Its time to dance

Tonight 

My daughter coaxes a melody from my father

Asks him sweetly, 

“will you sing for me? I want to dance”

And for an hour or so 

He picks his way through all the favorite family melodies 

Refrains of his fathers and grandmothers overflow from our kauhale 

My daughter dawns her dancing dress

Long flowing fabric stitched with flowers

She smiles as the tassels twirl around her

And the rest of us sit present simply enjoying this little miracle of a human 

And just as I begin to settle in

 my heart is pulled out of my chest 

the breath that holds the heirloom tune 

gets caught in the cracks at the back of my throat 

Because I know 

As I watch my daughter dance 

somewhere distant in miles but ever close in spirit 

Another child takes her last breath

at the very moment that my wife fastens the gown upon our daughter

Another mother wraps a shroud around her beloved

while my daughter twirls her free body through our livingroom 

Another child lays still between the crumbling walls of what was once a home, hospital, school…

As my father animates an ancestral serenade 

Another grandfather cries out a scream of horror 

Each moment of our joyous love here

Paired with its own twin terror behind the mirror 

I have no conception of how we could have allowed

A world quite like this to exist 

Where somewhere thousands of miles away and yet close all the same  

A beautiful Palestinian child could be dancing 

while her grandfather sings a song written long before the birth of our occupiers 

But instead 

Both precious beloveds are martyred 

and with them 

another family wiped from the civil registry 

and with them

another universe foreclosed from possibility 

I sit split in half 

at the boarder of these two realities 

at the margins of these overlapping worlds 

They are both mine

To know 

and to hold 

I dare not look away 

A single tear runs down my face 

Without a word the sweet child in my livingroom takes notice 

Momma? Don’t cry, it’s time to dance  

And so we do. 

Rafah Burns as i hold my sleeping son

Rafah burns, and I hold my sleeping son

I look at the pictures 

Of children 

Their smiling faces torn from the bone 

Their laughter evacuated  

I watch the videos of burning tents, of flesh floating in the wind 

I watch them 

While I hold my sleeping son on my chest 

I feel something like rage 

Something like love 

Something like fear

And Shame 

And outrage 

but this feeling is all this and still something different 

Something far beyond my emotional vocabulary 

I am a poet without language 

An empath without root 

I am overflowing in something I do not recognize 

Something like terror

But still not quite that 

I am holding my sleeping son 

And a man I will never know

But love all the same 

Holds up an infant corpse  

His beautiful face 

Has been carried off with the last of our humanity 

Before I can catch myself I let out a wail 

And The sleeping baby in my arms jerks himself awake

And now he cries with me 

For Palestine 

For the uprooted olive trees

For the shelled hospitals & schools & homes 

For the thousands of children 

Their parents and loved ones martyred 

In a smoldering flame 

Their fathers who gather the severed limbs 

      Like flowers 

Mothers who catch their drifting ashes like      

       sand caught in a gust of terror

My son and I are here 

Under an occupation a whole world away 

The flames of Rafah smolder before us 

I can feel the heat crackling in my blood 

And so we — my son and I — 

     fill this silent world with our wails  

Both Feeling something we can’t quite name

For Palestine, and all the reasons a Cease Fire is not enough

 

In gaza 

There is no escaping the constant barrage of bullet and bombs 

There is no water

No food or No fuel

No electricity for hospitals desperately trying to care for their wounded 

no place to safely lay the bodies of their fallen 

no guarantee any will survive long enough to pray over and bury their dead

So Palestinian’s of all ages are posting last wishes and farewells on twitter, Instagram, queering the map

they say: they will not be pushed out of what little they have left

they say:  they wish to live long enough to fall in love

to bear children who grow old enough to bear and raise their own 

they tell us their names and their dreams, their secrets, and regrets

I read as many as I can until the blue light of my phone begins to blur my vison 

 

Hours later I am awoken to the sound of my daughter crying 

She has been shaken awake by the sound of military helicopters 

hovering over her bedroom

The buzz of the blades makes the crayons on her desk shiver 

The meaning is clear 

So long as American money and war planes can reach 

the very edge of this globe 

None of us are safe

I cover her in a faded pink blanket

My mind flases to the image of parents searching for their children 

under blood soaked sheets 

I shake like the crayons on the desk and press the image out of my mind

Say a prayer of pale over her body

Wisper in her ear, I am here my love 

You are not alone 

 

In the very moments that the edges of empire and its violence are expanding 

I hold my daughter against my chest 

Across the globe, Netanyahu and his war mongering friends drop 6,000 american missiles in a territory ¼ the size of our island 

