This Torn Map

Pinned to my heart…
this torn map and bleeding
nostalgia drips at my severed valves

Lashes yearning for the blind white to cover
all the crimson
It grips the pit of pain where my stomach is
And nausea now has no name

It comes in flashes of red around Baghdad
in flames at the crying Shrine of Mousa Al-Khadim
while Abu Hanifa descends into flakes of
black despair

They both want out…

"These are not our people.
They have murdered us in our graves. "

Pinned to my brain
the image of love
that will never be again

Baghdad nights now have gouged eyes.
the tunnels are endless
and the sunlight of infinity
that once shone through its lenses
has been crushed with
explosions of unanswered questions...

Pinned to this spirit
the dawn of doom
and the weight of eternity that comes with the point of no return.

Under the earth

Under the earth
they look upwards
the poet
and he who tried to pick the word
and she who tried to dissect it

She who appreciated with tears
her bed sores still carved in her back
even under the earth

He who enjoyed iced-coffee
as he savored every character
and flipped the torched memories
of places touched
into flurries of ruminations
that rested on lowered metal rimmed
glasses

She who would fume with passion
her red-rimmed eyes
pale forehead and rosy cheeks
scratching the meaning of every word
into being

She who appreciated gardens of love
where words were flamboyant
and smiles full of letters

Now all under the earth
together weep
not at the life missed
But the earth that is no more sweet
it tenses up on their dead senses

The blood and salty sweat it is fed
has turned the soil into endless death

After the last death…
There should be no more deaths…
But not with war…where the dead awake to relive death…