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 

Things to say instead of I Love you:

 I had a life 

unfolding before me

I almost missed the whole thing 

Suffering through the agony of loving

someone, who refused to love me back 

While refusing to let me go 

And this is how I learned: 

Whatever is not mine

Must be released 

Things to Say instead of I love you

 On the nights I dream of my daughter

I wake up thinking of all the imes 

I have wondered: 

“Am I worthy of love?”

I think of all the women 

who said: “Yes yes yes” 

Until it was the chorus 

I sang into my own healing 

I think of the woman I might fail 

To raise into her own bloom

If it weren’t for the fierce flowers 

Who surround me 

Notes on Surviving the End of the world, Again

On the morning you wake to the end of the world

take your body back to the kai

to the place our kūpuna taught us life began

first pō, then coral, then slime

then a whole universe fitting into a space smaller than a grain of sand

then Ea rising through the ocean 

pulling the tides that make mountains

valleys, and the rivers that cut through them

Remember our ʻāina

for all the ways that she has fed us 

in the quiet darkness 

before the blast

dive yourself back into the depth of creation 

recalling all the times your world has ended before:

Call out the names of all the violence that has come

While calling itself protection 

All the ways we have been left 

To gather the shattered pieces

Two island cities in the corner of the pacific 

Flattened to caricature 

Names rendered meaningless, 

Carved over and over again into the binding of our textbooks 

Just enough of their shape remains to call foul at our hubris

But does nothing to slow the arrogant push of “progress” 

In their toxic wake 

Came our “Imperial Lake” 

Our grand Moana Nui Cut wide open 

So on the morning you wake to the end of the world, 

Chant all of the names of our dead and dying

Refuse to forget: 

Kahoʻolawe, Mākua, Pōhakuloa, Mokoliʻi

 

And then look to the horizon

Call upon the memory of hundreds tests

Carried across our oceanic backs

Bikini and Ānewetak, 

Kiritimati and Kalama, 

Meralinga and Emu, 

Moruroa and Fang ata ufa

And all the unnamed caught choking downwind

Epili Hauʻofa’s beautiful Sea of Islands vison perverted into a sea of toxic waste 

The enduring gift from our American, British and French “protectorates” 

So on the morning you wake to the end of the world 

Remember,

we have lived this ending before 

Each bomb of history its own strike

The coming of ships

The spreading of death 

The taming of industry

The carving of land, crosses, and cultures

Until all that was left 

Is what could be packaged and sold back at a premium

All because the men with the plans called power 

Promised us “security” behind the barrel of a gun 

Cut a fortress out of a breadbasket and called it “productive” 

Warships, cannons, and Gatling guns pointed at the palace

Then fixed into the ʻiwi of our mountains 

For “protection”

None of it 

Will save us the violence that will continue to come

Bullets only beget more bullets

Bombs only beget bigger bombs

And in the end, all we are left with is this waste, 

Waiting.

And still all this death 

Is not enough to force our forgetting

Our water, our moana, has a memory 

And we are made in her image 

Together

Meaning 

we are 

intimately connected

and infinitely powerful 

so who but ourselves can hold us accountable?

When none of what has been built will save us

From what cannot be called back

Remember 

This moʻolelo: 

The ea of change is heat

The ea of life only rises from ʻāina and kai 

There is no part of you that is meant to survive

When the cost is this place

Perched up as collateral damage

America’s shining shield sitting in the heart of the pacific 

A warning blast calling for what’s next

Know this: 

On the morning you wake to the end of the world

your vision will be 20-20

so use it

as the men with the “plans” called power call out from behind their screens to tell you to take cover

see beyond the violence of their contradiction

the enduring waste of their direction 

call upon your own mana to make a change 

Choose to remember

Our ʻāina, this kai, these kuahiwi 

And all they have witnessed

Even more they have endured

And still stand to protect us, 

Follow their wisdom 

Come Armageddon or high water  

hold them close

Pull a pule from our naʻau 

Call out to your akua by name

And commit to live your life in their image 

Not matter what the consequence 

And maybe

Just maybe

The world may not have to end again

Tomorrow 

For Mauna Kea

Its been 300 days since I first laid in your arms

First felt the chill of your kiss on my skin 

You brought me to the thin line between life and death

Between frostbite and heat exhaustion 

You taught me balance

Patience

Compassion

And when you stretched your arms around us

You taught us safety

What it meant to create securities from our own bodies

Voices 

So for you 

I am every child who imagined someday you’d be free

I am every prayer laid at your feet

These days 

I am hundreds of miles away 

But you still visit me in my dreams

We share ceremony with Niolopua

And in that realm 

You keep all my secrets

All my fears 

All I am too afraid or ashamed to say out loud

For my fellow kiaʻi

Its been 300 days since we marked the boundaries

Lined our jurisdictions with the trembling tenor of our collective voice

Since we began to feed each other

In food

In spirit

In care

For you

I am everything that cannot be broken

I am your first pinky promise

I am the incoming swell

I am every bit of love you taught me to lay at her feet

I am songs between stories, between tears

I am the water we fought to protect

That we shared 

Together

In the bitter cold of night

When we worried

No one else was coming