Gaza clings to its body of Palestine, like an ʻōpihi against a rock 

barraged by the shore break 

This is a century’s long genocide escalating before our eyes

We are standing in the orchestra pit amid the crescendo 

The percussion of violence has continued beyond its own breaking point 

But the composers and their musicians are still pulling at their strings: 

 

it is 3am when my daughter finally drifts back off to sleep

& I am thinking  about the visibility of violence in our digital world

I am facing the fact of our privilege 

That I can make her feel safe

In a world where securities are made manifest by the twisted destiny of empires 

The guilt of this “gift” we never asked for 

Carries me back to sleep beside her

 

But The rest will not last 

The next morning we wake to the news that israel 

Has bombed yet another hospital 

While I was holding my sleeping daughter 

Other Parents run for cover with their lifeless children in their arms

I read the updates while the American national anthem

spills into our living room

We are caught in the 8am routine of empire here in Wahiawā

The daily salute to war and privilege and waste 

The bugle shakes the last of our birds free from our trees

Soon The sound of kuahine will be overwhelmed by a new rain, the M16s 

 

On the nights when the sounds of war games shake our livingroom

I play The Black Pumas on vinyl to drown out the sound of drumming riffles 

Each cracking munition takes my mind to Palestine

We live in the stolen training ground of empire’s muscle 

The tip of their imperial spear 

I have known this for years 

Perhaps it is what made me a poet in the first place

But seeing the images of the murdered caught under this weight in real time

Has made me something altogether different

 

So today I am reaching for new language  

While I am fighting every instinct to look away 

from the children and their beloved burned, shot, and hollowed

Their homes and sanctuaries crumbling around them

I know At the very least they are deserving of our witness and our indurance 

So I watch, I keep my eyes wide fucking open

 

But In these moments I have no sign or solution, 

So Instead, I am standing in my small corner of our world with a mirror

I am singing all the freedom songs I know 

First in a whisper, then in a scream 

I am sharing the news with my two-year-old daughter during breakfast, 

and bath time 

Becasue I need her to know 

Why the Palestinian boy crying is to reporter about his cousin being shot down in the street

 

So I tell her

The sounds of war that she hears daily do not exists in a vacuum  

I tell her. that she is connected to him, 

this beautiful & grieving Palestinian boy 

I send a prayer that his parents are holding him, alive, tonight too

In my dreams I imagine them both safe 

Harvesting kalo and olives in our backyards 

Drinking clean water, directly from our streams 

Lips sticky with laughter, citrus, and lihing mui 

When I dream, I see them as kin 

Not just by the sibling shelling they hear in the morning light 

No 

My daughter must know

that his home and the terror brought upon it and him

Could be hers

That in fact, it already is

She must face it 

She cannot look away 

It is ours 

It is her generations inheritance

 

little ancestor

I dream of the world 

behind my daughter’s eyes 

where every weed is a flower

every rock, a jewel

every gust of wind, a relative 

 

The unsteady wobble of her walk

is my first true instruction in patience

her unquenchable curiosity, a promise  

no day is without its own intimate adventure 

and so, like any good student

while she absorbs every fine detail of life around her

I take meticulous note of her

 

I dream of her world

quiet, safe, and full of wonder

and when I am lucky

I am granted invitation

 

she takes my hand upon hers 

a small universe folded in my palm 

she leads me confidently to the next mystery

each one deserving of our full and present awe

 

she is my little ancestor 

my mentor-- 

pointing out every detail and creature worthy of my attention, and aloha 

and so when I fall asleep tonight 

I will conjure her brilliant universe behind my closed eyes

just to stay in her magic, a little while longer

 

The Death of Desire

Some mornings, if I am not careful 

I feel the phantom itch of a heart that is longing

Broken open and ready to be filled

But I know I am not that echoed cavern any longer

That ghost is so unifamilial to me that sometimes

I forget what desire feels like

And I think

That might be the death of the poet in me

So I mourn her 

Quietly 

When no one else is watching 

 

My days are a carnival of small celebrations 

of having the life I always dreamed of

With love 

Overflowing in every direction

With a purpose to give myself over to 

With a partner and a family who accept me 

with all my promise and shortcoming 

But in the cracks between revelries,

I cry for the lonely lover I left behind

And today I wake up unmoored by the quite part of a perfect poem 

And I realize

I was unprepared for the sacred sacrifice I would have to make

I did not know that being full would mean I would have to lose

The most familiar parts of myself

And so to love you 

I left her in a shadow I have no intention of returning to 

 

