I found you.
Among the dust and water that makes up each one of us, I found you in all of your uniquity.
For a lifetime I loved you without knowing it.
And then I met you,
knowing immediately it was you I had loved all along.
Eventually life, pride, ambition took me away from you
to worlds where people sit strangely, eat strangely,
even walk strangely and sleep strangely.
But strangely enough, we were all the same.
And we laughed at this realization.
I took you with me.
We walked along the Bosphorus drinking pomegranate juice,
listening to the drums and strings and rhythmic Ottoman voices that caused our souls to ache.
We tasted sand, brought in on the wind from that barren desert rich in so little but greed.
We visited cities in jungles, where local fare made us thankful for our many hours spent cooking, and perfecting the flavors that help define us.
I took you with me, my love.
You helped me don my suits and tie my ties and kissed me as I held you close before another day's harangue.
But in your mind, you were never there.
And you made me see:
A world separated us. And so I moved it.

This is too far,
I know I’ve gone too far.
As if the light of day were enough to wake
my dormant wit,
               But I know it’s not.
My children lay dead. My wife lies cold and still.
How long I sit in silence
   I can’t know.
My arms are lifeless weights along my sides,
My hands are crusted
With my family’s blood.
I cannot know the horrors of last night,
Echoes of screams
                   And a rage not my own
Are all that I can manage to produce.
At last I gather
their once warm bodies
and lay them down beneath the high noon sun.
Our house is now a broken shell,
    Much like me.
The door hangs from a single copper hinge
A parody of
   my fragile mind.
No windows remain, only empty holes
Beneath a partially
       collapsed thatch roof.
I fall to my knees and begin to dig,
Every handful of dirt
Is agony
To my shattered hands, I welcome the pain.
I dig the hole
wide and deep to fit them.
At last, my greatest fear has come.
The grief arrives,
            and bears down upon my chest.
I lower my children first into the ground.
And kiss their brows,
       holding each, one last time.
My tears raining down on their broken bodies.
I gather my wife
    And softly place her
Alongside our children.
I kiss her lips
And whisper all my thoughts
Into her beautiful deaf ears.  I moan
And heave, tasting
       salt and earth and blood.
“Bring me death if you have any mercy!”
I shout to the clouds
                 and blue above.
I wait for death but there is no reply.
Gods do not answer
                                 pleas of the insane
I ask for their forgiveness one last time
And heap the earth
       Onto my happiness.
I walk away towards nowhere, anywhere
But this place where
My murdered family lies.

Fishing the backwoods in autumn,
I approach the creek with silent conviction.
As the sun climbs above the trees dispersing dawn,
and the leaves fall from the rooted trees,
the wind approaches from the East
drawing hungry fish near.

The painted morning clouds above are near
enough to call my own in the midst of autumn.
They linger in from the East,
Void of all animate conviction;
Just as the trees
Are unaware of this autumn dawn.

And as another silent dawn
Lures me to the woods so near
The crowded branches of the trees
shake off their leaves for autumn.
I thread my line and tie my fly with conviction
As the clouds and wind roll in from the East.

I have family in the East,
though never have they seen my woods or dawn.
Unfolding my arms I cast along the Eastern wind with conviction,
humming as the fish draw near.
The once swollen creek runs calmly in the autumn,
beneath crowded, naked trees.

A whistled melody comes from the trees,
carried in from the East.
Maybe the wind combined with autumn
are offering a tune to this quiet dawn.
Or could it be another person coming near
hoping to also cast into this dawn with conviction?

I salvage my conviction,
as the stranger casts and hooks the looming trees.
Perhaps he has not fished a dawn with trees so near,
let alone with a gusty breeze gathering from the East.
I leave him to his tangled trees, he leaves me to my dawn.
Soon enough whatever leaves were left are gone, scattered from their limbs due to
yanking line and autumn.