Day 2: When the wave breaks, she creates

When the Wave Breaks, She Creates

I am a woman of feelings

 To live this life in full pigment

is to swallow a million hues of light

is to know a thousand different names and shades of darkness

My body is this moana of language

A tidal swell breaking

called every day into the moku’s sharp cliff

Come and watch the mess I make

Watch the way I crack and call it a performance of strength

Call me beautiful,

as you walk away.

I have been feeling a lot about what it means to receive

To call another body close

To see her tones and to know them as your own

To say, only what the body can

Through borrowed breaths and a stolen glance

To be intentional with the way your wave breaks across the surface of her cliffs

To know a magnetism beyond duress

I have been feeling a lot lately

In this body made of water

In this heart culled from the sea

My dark night pōuli

My dense lipo and shimmering ʻeleʻī

This bruised pōpolo

This hua that sprouts in salt

I have been feeling what it means

To look into a woman’s eyes and ask for her ancestors names

To dive into her pō and inhale deep

To learn to give thanks

For all the languages her body makes

I have been feeling a lot lately about what is left behind

All the times I have been left

behind

And what it means to try

To hold and carry

Rather than tangle and choke the shores that come close

I have been feeling a lot lately

Which for this ocean means:

I have been breaking and spilling

Diving and rising

But today

I am not afraid of my undertow

I do not fear my wreckage

I lust to be undone by your shore

Because I am also a woman who believes

That there are other women of feelings

Who were fished out of the same sea

Who lets her crystal ocean fall and shatter

And calls it creation

Over and over

And I hunger to dive in the waves her heart makes

To be close and hold out my greatest gifts of intimacy

And not be turned away

-->

Day 1: When she gives you Tobacco

When she gives you tobacco
Rub it between thumb and index
Set it ablaze with your fire stained skin
Watch the smoke kiss the sky
Promise not to let your flames burn out again

Reach in

Do not be a body made of hands. Do not reach out to hold everything around you. Holding cannot keep what will not be kept. Do not try to carry what will not be carried. It will only make you heavy with your body made of empty hands, holding nothing. Reach in. Do not show your sleeves made of hearts. Do not show what you cannot get back. Do not be disappointed. Do not be what disappoints. Do not. Do not. Do. not. be. this. way.

Anymore.

After you

Before you

I was a never ending

Ream of words

I was mornings unfolding to greet the day in language

In metaphor

In the rhythm of my thoughts bouncing off my keyboard

After you

I am never quite sure

Of the right word to say 

I am terrified of paper

I am apprehensive of anything proposing its own permanence

I am looking for exit signs

In all the pretty girls eyes

I am looking for you

And the wind

In everything I do

After you

I am forgetting the names to my favorite songs

I am turning the melodies inside out

Pulling the words out from the spine
slow and one at a time

After you

I am without

Everything I thought was

I am no language

I am foreign tongue

I am tone deaf 

I am too quiet

I am removed from my hands

I am full of salt

after you

I am not mine

Anymore

Love letter to Pōhaku:

Inspired by Noʻukahauʻoli Revilla 

4 to fill the mouth

to stop the hunger

from foaming over

2 for each palm

ʻiliʻili keeping rhythm

craddled between tight fingers

thousands for the ahu

the paia

 – the ala nui

1 million ʻai pōhaku emerging from ʻāina and ocean

protest passed carefully between generations

chewing rocks for water

Warm Welcoming Fire: For America

I cannot write

another name / his body sunken

I cannot stand

the weight, another brown boy is

hanging / I cannot breathe

this generation’s inheritance

the choking stench of violence persists

this accumulated death of the innocent

so instead I watch as we take

up

the pens and signs

throw our hands

up

the voices

and prayer

up

we open

our palms crying

please

don’t shoot

//

count the syllables and cities who home the buried

who mourn the dead and dying

Whose breath is held

Still waiting

for justice

Count the times

We have watched the master’s call for massacre

Held our young and brown closer

Shielding our children from this wildfire

Of slaughter turned acquittal

Remember the young men

Remember America’s promise

Kept secret from their opened hands

Today we light this foundation

that allows for the protection of the killing

and the dishonor of the dying

we burn with the skin and bones of our children

black

dead

but not forgotten

begging

//

what will change this country

if not a young man

shot porous

his open palms’

broken promise

his burial’s

warm welcoming fire

//

ʻĀpuakenui

ʻĀpuakenui is licking her lips across Koʻolau’s spine

And I watch as their Uhi falls down her curves and floods the muliwai

ʻĀpuakenui is tracing her fingers across the open shell of a crowning tsunami

And I am a recollection dissolving

Trying to (re)member the way you and I once shaped moana

ʻĀpuakenui is flooding light into the breeching bay of Heʻeia

Catching Oama between the webs of her toes

And I am holding my ea at the base of this Manawa

Waiting for your ʻŌpihi lips to bring me home

ʻĀpuakenui is shaking the ʻōpua free from her seaweed hair

Shaping sky for her promiscuous arc

And I am two palms opened to akua

Trying to catch the iʻa that fall from her scalp

ʻĀpuakenui is crying

Waling for a lover who wont return

And I am wet with longing for you

E kuʻu hoa ʻōpua o Hōpoe,

            Not even all this beauty

Shedding itself around me

misting this palapalā

Can distract from my longing for your lips

Sweet like the ʻiwi of ʻōpihi

After the tongues first taste