Doing the same thing twice
and expecting a different result
Some call it courage
others, foolishness

Why do we believe we’ll emerge new
Same script, same actors, same bait
But a new will, a new mind—
suddenly making all the right calls?

Will we stare into what once blinded us
fight what numbed us—or
shake off what sticks,
(still) fall into the same holes?

Perhaps when nature softens-
A degree warmer (against blitzing wind)
A letter that arrives (right before desperation)
A word that didn’t drop (as the last straw)

You’ll find a way again
to give like how you’ve self-taught—
remembering that forehead kiss
as a trace of being loved.

Or perhaps the truest thing  
is how courage and foolishness
are two sides of the same leaf,
lit by a different light.

I want to show you what I see
Things I captured on film,
trivial and incomplete.
So I show nothing, to no one.

I want to tell you how I feel
Those stuff on my mind,
overflows like a summer stream
I say too much, followed by too little.

I want to explain where I’ve been
Descriptions dense, delicate
The speaker too immersed
To realize the listener left out.

I want you to know what I am
Then you ask me, “So,
what you think you really are?”
I am only guessing-
As I’ve never seen me
Like how you see me, night and day.

Suffering
borne by each being
Plays no role in determining
fast or slow, our planet's spinning

In question of meaning
some believe it's God's doing;
Will and endurance tested
is an act of reverence proven

I'd resort to a poem
It's, at least some entertainment
Seeing all sorts of pain squeezed
into a handful of rhyming bitterness

If suffering is bound to happen
Let us raise our glasses
in honor of blood and tears
Say, in poetry, we trust

Skin itched by
sweat rash grown, on
shoulders rubbed by
clothes that don’t breathe

An ear is blocked
I can hear my own voice
irritated by its sound
against the blur of trivial noise

I cannot bear matters
that does not resolve themselves;
But am more annoyed by those
that could, and did not

If tomorrow always find things better
Like a clock with self-steering gear
— it intimidates me, the thought of
all midnight struggles made futile

This emotional ball of yarn
rolls forward, bigger and bigger
I lay all fingers to disentangle
only to weave them tighter

I am suffocated
by the impatience to spit it out
My mouth wide open,
the candy sticks in my throat

On Rarotonga, in the Cooks,
an oasis guarded by coral reefs—  
adrift in the vast blue ocean.  
Open, unyielding, yet few  
can approach.  
Only those who know the way.  

At Manawatāwhi,
Demoiselles and Māomao
—names painted on fish—  
dart as bottlenose dolphins leap.  

Even the strong succumbs to storms.
The mourning mother  
will never see her son again.
He lies on the shallow white sand,  
now nature’s artifact.  

And the sorrow of loss
lingers only  
in those who echoed.