Poetry: Ahmad Al-Khatat

What’s Inside My Heart

What’s inside my heart
is unraveled sorrows
between regrets leaves
from the trees of my honesty
to the people I love the most

What’s inside my heart
are arteries living on my ache’s
bad habits that could be a cure
with eyes weeping every day
I have no choice to stay healthy

What’s inside my heart
is dead love birds in cages and
drowned sailors in an unsinkable boat
which explains why I wear glasses
to enjoy my life in the colour of the clouds

What’s inside my heart
is a miserable river that floods in
my burning dreams in my hopeless
life meanwhile, the other side is still a
rock, paper, scissors memory

My Relationship with The Last Day of My Life

Lately I started having a close
relationship with the last day
of my life right after, death will
collect my spirit somewhere
near the broken gates of hell

I recalled two young girls,
laughing like headless chickens
in the cage of Animal Farm, while
George Orwell is alerting them
from the danger of the wild pigs

I remembered the tailor told
me that he sewed my first cloth
and will use the same thread
and needle to sew my last coffin
in case, if I will ever be reborn again

the first day, I went to school all
the kids were playing and laughing but
not me, I was dreaming of the swing
that I was sitting on it as it seemed
the cords` will hang me one day

I cried before, today, and tomorrow
not because I want to rest a bit longer.
I wept for realizing that death will be
the solution to end the darkness that
will sings for the last time above my tomb

Without a Mouth

I asked my parents
why the moon and sun
exist without a mouth,
and live with grief in their eyes

my father said
because mankind lies
to each other every day,
below the sincere sunshine

then my mother said
because mankind betrays
To each other quickly and
shamelessly under the moonlight

today, I am lonely
my parents are divorced,
they lied and betrayed me
and so I am a star by the raining clouds

The Time Traveller

If I had a time machine
I would not go the dark part
that built me up sad;
or ahead to my unknown
destiny and fearful future

I would take it and go with it
to the cemetery to bring me back
to the last moments of my friends
and see what the solution could be
instead of staring at their photos

I would then walk to my parents with it
and see if they could fix what they
damaged for myself and my siblings,
As I still hate the way they taught me
how to cry, far away from the tomb of my homeland

to this day, I feel I have been adopted
to a woman who she deeply loves me
meanwhile, I always look for a hammer
a few nails, to hook my dreams above
the broken bridge, with a prayer from my falling tears.

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Ahmad Al-Khatat: He was born in Baghdad on May 8th. From Iraq, he came to Canada at the age of 10, the same age when he wrote his first poem back in the year 2000. He also has been published in several press publications and anthologies all over the world. His poems were translated into Farsi, Albanian, German, Chinese, and Serbian. And he currently studies Political Sciences, at Concordia University in Montreal. He recently have published his two chapbooks “The Bleeding Heart Poet” and “Love On The War’s Frontline”. With Alien Buddha Press. It is available for sale on Amazon. Most of his new and old poems are also available on his official page Bleeding Heart Poet on Facebook.

Setu, November 2018