Poetry

My mother used to say to us, always…
Smile at your father's face, when he comes home tomorrow.
The world outside is: drear and treacherous.
It breaks fathers like potter.
And we used to stand at the door, waiting: with our smiles, that are like small boats,
And as soon as father comes home…
We start moving him: piece, by piece, by piece…
And we cross towards mother: who sticks him together again.

Dear God, they told me…
That you'll show the tape of all my life on judgment day: like a film—
But do that with sound effects, please!
As it will be a very long film: boring and with no suspense at all.
A film about war, death, bread, mothers, fathers, burns, wounds, a rose, a door, waiting, dead bodies,
ashes, coldness, heat, money, escape, forgetfulness, memory, betrayal, loneliness, and all…
And when you reach these scenes for which I should go to hell: let a sad oud accompany them…
A sad oud only,
As if your forgiveness: is something that comes with Al Saba Maqam.*
*Al Saba Maqam is an Iraqi melody known for its sadness, played on oud.

And you were playing with the puppies of the days…
And you used to say: they'd protect me when we grow together
And I'd be a man and they'd be huge dogs.
They would still know me and would never bark at me—
All this would happen eventually…
Except that, now you smell: like a stranger.

Did I tell you before: that the dead are drafts for a homeland…
No one is able to write it correctly, yet.
Did I tell you, that I tried to do this: using your body like a shining piece of paper,
Yet, I failed…
Not because I don't know how to write,
But you were so tender, to the extent that you fly whenever a sigh blew on me through the window
Though I used to put my head on your shoulder: like a paper weight.

And I can't dream, I am the so petty—small—and insignificant
Except being visible in such a mischievous way, even if it were for a second
Like a piece of crumbs between the teeth of war, when laughing
Or like a fly standing on the screen: on the number of the dead, exactly.

It isn't just hurting me, any more: they are slaughtering the birds…
Moreover, they: never wash their knives.
From them, orchards are dripping into the sink of my soul: a tree following a tree.

Those who bleed invisible blood, yet it's heard like a faint song that never congeals.
Those who accept to be divided by the number of disappointments, with nothing left for their children.
Those who sift, long through the openings of tobacco in their lungs, the wheat of the news…
They, while eating the bread of the events: may not break their teeth with people's bones.
Those who drag behind them the dead bodies of weeks like a biography: waiting to be buried in
listening.
Those who invented immigration without moving one single meter…
Then each one of them sat at home: like a whole colony torn by homesickness,
Those who collect the remains of soldiers, and out of them they'll make a lover to protect the country.
Those alone…
Are the ones who were mending the air, while breathing.

When my son grows up…
And complains about the blurred vision: because of this sticky, bloody, hot and continuous rain.
I'll tell him: that I used to go everyday…
From home to work, and from work to home,
Trying to move like wiper blades.

Can't you do something?
Like, using the faint light of the TV to find my lips
Totally neglecting the bloody news that lit the way for you…
A kiss sometimes: is like the piece of cloth that we bite on; when we are about to scream…

I'm the slim dark one…
Who looks from far away: exactly like a nail,
Yet when I fall down: you won't feel that something was taken off of the world.

Despair has prestige: like an old grandfather who is very strong…
He goes out every morning to plant a tree
While we sleep till late, after a long night of hope.
He doesn't know a thing of what we know
And that’s what makes him wiser.
He didn't see what we saw
That's why his eyesight is not weak, yet…
He is exactly like an old grandfather
Never laughs when we laugh, like proud grandsons,
But he smiles at our faces when we cry
Then takes our tears with him every morning: as seeds
And goes out quietly...

During the long mating season of war…
Cities soon become pregnant: with the dead, soldiers, leaders, orphans, dealers, calligraphers, poets,
widows, videos, immigrations, and pharmacies…
Some of them come like baby whales: where no one is deep enough to witness their birth.
Some of them come out from the holes of mothers' hearts
The mothers' hearts that are as white as: a rabbit that'll give birth for ever…
Or they'll fall from the holes made by missiles in the house walls: when the dust is the water of the
womb that covers them completely…
Others cut the umbilical cord of their sadness with their teeth: then run after the herd of our sorrows
like careless wolves…
Some would come out blind like baby kittens: feeling the sound of wailing to move in the world.
Some, with their finger nails, would tear up: the belly of dream before it completes its pregnancy
Then come out like premature nightmare.
Others would be born of bats of fear…
They look frightful, yet they can fly like a butterfly…
When the arms of their beloveds are around their waists like a cocoon
Some would come out of the clefts of jobs like a rose…
Whenever someone steps over them: their children at home smell an odour.
Some: are alone… as invisible creatures
Multiply every night to endless numbers of themselves
Dreaming that they'll develop to become: nobody.

And in the times when it seems that nothing will move in this gulf of sadness
Suddenly, your legs move outside: like two happy dolphins, made of jeans
While we sink deep…
Each one of us: a whale with a prophet inside.

Like a wolf…
I walk inside the jungle of silence, looking for the meat of words.
I see grey hawks in metaphor, and black crows in justification: landing on a dead body
And pulling out the guts with their curved beaks: a line after a line
And I wait till all of that ends…
Meanwhile I grow old and thin, my teeth fall out, and I learn how to live on grass and insects…
And here I am, moving forward to what is left behind: pushing the sharp feathers away with my nose
I just smell it…
And howl with all my power…
As if trying to express all this forest till annihilation: with one scream.