Day 984: turning over and over

First, there is silence
then, a part of you falls through
diamonds of tears scattered

everywhere.

Day 982: Haiku for Silence

to be without words
is to forget the distance
i have moved through, you.

Day 983: haiku for mothers

For mothers who have
skeletons for memories
flashback for daughters

Day 981: haiku for distance

hearing what i want
i smile at your request
to be held once more

980: Haiku for simon

i wonder how words
will return themselves to me
unspectacular

Day 979: haiku for rhythm

Home is an island
holding me while she dances
over the ocean

Day 978: Haiku for your gravity

what part of you is
given to the moon tonight
what is left for me

day 977: beyond the horizon

Tonight
my mind is on chicago skylines
and the way 2 eyes
made me distant enough to ignore the lines
ignore the sides we promised to stand by

tonight
i am forgetting
how to ignore the remnants of you that i still carry with me
i do not want us back
i just want the parts of myself i lost track of in our collision

but what of all this i have taken
pieces of my confidence
that shine still of your smile
fractures of my strength
set ablaze by the electricity in your gaze

i promised myself
id stop wriing poems for you
but what about for the parts of me that were never returned
do those pieces stay silent too?

tonight im remembering a girl who loved me like skyline
like iʻd always stay
and im loving a girl
who trembles under my touch
i am recognizing the difference
and remembering the loneliness
i couldnt ever shake as your horizon

this is not a poem for your smile
its a psalm for our story
its a promise to carry forward
whisper to remember why it ended
this is not for the way every woman in every airport seems to wear your perfume
not for the songs i still use to sing myself to sleep
this is for closure and new beginings

for girls who carry baggage like sickness in the waves of their eyes
for the one who carries me into every tomorrow
reminding me why i left
the heavy and broken parts behind
when you no longer fit in my skin

Day 976: wrinkles

iʻve been sitting here
wondering
what it is about your fingertips
that seem to have such a strong grip on my body

what about your voice that settles the seas in me
keeps my nerves still
when the rest of my body
is running
running
running

there are secrets to be told
in the wrinkles hold of your eyes
promises that never quiet
show me where they hide

Day 975: haiku for movement

Language is solid
childhood moves like water
somehow, learn, connect

Day 974: becoming aotearoa

Green everywhere ou
turn, find something small growing
let yourself become.

Day 973: body

Iʻm trying so hard
to find a piece
of this body to find
peace in

Day 972: Homeward bound

Ive become acoustomed to this hustle
this shifting and transfering
to fit into awkward segments of time
learned to find a part of home in every street
every set of eyes
every smile
a part of place to make me belong

but what is there to be said of this pretending game
how all my genius
returns in my own medeocrity
what of this silence
in waiting
in transit
what of this travel
that has taken me to every edge of the world
when
every part of me hasnt grown in movement
how i seem to have nothing unique and new to say

how solidified regression takes shape inside of my veins
what about this privilage
has turned me so scared of change
so comfortable
in achievement that iʻve stopped to move

it is nights like these that i found myself willing home into every image i see
tuirning the next terminal into nothing
more than a turnstyle
that will eventually take me home

Day 971: stay for sound

how many smiling faces will pass
before our memories harder and crack
shatter under the silence
splinter
in every directions

or is sound something that will ever learn to stay the way
our bodies couldnt

Day 970: kou leo

its been three days
and ive yet to scrub your voice from my skin
your leo from the cavities ive allowed to harden and decay

this morning i woke up to the sing of your conviction
and the stench of time rotting
im wondering how many days will turn from future to past
until either one of us forgets

DAy 969:

Headed to New zealand today.
i will be writing but wont have internet so ill be taking a little hiatus.

best,
jamaica

Day 968:

to share a voice
to have someone listen
is the best form a validation
i much digest
find something here to hold onto to
to bring me into tomorrow
for me
for us all

Day 967:

ill be back tomorrow
when the poems start writing themselves

Day 966:

row row row your mind
gently done the stream
merrily merrily merrily merily

writing poetry sucks

Day 965:

silence slipping you
waiting on the other end
when does it all stop

Day 964:

spin spin spin
as long as you like
ever you stop
i will be waiting by your side

Day 963:

every time i return
something new is up
and something old is gone

i am not the only thing hawaiian that is transforming

day 962: moolelo

why are we only turning to stories
that paint us as monsters
and whores
when there are so many
that we were
as kings

Day 961:

The silencing of indigenous thought is not a phenomenon exclusive to Hawaii, nor is it an incident specific to written literature. Any opportunity to dispose of cultural capital is one that must be taken by the colonial project in order o be successful. The silencing of Hawaiian voices in this case, through literature, represents not only the silencing of portions of moolelo but entire kanaka maoli interpretations of moolelo and events and in silencing that interpretation haole translators and academic were successful in changing the landscape of popular kanaka maoli thought.

Day 960:

Hawaii’s literarily history is vast, comprehensive and was almost completely ignored by all scholarship in the islands until well after the second Hawaiian renaissance in the 1970’s. Even though there are an estimated 1 million letter sized transcript pages of nupepa authored by Hawaiians between the 1830’s and the 1950’s the only literature given any weight by haole academics was the serial published work of 4 religiously educated and converted men. To this day, most people do not even realize this resource exists and if it were not for the recent work by Kanaka Maoli authors and academics to unearth these nupep they would be almost entire forgotten.

