Merhaba

a twenty three cent soldier
spoke his foreign tongue in Korea
with the taste of morning honey
still bright upon his goat cheese smile
so many miles from his native land
where olives calmly grew on ancient trees
and women sat talking on the second floor of the mosque
after working to make gozlemes in an oil-burning
cook pot for the men wearing knitted caps
and woolen jackets smelling of cheap cigarettes.
he saw the dead American bodies twisted in the broken mud
and thought of his mother sitting in another room
not too far from the Black Sea
in a country where Asia and Europe meet
where tradition and change have been at war
for longer than the fight he now found himself bought into
and he thought he might like to pray
but he didn't have the time.
for him, it was too expensive.