430: i wear my culture on my skin

i wear my culture on my skin
damned like windward springs
where children rain into leaders
our own contained colonization
our stolen evolution
can you see it?
from mauna kea to keaukaha
our empty answers with rich questions no one seems to recognize
how stale our containment must be
for our sands to prostitute themselves
from a revolting lili'u
who was so misunderstood
i wonder what color she would bleed before the missionaries told her she was human enough to
and what could their children have seen other then beauty
as they watched our rough empty palms turn dust
turn dirt
now we look at ourselves in digust of what we have become
but dirt is not dirty
it is just brown
we are not gone
just forgotten
liquid beauty
surviving colonization
one trickle at a time
my skin is murky
i like it that way
its hard to tell where i've been and from whom i sprout
i am preserving myself today
from my haloa roots
to my keaukaha fins
from palolos mud
to kaimukis winds
there is something to be remember
danced
the water is warm today
my skin is waiting to be embraced

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