The Colour Of The Moon Poem by Istabraq Al Ahmadi

The moon is both yellow and white
For a soul wrestling with cancer
That sadistically licks his lips
From corner to corner
Over the helpless and stern body
That is laid to rest,
Like garbage, in his skinny cell
Where the first breaths of each dawn
Hang over him like rusted nails
Nailed to a dead tree
Whose skeleton, like shadows, creeps
to his heart, leaving the coldest of its footprints,
To remind him that another day
Was added to the calendar of waiting
Thus, the long awaited coup de grace
Will never come with just pleadings.

The moon is red
And smells of blood
For a beloved waiting for so long
And wearily dying in the wait
For her lover to return
From doomed trenches
Where death, like an arrogant trumpeter,
With his mouth full of bullets
Hoarsely whizzing and roaring,
And demented shells of blind mortars,
Announce to those waiting at home,
That the dead shall never return.
For death, like an angry ox,
Knows how to amuse himself
By kicking and tossing their bodies,
Blowing them to pieces,
like the small florets of a dandelion
blown away by a howling storm,
and gluttonously snatching
their wretched souls.

The moon is ghastly white
For children escaping death by land
Whose souls they told to carry,
Like hot embers
Over the palms of wrathful seas
That with their mouths,
gaping like the mouth of hell,
Swallow their small bodies
And vomit their unborn dreams
On the nearest shore of oblivion.

The moon is white, white as grief
For an orphan living in a tent
Who keeps drawing his dead mother's face
On the stars that sneak through
The billion holes of his tent,
Until his fear and hunger laden eyelids
Are shut silently and forever.