| by ali habash The day floats like a ball And be pored in streets which are like my mom and dad The country is a pocket my friends patch with their tears. How can a wife become a night? Meat is still raw in my guts, thinking about debts My dreams are a growing bullet, and poetry is a hospital From one son to another, a ward of sleep is erased. And the pen stars to vomit. Meat is still raw in my guts, thinking about debts How can I digest this spirit as it goes down with Iraqi dinnars in my trousers, and goes up in my shirt’s pocket as a dummy? How can I clean my tongue form salt while it receives a new position everyday? The ground collects its feet in an ashtray And my shoe is a coffin racing the noon And bleeds junk to potato vendors, Like a wick of a lantern, I carry my kids at night And mornings shoot at them at bread stores in the morning Nuts gather them merrily Then happiness falls as crusts on the floor. I have to make nylon feelings that look like my evenings Poetry arrived with a real bomb and a shovel Which one of us will be berried? Which coffin will top the tour of life? The city gathers on a match stick and gets extinguished Ants migrated towards the curb which comes before my life, leaving their memory in the house How did the kitchen become a means of suppression?? How did Africa climb my dreams? My third millennium was not received by a camera, It was not received by a bus Days lift their dreams in the news reports Then broadcasting is interrupted No birds are there in “Al Tayaran Square” The statue of the morning welcomes pedestrians with patriotism “Kamil Shibeeb.Fell a martyr on 20.May.1944” I stand near a church that supports the sky with its crucifix. The lipstick fumbles behind the glass of the bus “Al Tahreer Square 36 the road to Al Rasheed Camp” My language stumbles with the bus driver, and it grows bigger close to the traffic light Priority is to those who are in a combat I bump into colossal axes called restaurants I sneeze a country that has two rivers” Mesopotamia” We race against the desert Live separate them outside the borders I drag my friends with newspapers to the café but the passports arrive before me. Suit-cases are saws for the letters And on egg boxed, future counts its empty bottles This is my evening Glasses made of plastic and Christians; Idris for instance… The glass is addicted to my right hand fingers I finger- print my documents with my left thumb I know that the destruction which is holding my back is the same one that is in the library I know that the glass that was shattered in “Bab Al Mu’atham”… It’s a warplane I dreamt of two wars ago. My daughter is polishing the screen of the news with a lighter I carry the world in a tea spoon and smile The walls of my bed room were relieved when I sold the furniture. The house became as harsh and rude as the city itself The frankincense ran quickly oh so quickly to India leaving its corps on the floor And when the rug began to crack, my wife started believing in life My family is chess statues who are nostalgic for powns The castle is but fog in between two breasts and clans What am I going to do with this spider that is breeding along the horizon? They talk using symbols Used clothes are enjoying their bodies They count martyrs with a rosary Going down the next station… he said wishfully while the road was climbing up with us I wish I can cross the time where the traffic light is And collect the city buses with their green light My gaze coheres with the borders in the news man’s throat My life is a cigarette… its smoke is trains Its ash is women on the curb I light my dreams with the country And I alone can hear the buzz of my soul in the ashtray. Translated by: Dahlia Shawi Translator’s notes: • There are some Iraqi names of streets, parks, famous intersections, and squares in Baghdad in the poem, they are the ones between the “….” • Tiba is the poet’s younger daughter who is in kindergarten now. |
alihabash
The way to the camp
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poemThe way to the camp
alihabash65@yahoo.ca
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