Words from the Ocean

If a few drops of the ocean can
Reminds us where we come from
If a few drops of the ocean

Can make Mars home again
Hae.mi, there’s beauty more than skin-deep
More than spark and chemistry

There’s elemental wonder in
The way the waves move together
They are made of the same stuff

Like how human beings are 99.9% the same
If a few drops of the ocean can
Cleanse us, then when it rains

We have to remember, not to be afraid
Of getting wet, it’s how the wind moves
How time walks, in moisture

Tears that draw our worlds apart
Hope that sets our records straight
Faith that wounds us with idealism

Trust that pains us with her betrayals
Thirst that aches in us for each other
The ocean’s beauty can not fade, but we will

Being in the ocean by myself, was
What being a poet meant to me, writing
To nobody in particular, but wishing for a muse

Hae.mi, how many times in a life
Does the sailor fathom your depths?
How many times a year, do fishermen
Ask you for a look inside your heart.

These Urban Rites

If the soul selects her own society
Then tell me who shut the door on years
Shared, oblivious, estranged that was
Once so intimate, divorced reality

Some things that fly – are meant to be
Don’t you know, lover, formerly Beloved?
Where we two crept through winters
Hand in hand for a short while

Was it enough, tell me lost friends?
I have known some of the most lonely hours
Sensitive perhaps to primitive emotions
Of abandonment, alienation, dependency

On a clan, a tribe, a friend, a partner
Who was not truly there, the family unit
Is then, not what it used to be
Brothers, unsistered, father impersonal and past

Faith is a fine invention, for community
But what if the world was dangerously anonymous
What if the trusting woods were no more?
And friendship, as if spoken by a distant bird

Whose voice has been ripped from evolution’s side
We, who were once two butterflies at noon
In our starry youth, overcome with glee
The tides have turned and we’ve been beaten

By men who would be our competition,
What mystery pervades such a world
Where the street and brutality have new meaning
And poverty a disfigured face to those
Who once might have shown us kindness.