3 AM in Baghdad

Written just before we all failed to stop Bush from launching the biggest criminal act of the last 30 years.

It’s 3 am in Baghdad,
“City of Peace” according to
Arabian Nights,
those stories that lulled me to sleep,
to soft dreams.
How did we lose our childhood enchantment
with this far-off place
of silks and spices?
And yes, it’s true:
the rivers we will soon send gunboats up–
will make to run red with the blood
of children–
are those rivers; the Tigris and the Euphrates,
that flowed from the Garden of Eden.
Have we forgotten that too?

It’s 3 am in Baghdad
and I’m drinking water that once,
in the geologic measure of things,
carried holy fish from Eden to Mother Sea
I can taste the tears of Eve,
her black eyes reflecting the death-planes
vomiting out their bombs
while the men at the controls
imagine that she is their cold, blue-eyed mother;
they imagine that God doesn’t hate them for their murder

It’s 3 am in Baghdad
and I want to listen to a Miles Davis cd
but I’m afraid to turn off the radio
I’m sorry I ever paid my taxes
I’m burning a candle in my window
wondering if my neighbors can see it
over the glow of their television sets.
In the middle of Kind of Blue
one can imagine a world where blood
runs through the veins of children rather than rivers;
where oil is kept in the drum of the earth
cradling the bones of our ancestors
and the memories of stars

And now, it’s 4 am in Baghdad:
the deadline of our appointed sociopath
the winds have calmed and the sands
have settled, revealing
 the braided strands of stars
silently twisting across the darkness.
Eyes that haven’t slept this night,
that haven’t slept well in years,
look up at that luminous river,
mirror of the Biblical trickle below,
and see the coming storm,
the cleansing rain of fire,
“liberation” from the barrel of a gun.

I hold the water glass to my lips,
knowing that it is made of sands
that once blew across this desert
by winds that held the incense of Arabian nights.
Through its lens I see the
distorted image of a candle burning low,
and its reflection winking back at me from the glass
of the window; also made of these desert sands
and I wonder, how can we ever explain this
to our children?
How can we read them bedtime stories
that speak of a land that
we have destroyed?

It’s 5 am in Baghdad,
city of peace,
the sun should be rising soon
but the night ahead of us is long.
I’ll take a chance and put in Miles–
track 4–
pour another glass of water
and pray to what I no longer believe in.

Reviews

[Lyra Day]

I am always on about rythm... and how it impacts a poem. Yours is fluid and so easy and gripping to read. I have always been a fan of political (or related) poems. Not for the controversy, but because more often than not, there is a brutality, and honesty and gutted rawness about them. Poeple who write poems such as yours, are people (in my experience) who feel a little more intensely the injustice of what they experience or what they observe.

This is a magnifiscent poem. It is so vivid and it had me hooked from the first line to the last. I am also especially fond of Miles Davis, and a Kind of Blue.. and appreciated the reference.

I look forward to reading more of your writing.

[LizLadyNinja]

Very powerful. I really can't think of anything that will help make this poem better. Good job.
C. T. Edwards