In my youth, I ran to the desert.
She welcomed me as one of her own,
taught me many things,
loved me in her own unforgiving way.

The years I spent in her arms
saved me from many deaths.
I learned patience, and harshness
learned to welcome all things
as gifts from a God I couldn't see...
so I thought....

I lied to myself, and was alone
though God and the desert and
it's spirits walked alongside me
my heart never grew.

And now that I have come back,
I don't know how to hold
everything in my heart.

I learned to live on ideas;
real love was an abstract memory,
something that cost blood
and horror and betrayal.

I told myself what love was
out there in the sands,
when in truth.....
I could barely open my heart
to the beauty of a sunset.

Nothing has prepared me for this,
walking out of the wastes
to find my own people
waiting for me.

I have seen terrible things,
and so have they;
I don't know how to open
my heart to so many.

Jellaludin said to write what
we are most afraid of
so I shall write that.
I hope Shams approves.

I always say that one day
things will be different,
that we can change the world
as if it was the world that needed changing,

In truth, I am the one that needs to change,
I am the one who must take the leap,
I must step out over the abyss and
believe that it's about something more.

I am not afraid of the dark within myself,
my shadow I have come to terms with.
I am afraid of hurting those that have
tried to love me, whom I haven't allowed.

But that day I always yearned for,
the day when the world rolled back,
and the fountain gave of itself,
the day I decide to let my love **** me
that day is today.

See me.
Really see me.
As I see you.

I've heard of you woman,
I knew your eyes were oceans
and your heart was a sacrifice
long before I came burning out of the desert.

I know that you were beaten
and I know you had your soul ripped out
by the ones who ought to have cherished you.

But I....I am not those men.
I was not sent here to take
but to give.

I long for the lost gardens of Cordova,
for the glory that was love and light
along the banks of the Guadilqivir
that river still flowing through my heart.

Yes, by all means test my resolve,
I have witnessed too much horror
to let one more heart be wasted.

I want to love you,
I want to take your suffering heart
and pour all the love God has given me
into your many wounds.

But it isn't in my power to do that,
It isn't given to me to rewrite your
book of tears and sacrifice.

I have been sent here,
journeying so long and so far
that I had nearly forgotten what
a home felt like until I woke
with you in my arms.

You kissed me,
and I heard the music again.

You touched my soul,
and the rains came at last.

You open my heart,
and I remember.

As if the masks I wear for the world are anything
more than mere artifice.
Make no mistake I am no civilized intellectual,
I am no yuppie at a tech company living for machines.

My soul was old when Rome ruled the world
and beneath my person suit I am an utter
****** savage with the face of a starving jackal.

I am an uncivilized, spear-wielding force of
nature ruled by monstrous passions
born from years of torture and supplication.

Take my hand and follow me to the forest.
I'll teach you it's secrets and we'll dance
naked in the moonlight for a thousand years.

Maybe that was the first mistake I made
there at the very beginning.

I wanted all of it, everything I could glean
from whatever life had to offer.

Not only did I want the beauty of Hesse,
Dante, and all the glories of Old Florence,
I wanted someone like me to share it with.

I wanted to wake up in a room in Tangier
to the Muezzin calling the faithful to prayer
and have some unbelievable soul in bed with me
wipe the sleep from her eyes and kiss me.

They say that I'm a drunk and a dreamer
and they may in fact be right about that,
but they'll never know the absolute glory
that comes from pouring your bleeding guts
out onto paper at two in the morning with
Pavarotti blaring as loud as you can make him.

I'm almost thirty and I've almost given up,
almost accepted that the finer things in life
will only ever be a dream, a fleeting glimpse
into an improbable future that may cost too much.

And then I meet people like her, Artists and Lovers
that cut me in ways I didn't think I could be anymore.
I'll be doing alot of drugs with them, maybe have some
truly Protestant shaming *** with them, trying to
reach out across that ****** abyss and touch their soul.

But I'll never wake up in Tangier with them.
I'll fall asleep listening to Netflix and wondering
who gave her the scars I can feel pumping through her heart.
It'll probably fade away relatively quickly too,
that one real moment when the walls fell.

No matter, I always knew deep in my heart of hearts
that people like me don't get happy endings or to
live our dreams out unless we die for them.
We go our own way, suffering to be who we are,
creating beauty in ****** rooms with screaming
children that reek of cat **** and regrets.

But if it ever gets too much to bear, there's
always truly running, truly giving up on
having it all, walking the **** away
and being insane and drunk in Tangier alone.

And at last I understood why they all hated me.
All at once I knew in my very bones
that even as a child they would look
into my eyes and couldn't see a person looking back.
They could read nothing in me, could not own me,
and I could see right through into their souls.
All the lies they had built for themselves,
all the powers of their plastic civilization
meant nothing when they looked at me.
I am a jackal of the desert, born of horrors
and raised with the spirits of the dead for guides.
When they look me in the eyes
they know fear.