Friday, March 14, 2025: Liam Balmeo's “Honalua”

 

Liam "Lee" Balmeo is an emerging poet & activist.

I. 

You can feel it, can’t you? The ominousness present, on the sand. All around the hand that held life in its fingertips, the people in its grasp. But we know that something’s wrong, that offtone sensation of emptiness in our stomachs. The ocean and sand do not fall with the tides but follow the season’s games as clouds shelter the ones under its brow, caressing the ocean with its shadow. We smell the brine sweeter than its carcass, changed with the lips of Mother’s kiss while holding the gritty sand of pebbles spit unevenly across the ocean floor. The rocks have been turned by time and glazed with rough edges. They’ve been waiting—they’ve been longing for someone to set them free. The land and its living steer clear of this zone—but only the ones that can see it. Palm trees sway crooked in the raging winds because their limbs are removed in the form of delicate leaves; their shrubbery below has stolen the sunlight and nutrients of another as blossoms would not emerge from this plant. Birds ride the lightning when the turtles ride the rain during their daily storms, since the weather can never stay stagnant; the fish and chickens always move in the same direction as the voice: they’ve been calling for us to return to the ocean, with their low-toned horn. They summon us all. 

II. 

Cliffs of mountains shine duller than the moon above as an avalanche calls its rocks on the edge to roll: the tiki on the pathway carries its head over its forgotten home, and yet concrete paints the ledges flat while its metal bars jail both open sides. Constellations of ancestors paint the night skies and rocks below, and yet little children run up and down the sand and ignore the torches smoking sage in the moonlight: the lights that were used during generational rites-of-passage were replaced with lights to lead an artificial ceremony. We can feel them, their presence in the darkness of the day, like a waiting sign in the wind—but they’ve come to shed light on the remains below the sand, the fish corpses and dried grass skirts and prayer beads below the mound protruding the beach; but the entire picture hasn’t been shown and hidden for a purpose. When a blank canvas is given, nothing can be observed, as the fear of one can grab ahold of their mind and take them away. The messages—their messages—are cast aside as coincidences as the ones that are sent between both worlds are lost at sea in the midst of a warning call. They said that it was someone’s own mental thinking or delusion, but maybe it’s the wooden cross hidden between the bushes.

© 2025 Liam "Lee" Balmeo