There is no regret 

Just the worry that soon everything I know about yearning 

May be what I imagine or what I am able to remember 

From a time before that is so far gone

She is so foreign

And so I will mourn that loss, too

The version I was before there was you

And love

And every dream I could have imagined, came true

We knew we were liberated when we no longer feared for our daughters

 

Its been raining for days

the kind where the sky turns grey 

and you wonder if it’ll ever turn back 

its 53 degrees in Hawaiʻi (which is really fucking cold, btw)

and my 6-week-old daughter is sneezing more than usual

My partner looked it up

Some babies sneeze when they are cold 

so i am holding them both a little closer than normal

which is pretty damn close 

 

at night 

i close the windows

I warp her in a lei of blankets 

i say her name 

out loud

remind her that she is loved

safe

o wau no kou kiaʻi 

I am your protector 

i say 

over and over until she will be ready to say it back 

 

and her mother and i wait to hear her fall asleep 

and then we settle into each-other

this is the future we dreamed of, together

from the frontlines of a movement protecting our mountain, our water, each other

and it is full of everything sweet, and beautiful, and tender 

but we are no longer in a puʻuhonua

so it is also overflowing with everything i fear

 

The US navy is poisoning the water in Hawaiʻi 

tens of thousands of gallons of diesel fuel have already spilled into our aquifer

250 million gallons remain in these WWII single wall degrading tanks

and the Navy is refusing to drain and decommission them

even after admitting to the contamination 

on twitter and Instagram I see photo ops with “the best” of congressional leaders handing out bottled water and hotel vouchers to military service families 

like band aids on a bullet wound

 

and for the first time in my life

I feel completely helpless 

There is an invisible plume of poison working its way through our underground water systems 

And the only people who know the exact extent of it 

Don’t give a fuck about us

Our ʻāina and wai, and certainly think nothing of our children 

In fact, while preparing a suit against our state for demanding they drain the tanks the US NAVY insists: “It is not the fuel in the tanks, but the fuel in the water that’s making us sick”

Let me say that again

The US navy says: “its not the fuel in their tanks, but the fuel in OUR water that is making us sick”

And I give no fucks about their lyrical gymnastics

There is no rewriting themselves out of fault

 

I want to ask them 

how will i feed my daughter if all we have is jet fuel falling from the faucet 

instead I start googling DYI home rain catchments 

while I spin into a tornado of my own fear 

I can only think about the decades our people have been calling to demilitarize our island and ocean 

and how no one beyond our lāhui cared to listen

 

and now it’s the TV and twitter and Instagram all popping off 

and the water is rising 

and the Covid variants are multiplying 

and there are guns and cops and cages everywhere 

and my checking account is hemorrhaging money 

and my daughter is crying 

and it hasn’t stopped raining 

its been days 

 

and it’s true, i used to long for these moments 

a quality storm to quiet my house and mind

me in a corner with a pen and pad of paper

but today 

i have a sneezing daughter in my arms

and i know that means she is cold

so i am holding her a little closer than normal

which is pretty damn close 

and i cant stop thinking about how little I can protect her

and now I know I am really a mother of a daughter

because i am made only of worry 

 

and i am thinking about water 

the wai that is now fuel 

and the kai that is still rising 

all around us

and the mud that is creeping closer and closer to my doorway

with each day that the deluge continues 

 

and i am waiting for someone to come and hold me

to tell me i am loved

to say that at least for today the water is safe 

I am waiting for someone to remind me that we too are worth protecting

like a mauna, like an island, like our ocean, expanding 

 

i look into my daughter’s eyes again

o wau no kou kiaʻi

I am your protector 

she says 

first to the ʻāina, then to the wai, and finally to me

and for a moment 

I can breathe again

Because at the very least 

Malia and I did one thing right

We prepared one more wahine koa to take into battle

 

But I cannot help but think

is this really as far as we can dream? 

 

 

 

 

 

Call to Prayer

 "Call to Prayer is a poem that attempts capture and portray the experience of standing in the malu of the sacred. Whether that malu is cast by monument, an altar, or a mountain, the poem depicts the kuleana of recognizing our pilina to that which is kapu. The poem travels through the knowledges of faith, courage, devotion, fear, and aloha through the perspective of a Kanaka Maoli wahine who lives in the malu of our kupuna while continuing to endure the ongoing wake of settler colonialism, displacement, and alienation.

