44 years old
Baghdad * Iraq

Iraqi poet Ali Habash was born in Baghdad 1965 and started publishing his works in 1985. His poems have appeared in all Iraqi and Arab newspapers. His first book of poetry ( Years without Reason)was issued in 2001 in Tunis. His poetry has been translated into French. He is a journalist for Al Khaleej newspaper in The United Arab Emirates and is featured in the film Voices in Wartime.

Absence Talk

The history’s flower crossed round me
Bleeding in the autumn’s name
Its flood gathering the city's tatter
Carrying the tomb of dynasties
My departure from the sun’s lexicon
Damns my remaining and my steps
Paris reaches me with letters
Panting I open its doors
Then I drawn in the Seine’s tears
Amid ages laps
No, it’s my stay in the farewell’s bed
Among the southern shoulders
No, it’s repetition of hope
An outer road birth
Starting every day
No, it is repentant cycle
Repeating the absence talk
No, maybe, but, we saw him
We saw him carrying history’s larynx
Rolling among speeches arches
Slow tumult covering day’s wound
And carrying my shame
I’m about to belies museums
And remove its names
I will color it with the ashes of our last bucket
Maybe I wasn’t me
Twenty centuries ago
No one asks of soil’s alphabets
Of slow death
That will be completed behind windows
Adam was formed
In the continent’s sediment
History’s flower was complete
Scattering under my pillow
Carrying pain’s resemblance
In Rome and the Euphrates
A decline involved in
Remaining of the ocean's clothes
Maybe I was roaming west of
The Mediterranean’s blue eyes
Dreaming of the east
No, maybe I was hearting of Babylon?
Europe’s sands
It’s my decline drawing its last words
On the world’s edge
Under Gilgamish’s ruins
Brunette years
That’s what I read in ashes lexicon
From its first line  
I emerged with a slaughtered history
I was about to miss the coffee shop
And flow in road's curve.

By the U turn of Age

To Nidhal

With the strangeness of Dananir
I reach the structure of ally
The bell is a guard in the house
And children, with one step reach their
Old coins.
They look at the desert between my
Fingers.
They collapse in silence.
Symptoms of dinner show on them
On its shoulder curve complete
You father we deserted the market?
What shall we inherit from the ink…?
With her teeth she tells me about the sense
Mazen violates my clothes without seeing them
Days are machines working with rice
And vegetables,
Every morning I rice of fight.
First picture of wedding ceremony destroy,
The cradle we bought is a grave.
Swinging away from the country?!
I’ll sell the bedroom?
The house’s identity shall be sold in
The auction my friend.
What shall I the children?
Two years later
I remember the bitterness of the first
Glass
And the salt filling the book shelf.
Approach my dreams a little…
I get ready to digest the dream
You surprise me with washing the
clothes
Mountains are still between us.
You other!
Between the doctor’s prescription and
Candy vendors
World is filled with bullets of marriage
Since two months the sack of garbage
Lies
By the U turn of age
Foxes are waiting.

(Untitled)

1
Without meeting
We agreed to imprison the world in homes.

2
I wish there were a grave between us
Between us a crippled geography
And a disloyal policeman.

3
My face is a bed for you
And a rusty dagger for the family.

4
A purse for kings
And an empty pocket in my shirt.

5
Her voice is green
And her country is dry.
                       6
How would I cross this country?
With one sweet heart
And a turned–over heart.

7
I noticed the river
A bridge after another
Regretful is memories.
                      
8
She’s not a picture
She’s my sweet heart.

9
The desert is heading towards the house
And desperateness is
Hiding in airports.

10
What a bout the soul
The far away deserts.

11
Her shirt is dead beside me
And her feet
In another continent.

12
My memories:
The Tigris dragging bridges’ regret
And crossing my forehead.

13
On the house’s roof
Was my life
Shattering every day.

14
He hanged his life on the wall
Pointing the gun towards it  
Gently
He’s shooting it.

Rockets Destroying a Happy Family

Rockets fill my heart and head
Time is running by
All your friends are being blamed
   for this, Oh Iraq.
These are our dreams
Barbed wire crowds the streets
and people are entangled by it
and get lost in between.

I tried to slip through all this chaos.
I saw a family trying to climb a truck
and I saw a child with eye
full of tears behind a tank
and I saw a coffin waiting
beside the Euphrates bank.

Life has no meaning anymore.
Just tons of metal and iron
Are all these arms just for me,
For my children, my old home?