am I your prey ;

give up false smiling at me to obey ;

no longer is hope my life key ».

I say ‘No’and ask you in a simple way

« Isn’t hope and love a hapiness ray

love’s everybody’s reason to stay

you’ll be happy and forever free

by fighting away your futile dismay.

So , have no Sibyl Vane’s wild fancy

In Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray

Mind not show you the way to spare decay :

Life is over when tears are the key ;

The future ,to me, is a monster I do not care to portray

And I take things as a little child may .

For everything is gonna be alright and ok

As went wise people unlike me…

W.aziz 1986

Maux Grégaires

Espoir..

Il voyage pour se consoler

Dans un nid sur un arbre perché

Où gisent des petits abandonnés

Qui guettaient ses sourires

Qui sans lui seront sans être

Sans nul, aucun devenir.

Le rêve persiste et résiste aux péchés

Se nourrissants du passé, lien sacré

Où vit lumière et fut baptisé

Sous l’étoile bénie poètes maudits.

Bienvenu ! Toi qui est tant attendu

O toi qui ne cesse de m’éblouir

Avec tes rides infinies,

Avec tes sources inconnues

Qui illuminent ton âme immaculée.

Je sortirais des tristesses du temps

Pour meubler l’espace qui manque,

Et de l’éternelles écumes du temps

Qui se brisent sur ses mots creux

Qui éclaboussent les rives

De ce silence peu pieux.

J’escaladerais ces clôtures

De cette forêt vierge

Qui s’éclipse dans ma mémoire

Envahie par un quotidien

Sourd-muet qui se veut mien.

Voyageur de cette planète

Tant observée et scrutée

Pourras-tu chasser le gibier de cette jungle

Qui regorge de prédateurs ?

W.aziz 1992


Fatal agony of death

Rays of light through fences round my heart leaking

Devouring the shadows of fear and sparing my shaking,

Planting nostalgic thrills of hasty sunset sinking.

Unwelcome tears stream down my soaked cheeks,

And sow misty illusions and teasing tricks

When a lass ever haunting my soul sighs and speaks.

With a slowly healing heart aching and bleeding,

A deaf past displayed a strong unyielding

Ans endeavored to cheat on my skill of eluding.

Chilly waves of memories digging my brains,

Drawing crimson narrow paths on my veins,

Leaving back dense hills of sorrowful pains.

Lonely eyes with burning tears dropping,

And a wounded mind swollen by weeping

I knelt down to beg way to her heart lupin.

An evil joy sought way to the gate of my time

And sentenced me to live lapses devoid of rhyme :

With no hints to decipher the realm of mime.

A huge cluster of ravens hardly flying

Veiled the sun and deafened me with shriek yelling

And nested on the torn side of my feeling.

My eyes closed, back deep in dark caves,

Saw ambitions wrapped in the future of old slaves,

Saw them sobbingly digging their own graves.

Soul music rhythms sewn with suffering,

Bound with strings of injustice darkness was bearing,

Entombing the lights aims of fear and scaring.

A widow’s mournful voice whispered over my fence,

Thrilled my silence,stole my smile and gave it sense,

Split my emotions , captured the reins of my defense.

Two lonely stars of a sore happiness rebeling

To join the sky of a love fortress crumbling,

And to fade away like a prisoner’s calling.

The blank screen on yonder high mountain

With laws of love miserably miswritten

Eagerly awaiting my correction and raising the curtain.

I am looking for my soul’s self not raving,

I am after the affection that orphan time is weaving

In unknown verses of famous posts still living.

Blues relating slaves tales with sung stories,

Involving my indifference to sail inside worries

And translating my steps into queer series.

Dream of a lasting peace is slipping away

Turning my steel hills into small heaps of hay,

Damping off the head of my imagination tree.

W.Aziz 1987

A Thinking Willow

Some seek your shade

Some your colour green

few lose and no one wins

for all ignore your grade

some like your green leaves

fall apart and again like waves

Come out the way your ,

they will only to home lead

let they be weeds to my lake

willows ever green ,never foresake

you’ll end where you belong

where you’ll never feel wrong

where well two hearts can get along

No tempest would ever spare a tree

even prayed to on one’s knee

nor no waterfall high or low

would spare any shy willow.

W.Aziz 1991

Sleep.. my son !

Shall you ever be strong

Shall we always be wrong ;

Your dawn looks no weary

And our sun snores in slavery ;

You suck the soul you lack

You sure leave nothing back ;

Even voltures starve on your land

You put to my being an end ;

No one escapes your will

The by-gone and the coming still ;

He who dares to mourn the past

Shall be trodden , he’s an outcast ;

And banned who seeks to know

Just breathes and swims in his woe ;

History smiles in our face

Sneers and snarls at our race ;

Dismantled now goes the ship

No mast, only slaves and a whip ;

No shipwreck in the old’s mind

But no goods could the young find ;

Puzzles , mysteries and white lies

Taught to the young to wash the whys ;

Big are you in the little’s eyes

And our sun swears never to rise ;

The young feels warm in your shade

While dreams in full bloom fade ;

Some feel , some fly, some flee,

Some have no idea of any plea

Aziz

1990

Spitting rhyme

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stepped into my dim life alone

To soothe my misty aching moan

Once rippled my feelings

And went to oblivion

Absent and present in my thinking

Once thought mine forever

And all soon eager to vanish

Leaving a burden hard to vanquish

Yet no sign of hope ever

This heart of mine weeps

And despair over me creeps

You disappointed like none

I cut love’s veins

And in the crowed moved on

Hatred knocked on

And thought she’d won I hated her

She hindered my smile

Sentenced me to pine And made me look vile

This soul of mine no more mine

In her shell once more in rime.

