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