The poem intentionally stands in the malu of the Mihrab, Shangri La's most sacred artifact. And in her magnificent shadow we come face to face with her certain theft and current violent misdirection. We cannot look away, not from her outstanding beauty, and certainly not from the generations of violence that has allowed us to be in her unconsenting company. The Mihrab powerfully calls us back to our own sacred places, and in that moment we are invited into a mutual recognition, an unexpected intimacy between peoples, ʻāina, moʻolelo."

 

 

 

Call to Prayer 

Jamaica Osorio, 2021

 

If I have Faith

It is only because 

I know what it means 

to stand at the foot of a mountain

my whole body a prayer 

the whole island a monument 

and to see

the piko

shining through the mist 

I still feel her before me

Even from hundreds of miles away

Anytime I have the strength to look to the horizon 

 

If I have courage

It is only because 

I have watched our moʻolelo remake themselves in my generation

I have seen an island born from pō

From a whisper in the quietest parts of ourselves, 

Here 

A promise that we refuse to forget or forsake 

That this place is ours

Only so much as this place is us

And I have held it in my hands,

The birthing of our worlds

Pō, turned light, turned pūko’a, turned slime turned gods in a time of mere men

I have watched the call of the intrepid summon Manaeakalani

every morning 

in the hands of our kuaʻana

Maui, fishing us each 

One by one from the dark sea of this forgetting 

 

If I have devotion

it is only because 

I have traveled into the poli of our akua

I have crossed the piko

from wākea to wākea 

and sailed upon the dark and shining road of kāne 

deep into the realm of our ancestors 

and I have returned, 

with the knowledge that to  lay in the bosom of our kūpuna 

is to commit yourself to the prayer of memory 

to cast your eyes upon Kuehaelani 

and to pull her shimmering body from the skin of the sea 

 

If I have anger

It is only because 

I know the stories of our loss

Kiʻi burnt to ash 

Stones and koʻa removed

Now the foundations of Billionaire estates 

I am aware 

That nearly anywhere we walk 

We are trampling upon the ʻiwi of our kūpuna

 

I know the moʻolelo of the hundreds of thousands dead and dying

I have seen the signs of the separating sicknesses 

Born again, like Haumea, in every Hawaiian generation 

I know the names of the thieves

The crooks in finely sewn suits 

Praying to their capital 

As they pillage 

And loot our holy cities 

Leaving us with nothing 

But a whisper of what we once believed

 

And yet I still have aloha 

But only because

I am still here

With all my kūpuna beside me

And when I stand in your malu 

You 

Tower over me, like a recollection 

Like a mountain 

With so many stories I will never know

In languages I will never speak 

Thousands of miles away from your home

And the ʻāina and alchemy that made you

The hands that formed you

Like an island, consecrated 

You are here 

Pointed even in the wrong direction

A desecration 

And still your kaumaha 

Is not foreign to me

You feel more family 

Than stranger 

And in your magnificent shadow 

I hear our calls to prayer 

 

 

For Iremamber Sykap

 I am preparing for a class on environmental racism when I see the headline

“a 16-year-old boy has been murdered by the Honolulu police department”

That’s what I see, but we know that’s not what it reads.   

The police and mainstream media will first call this child a man. 

Call this murder a “police involved shooting”. 

Will call this “incident” an inevitability

chief Ballard will say, 

We have no further information as the officers involved are “consulting with their lawyers”

“They have been put on a four-day administrative leave”

That is the “normal policy” 

Ballard will admit That there were no weapons found at the scene 

While she hints that maybe one of the 14 or 16-year-old boys (she says men) tossed them

And now the whole internet is engaged in a public debate about whether or not a child deserved to die

And I am weeping, in awe of the magic of this misdirection 

We are having all the wrong conversations 

 

I am preparing for a class on environmental injustice

Where we will discuss that the most accurate predictor to environmental harm is race

The ordinary topics in this kind of conversation are about toxins, improper waste disposal, and water contamination 

But I think about how our hunger, lack of shelter and healthcare – along with the obscene presence of police SERVAILENCE must be a part of this environmental equation

The math that leads only to our displacement and death 

 

KITV lets out a hint 

3 of the 6 boys were unsheltered (they say homeless)

Facebook comments will call these children guilty of a lack of worth ethic

“they should have been in school, better yet, had jobs” 

Even from our own lāhui, calling out bastardizations of hawaiian values without context 

“hewa nō, make” 

The worst of us will debate “choice” from our moral high ground

our bellies bloated with privilege

 

I get caught in the black hole of Facebook comments 

But I cant stop wondering how long it might have been since any of these boys have felt safe, full, protected