W.aziz 2000

A Nestling on a Scarecrow

 

Dead words promised in my veins

Shine to heal your severing pains

To maim your severed-to-be time

For wisdom is sought in Will’s rime.

 

Nightmares pregnant of wounds

Clinging with so many a hand

To my elequent silenced words,

Funeral crowds wailing at night

Majestically crossing left and right

The gloomy paths of my blood…

What a life early married to confiscation

And for life to be sold to oblivion !

 

A recluse of a time with giant strides

I see a sole mother to my sides

To tear up my senses in deafness,

And , for a death with no nothingness.

 

Deep shall I bear refusal roots

Of a consoling cynical indignation

And my dreams with no completion

Tatooed in my veins , dormant riots.

 

I find no ear to harbour my sound

And none to heal any of my wounds,

Painfully shall I bear the despondency

Of a time stumbling to look and never see.

 

Deaf-mute is my absence-presence

In a blood sullen autumn

And in your eternal absence

I’ll initiate myself , O freedom,

To the art of dying times a day _

I‘ll fling the dice for my way.

 

I beg the possibility of conquering

Those green meadows of silence

Where prisoner poets weave green verses

To win you to divorce your ignorance.

 

A second-hand soul mourning loud

To heal mine strewn with swords

Virgin still her spirit is in a shroud

For lack of passion in your love jars.

 

True passion I’d swear in every line,

All my every line , spiritual shelter,

Slides from so shine to so pine

Spouse of none , proud spinster.

In yonder forest where free birds

Enslaved to the seasons of her woods

Meseems never fail their holy rites

The time the sun rises till she sets.

 

I play chess and I drown my sins

In the darkness of your dead eyes,

In the storm of your dull clarity

To lose the game and be master to your mystery.

 

I rush off , I seek your fair doom

Wrapped in a shroud, my eternal home

Where bloody wounds of all time

Befriend my soul in false mime.

 

Eternally shall I ever break my fast

To yield to no ignorance tempest;

My soul shall trust to your poetic tomb

Her spirit, my apocalyptic womb.

W.aziz 1988

 

Faustian bargain


To make a pact with my own demons
An offering must be made:
One part of my mind,
One part of my soul,
And the keys to my heart.
Only then will their hunger abate…
They will retreat again.

How could I allow myself to be quartered,
Torn to shreds if what holds me together
Must be given to them?

Everyone simply assumes…
Begin to believe a lie and everything that follows
Is merely an Illusion.

My mind – a combination of fragility and strength -
Can be shattered,
Scattered to the winds…
But always comes together.
It will take time,
Transformed to something new…
No matter.
Always whole as it was meant to be.

My soul – existing only between myth and reality -
Could live apart from me,
Free to wander aimlessly…
But needs my eyes to see.
It would venture away,
Curious for a short while…
No matter.
Needing sight, it returns to reside with me.

Those demons rest now,
Not because I complied with their demands:
Only through bargaining did I escape
With mind and soul intact.

Creatures of darkness and terror
Long for pretty things,
Objects that shine and glimmer
With light they never see.

So I offered, knowing I’d never regret,
A single key of polished gold
Intricately designed, fragile as lace…
And they took it from me.
No questions asked, no debates made,
Simply smug contentment of victory attained.
The one object in my possession
That gleamed so perfect from lack of use
Was finally gone,
Swallowed into the depths of void forever.

Still asleep, clutching greed in their lonely claws
My demons will never know that they were cheated.
They shall never realize that those things which I most prize
Continue to belong to me.

The keys to my heart, tarnished and worn,
Aged infinitely longer in appearance than my twenty years,
Lie hidden away…
Folded among precious memories of laughter and love.
And there they shall stay
With the exception of one – a recent gift
To the person I hold most dear.

I understand the nature of my success
For not only do I survive whole,
I also live and continue to live with each passing day.

But instead of relishing in an act of deceit
I quietly thank those creatures far gone.
They awakened my appreciation for life in its entirety,
Good and Bad -
And most of all they accepted that key
Which opens my own version of Pandora’s Jar:
A place of deep despair,
Wanting only the shallow sleep death can bring.

So now I walk in the quiet that follows long storms
Calm in the knowledge that I may continue.
That quest for Peace still lies ahead,
The keeper of my heart’s key stands at my side,
And the world for me again shines
In a radiance of mystery and wonder.

All because I made a final pact.

Aziz