Hussain Ahmed
Ice Cream and Blood
– For Baghdad
Chromatography was our best chance, to separate blood from
the ice cream. I see there’s little oil in the world
to make this love go round, without the screeching voices,
without the cries of a woman, widowed before her wedding night.
Tonight, I search through the piles of
dark spots in my heart, where I expect someone
to stand, hands behind his head, waiting to be named,
waiting to take the blames for the fire.
The man who sets his garden on fire, started this war
smoke from the weed, got his neighbors intoxicated.
The cattle herders would not take the blame
for grazing my father’s farm,
they believed that God created all greens
to end up in the cattle’s bowel,
they wouldn’t understand why my father
chooses to be a philosopher.
The fishermen are to blame for this up rise in the
sea level, the fishes are replaced with plastic bags.
Forgive my mother’s father, for he wrote in his will
how he fought weak erection, by sniffing the powder
made of a rhino’s horn. My mother is to blame
for reading the will aloud, in the presence of her horny brothers.
The poets are to blame for this war, they are never tired of
praising men who martyred while singing of how soon the heavens
will be filled with the smell of smoke, with orphaned boys
that do not know, that their fathers cannot recite the Qur’an.
Blame the men who sighted the new moon,
blame the moon for its luck, blame the sky for granting it asylum.
Blame the White House, blame Saddam Hussein, blame Hiroshima
Blame Saudi Arabia, blame my father, blame the vanilla ice cream.
how else do you slow down a racing heart, after a long day of fasting?