I think 

How terrifying it must have been

These kids 

Younger than the age of my baby sister 

The full force of the honolulu police department in pursuit 

And firing 

To me 

This fear is so human

And so I see their faces before a single picture has been released

I know these ʻōpio- they are not strangers to me

 

And so of course when the news drops I wait for the revelation of what we already know 

The faces of these boys will look like ours
and if we have resisted the forgetting 

Paid attention to the carving of our ocean into digestible, colonizable, categories 

They will be familial 

Sons of our ocean 

Our moananui

The only blue that with ever be worthy of our backing 

If we hold thse genealogies as sacred 

As self evident 

They will remind us 

Of us

And so for just a moment 

the 16-year-old chuukeese boy, named iremamber 

Who was murdered by the Honolulu police will be our

Child 

brother 

family 

comrad 

Someone who’s life might matter far beyond the sum of mistakes made under the weight of a society that has already marked him as unworthy 

His brother says, 

“the police hate micronesians for doing what we do... surviving” 

And I think, 

I know that feeling 

Of being a target for elimanation 

A nusence in the neoliberal promise of progress 

living under the crushing weight of a failing state

 

I said it before

We are having all the wrong conversations

We are examining all the wrong “facts” 

We are engaged in a debate that promises only to strip us of what little is left of our collective humanity 

While a 16 year old boy, born of our moana lays dead 

So instead 

Maybe we could take a moment to pay attention 

To mourn 

To aceept our culpability 

And do anything other than cower, paralized

 

Watch the way the police will position the murder of a boy as inevitable

Watch the way our lives and the lives of ones we love have become disposable.

Watch the state pivot away from the root cause of crime—use this as a justification for more force against us

Watch the ways the state will justify all this violence 

While calling itself protection 

 

We must know now

More than. Ever that we much Watch out for eachother – becasue we are our only defense

We are our only chance of survival 

 

 

 

 

For my Haumāna

Remember the year we spent in pō?

How all the things we thought we learned came back up 

Again 

And again

And again 

As if there was something we missed?

But couldn’t quite catch 

We spent days holding our breath turning our heads in circles until our faces were blue 

 

Remember those months we spent grieving

Sitting in our darkness 

Forgetting the light

Mourning a life 

That seemed so far away 

We questioned if it even happened? 

 

Remember how we (d)evolved

How we became a string of ones and zeros 

Represented in high definition 

But still

Carved out to fit in binary 

In someone else’s algorithm

Living our lives in 75 minute increments 

 

Remember all the mele we lost 

How we forgot how to sing in harmony

or at least in unison

How we sat there in our own void

Silent

Constantly facing our disconnection 

When you reached out for pilina 

Do Remember the thumbnails that starred back at you?

How you wondered if you would ever know the tenor of their sighs

Or the emails

Remember the endless strings of emails 

One after the other

Each a reminder that 

No one seems to have escaped this heaviness 

This flood 

This deluge 

How your haumāna 

Endured challenges you cannot even imagine

Losses you dont know how to hold or comfort 

All from behind the lonely blue glow of a computer monitor

Hearts trembling 

Hands hovering over the unmute button

Stuck 

Remember how your employer did give a fuck 

And insisted you evaluate them with a letter grade anyway 

How the failures of “leadership” soon began to not surprise

As the body count continued to rise 

                                                    

Remember How so many times you wished

You could reach out to them 

Your students 

With more than an arm of an email thread 

With more than 

Ke aloha nō

How many times you wondered if they felt your sincerity

Or if it had been distorted through the microphone 

Caught and lost somewhere in the endless ether lodged between you

 

I dont think I will ever forget 

The way this silence broke us like a flood summer rain 

Like a storm shaking us from the summit 

Just like we wont forget how we survived still

Beside each other

Even Thousands of miles away 

The lines of mana wahine we endured to create

Armed held out taut across the oceans and continents 

Made something old 

Almost familiar 

Out of something so strange, distant 

And inhumane 

 

Most of all I wonder what will remain

Will they know

My haumāna

How I wished so much more for us

For them, for sure 

How most nights I stayed awake paralyzed by our collective anxiety 

How I wanted to show them this ʻāina that has loved and made me

How I wanted to turn our hands together, down to her

So they might have the chance to be loved

And made again too 

 

But instead 

What we have together is this pō

This dark and churning heat 

Still expanding, growing around us 

Into something I dont know how to hold

All we have is this quiet between us

And the knowing that something better 

or simply something else is soon coming