This practice represents the overall silencing of Hawaiian thought and voices. Those voices were replaced with inadequately translated pieces of literature. These texts remained under the names of the original authors to maintain their authority. For the next 100 some years kanaka maoli and haole scholars alike have to turned to these texts unapologetically as a significant source and launching point for almost all scholarship to bloom from. Ignoring the fact all four authors were men who were converted Christians who had turned away from kanaka maoli gods and that their work was sliced and r4eworked by opportunist haole men it is still incredibly problematic to base an entire academic conversation from the voices of sources – especially when there is a massive pool of literature to also look to when trying to form an image of kanaka maoli identity and history.

Day 959: more thesis

What is so fascinating today about how Hiʻiaka and Hōpoe were creating themselves in this moolelo is the conviction and assertion it takes to do so. This is something we, as wahine, have failed to do throughout most of our colonized history. [must make the distintion between wahine attempting to do so (hui aloha aina- newspapers) and more recent history of wahine leading activism) emphasis barriers]Initial scholarship in Hawaii, written by haole men, would have you believe that this has always been true, that women in Hawaii have been devalued since the adoption of the ʻaikapu. But this moʻolelo gives us an alternate narrative – a narrative composed and celebrated by kanaka maoli, both kāne and wahine. [say something about translation/transmission here]
Today the returning of particular wahine to these moʻolelo/ figures instills a new mode of creation. Kanaka maoli wahine activist and academics who turn to Hiʻiaka and are revisiting the creation of the stories and are allowing themselves to recreate Kanaka maoli images, both for themselves and for their kāne counterparts.
The recent, [last 20 years?], returning of wahine to these moʻolelo has caused us [who?] to investigate the point in which wahine images were no longer created by wahine and in that process how they were interpreted as being devalued causing themselves to in fact devalue themselves and allow others to do the same.

Day 958: Prose from my thesis drafts

Hōpoe is not by any measure a household name. Even those in Hawaii who recognize the name Pele and Hiʻiaka and know of some of their most celebrated journeys are often completely unaware of Hōpoeʻs existence. And yet, Hōpoe was the beloved ʻaikāne of Hiʻiaka who happens to be the favorite sister of the most written about Hawaiian goddess throughout all of Hawaiʻi’s literary history. Hōpoe also happens to be the first kumu Hula. Kumu hula today often come back to Hōpoe as their beginning but most often fail to ask the question, why has Hōpoe been so eassy to forgotten and excluded from our collective consciousness as Kanaka Maoli.
The joining of Hiʻiaka and Hōpoe is more than the collision of two beautiful powerful women as companions and lovers. It is the intersection of oral poetry and the poetry of movement and forever changes the way story and mele are created. In meeting, the two women are creating themselves as apart of eachother. Hiʻiaka gives Hōpoe a home made of rare Lehua blossoms and mele while Hōpoe gives Hiʻiaka movement, dance. Hula then becomes one of the most recognizable ways for kanaka maoli to imagine themselves and project themselves before others.
Today Hula for many has turned in to something entirely different. But at its root has the potential to contest all Hawaiian stereotypes and images and return women with the power to create of themselves.

Day 957: This is the poem that will open my thesis

DAy 957: What they cannot see: A mele from Hiʻiaka to Hopoe

I saw you dancing in the distance
You pulled my glance with the diction of your dance
You
Of unimaginable magnetism
moving over the land like water over itself
moving like mist
like promise
With a name that speaks too much of your magic
Warns of the way, I would never again be able to look beyond your forest
Nānāhuki,
Too heavy for the diphthong of my tongue
Instead let me call you Hōpoe
As if I have been the one to see you gathering parts of yourself in the form of yellow lehua there
As if I had been with you from the beginning
As if were only waiting for the pahu to sound for our dance to begin within each others bodies

You created of this stranger in me
A lover
Let me cover your body in sacred flowers of different colors
let me plant you a forest of rumbling lehua trees
each blossom a promise to return, my love
to move within your dance again
for your rhythm to find home in my mele

Can you see those strange men
Watching us from beyond the page
From under this breath
Can you see the way they have drawn us naked and grown
How they have missed your skin feathered with yellow lehua
How they have done you no justice
How they have written us into stillness
Into silence
how it seems through them,
we have been forgotten
how we have barely existed


I wonder how it is they cannot see
I wonder what has made them so blind

Day 956:

they are waiting for my words
as i have been for months
i want to tell them
to shut up
and be patient

Day 955: STUCK

i have found myself
lately
shuffling between
wanting my life to be frozen into perpetual youth
and wanting every part of my days to be set ablaze
until the morning i find myself beside her and am not counting dount the days until i have to be alone again

it seems simple enough
they say
keep your head up
do your best
and hopefully the world takes care of the rest
but i don't have enough faith in hopefulleys
and maybe I'm too young to talk like i want this to be it

all i know
is theres a girl in north carolina
and 6000 miles is too many for me to feel stable in youth

Day 954: make it wash/ away

they want me to write about my body
but what is there to say of these hands
my palms made of dirt
dust
how they crumble at your touch?

what is there to say of this chest
how is falls faster than the break of a wave
of my back that crawls like a mountain ridge

what of my throat
this voice
how borrowed it feels
how its never mine
what to say
of all these parts that never fit

i want to tell them
that this body is not worthy of these words
these lines that make me feel home
how this skin
never could
not nearly rough enough for my taste
not nearly rigid enough for my eye
how i wanted to be anything but curved and soft
as a child
how i wanted to hide all my weaknesses
turn them all to edges
and corners
how i wanted to be as sharp as an turn

what is to say of that
of a daughter who wanted to be anything but
and a mother
who was worthy enough to please
worthy enough of this discomfort
what is there to say
of any of it

is there a word
to make it wash away