Oye, Hermano: Ode To My Unknown Half-Brother
Oye, hermano,
We share the stuff of life;
In us flows the destinies of madness
And abuses most sharp:
Self-abuse, self-abasement,
Self-abnegation, self-aggrandizement,
Self-atonement.
We are mad with missile crises,
And hostage crises, deep
In our DNA.
We are three decades apart,
But the same shipwreck disorder —
Those same 90 miles and congenital madness — marks us.
Where are you now, hermano?
What do you do and how
Do you cope?
Have you children? Did you
Continue the family line? Did you
Extend the name another generation?
Does that madness still live? Will it
Outlive us both? As we float apart
On our separate continents sinking.
We will be inundated
With memories of belt buckle rain storms
And searches for redemptions in chemicals and mind control…
Psychotropic — be our names —
Peaceful (I hope) — be our rejoinders —
In our separate searches for meaning.
In this madness
That has been bequeathed
To us in separate, mysterious, lives.
“Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those that do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.”
— Graham Greene