I’m reading old chats
Flipping through your photos
Reminiscing the past
Replaying intimate convos

I’m staring into the distance
Laughing over nothing
I’m dreaming up a romance
Even though the last attempt was scathing

I thought I was past this
Yet you’ve reeled me back in
It’s heady, it’s bliss
But I know it’s flitting

I’m playing with my heart
Daring you to hold it
But it’s fragile—a fact
One you’ve already proven

So I have to step back
I have to save myself
It’ll be madness on crack
If I do anything less

A hive lives in my mind
Shows up in strange thoughts I find
A swarm of opinions from out there
It forms a crowd in my head

It’s loud and persistent
Terribly rude and insistent
Forces me to open my ears
Makes me do what it shares

It drowns out my voice
Fills my noggin with noise
I can’t outtalk its screams
I’m stuck listening it seems

Shame follows my every step
As it recites words of regret
This hive I can’t escape
It’s become my unsafe space

When two poets put their heads together
And pull out their pens to write
There’s no way to know the direction they’ll go
When it comes to the rhythm and rhyme

They could write about a simple theme
Or a deep one that makes you think
Their words might make you beam
Or take you to sorrow’s brink

Whatever they decide to confide
In this melding of the minds
It’s sure to indeed make you think
Or at least bring you closer to the light

When their words roll into sentences
You’ll be carried along on a magical tide
And surely when the end arrives
You’ll be glad you came along for the ride

By Mike Hauser and Mfena Ortswen

Nature at one time beckoned me
In the blowing of its leaves
Yet treated with little respect
Out of neglect will leave you be

Roots that burrow into the earth
Trunks wide like the universe
Branches scale in height and breadth
It spawns an unending curse

A curse that leaves man to his own
Never again to call nature home
Given the chance and man blew it
Would things be different had he known

Now nature’s unmoved by man’s suffering
Man’s woes are his own doing
When on the edge of extinction all’s teetering
Stoic and indifferent, nature will see to man’s ending

By Mfena Ortswen & Mike Hauser

Nature at one time beckoned me
In the blowing of its leaves
Yet treated with little respect
Out of neglect will leave you be

Roots that burrow into the earth
Trunks wide like the universe
Branches scale in height and breadth
It spawns an unending curse

A curse that leaves man to his own
Never again to call nature home
Given the chance and man blew it
Would things be different had he known

Now nature’s unmoved by man’s suffering
Man’s woes are his own doing
When on the edge of extinction all’s teetering
Stoic and indifferent, nature will see to man’s ending