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Feb 2016 · 452
The Ocean is Proud
Alem Kidane Feb 2016
Shipwreck lost in the sea
With treasures and secrets
And old companions
What did you do
To make the ocean mad?
Shipwreck lost in the sea
Broken and scattered
And forgotten
What did you say to the ocean,
To anger it so?
O Ship of Life
Don’t you know the ocean has pride?
Did mother not tell you?
Why did the waves hate you
And shower you with floods of salt?
Shipwreck lost in the sea
How could you not have known
That the ocean is proud
How could she not tell you
That it hates mockery?
Feb 2016 · 433
reconciliation in Hell
Alem Kidane Feb 2016
Your imperfection enticed me
Your delicacy melted my heart
Full of sin and blemish, I fell in love with you.
Your pride disgraced my honor
I withered like a dead flower before you
You spit your venom and spite at my face,
I succumbed to your impudence.

You captured my heart and squeezed blood out of it
You ground my audacity and snorted it like a drug.
Filled with depravity, you bewitched me
I fell in love with you.
I cracked, like an ancient wall
Before your profane presence

You are as hopeless as life itself but you are my faith,
You are not worthy of worth but my being values you
With your flame all burned out, I fell in love with you
Having washed out my life, you left
I lost myself in you.

I looked for you with tiger eyes; a day, a month, a year
I sniffed around the earth like a hungry wolf, to locate your scent
My ears were pulled up like a cat in case I heard your strides
I walked and walked, I ran and ran,
But I couldn't find you

Then I found someone who said you were gone for good
You left the world with displeasure and that displeasured me.
But I want you to know, when I depart this life,
I long to come to hell…so I can be with you
Then you will see me for who I was and
Be satisfied.
And that… will satisfy me.
Feb 2016 · 498
Infinite Empathy
Alem Kidane Feb 2016
My Beloved, your empathy is infinite
It is a bag of compassion that never runs out.
At the rarest of moments when it’s empty
When I am undeserving
Your silence is louder, there is always plenty.
Forgive my life of avarice that rips your strings!
But…how can a hole make one whole Beloved?
For your leaks endlessly trickle like a stream
Soothing desolate lands into meadows
And yet miraculously, there you still are
In the headwaters!
My Beloved, how bountiful is your empathy?
It’s a bag of compassion that never runs out.
Feb 2016 · 344
You Saved Me
Alem Kidane Feb 2016
You were unordinary
Dressed in colors of humility
You were a joyful pariah
You were happy to be.
Extraordinary
Was all they preached to me
I was a life of loss
And I was sad to live.
How is it then
That your spell captured me
That we fell so in love,
That you enchanted me?
Feb 2016 · 355
God of Fruit Seeds
Alem Kidane Feb 2016
I know that there’s a God
We have met in solid form.
In the early morning he was a peach
He was an orange in the afternoon
But he is full of surprises
For he was in the evening, an avocado.
Yesterday he approached me
From the hands of a gentle friend to mine
In the form of a kiwi
I am not certain of tomorrow
But no doubt he will be a melon
Or a ripe papaya.
There is a good God
If you could only savor fruits
You will see that he means well.
Feb 2016 · 453
Tuneful Biography
Alem Kidane Feb 2016
Let me sing you a waltz
But if you dance to it,
You must match my singing…
Let me play you the harp,
Since I know you so well
But you must catch your breath…

“Wait a minute, my sweet
Sounds contain essence
Because that melody
Sounded just like me.”

Let me sing you a waltz
If you match my singing,
Then you can dance to it…
It is the least you can do
Since I know you so well
And I have played you the harp
With matchless melody.

Wait a minute, honey
How often do you meet
A woman gifted with,
Tuneful biography?
Feb 2016 · 393
Three Words of Magic
Alem Kidane Feb 2016
I know three words of magic
That tell a beautiful truth.
He stared me in my eyes
Awaiting these words, three...
To flow from the wells of my soul
And spring through my lips, quivering.
He summoned the waves of sound
To carry them,
Unto his self-indulgent ears...
And drown them, in his unquestioning heart.
I know of three magic words
That make a humble truth.
They are but simple, albeit unknown.

“I don’t know”

Dust in the wind but I am
What rights have I to know?
Aren’t I a passenger in the dark,
A traveler of light?
What do I sincerely…know?
I am nothing into something.
I am something into nothing.
But I know just one thing.
And they are three magical words.
Humble and truthful.
I know. That I don’t know.

He…knew of three enchanting words
That made a handsome lie.
He longed to hear them, from me
These heavy words… boorishly abused.
But I am a lone traveler
I pay no heed to false knowledge
Nor have I time for ephemeral gratification.
All I could tell him was
“I don’t know”
But he valued his lie over my truth
And gasped at my last two words
Which were neither “love” nor “you”.
Feb 2016 · 350
Life of a Robot
Alem Kidane Feb 2016
your breakfast, a fast break
your lunch is junk
your dinner is coffee, to your sleepless nights.

your eyes shop what they see
and your hands work for them
what a sorrow, that your eyes
only see what they shop.

your life is a file
your history, an abandoned case
your death, a folder in a trash can.

you’re a mold, obediently molded
in a moldy society…
I would have liked to wipe
the speck, from the corners of your eyes
but the Book says
“first take the log out of your eye
then you’ll see clearly,
to take the splinter,
from your brother’s eye.”
Feb 2016 · 673
what is love?
Alem Kidane Feb 2016
he sang to me his music of silence.
his canvases empty...
a great painter was he.
he wept devoid of tears,
and he laughed without teeth...
his books contained no lines
nor did his poetries.
he never said the words
but I know he loved me…
one who truly feels love,
discerns it quietly.

— The End —