If you are going to call yourself a writer - a reminder to myself

if you are going to dare call your self a writer
an artist
a woman who pulls words from the vein of body
then words better come
better pray
it rains you some
metaphor
that they crash down
in thunder
strike the ground
hot enough to turn the crumbling earth
into iridescent foundation
something solid
for life to be held
even the smallest of it

if you gonna call yourself a writer
better not wait for writing to happen
better happen yourself into writing
better force yourself awake
each evening
force the finding of words
better tie cords into your edges of your wrist
better pull til worst fall free
better take care as they tumble
down before your eyes
down from your blood
down
down
down
better pay close attention
better not expect any pay or attention
aint gon get any
anyway
better keep on that writing
better keep on that focus
better keep on
better write
write, write
if you are gonna call yourself a writer
you better
write

What missing you means

i leave the bathroom door unlocked when i shower
take my time
wash my hair
once
twice
stop at three times
i wait
wondering if waiting will bring your return

i curl my body into the corner of my bed
press my skin agaisnt the cold of the wall
let the only heat come from my breath bouncing off my pillow
i let my body remember the space you occupied when you were here
refuse to let it dissipate

i eat lots of ice cream
and cry into my pillow
play the weepies and sing along until
my sobs drown out any sound resembling music

i am overly dramatic
write metaphors to compare my longing for you to some kind of serious trauma
it is not
we are perfectly safe in this distance
and one of us always returns
we will be okay

but it doesnt mean i do not find myself empty
having forgotten how to survive alone
it doesnt mean i will lock my bathroom door
anytime soon
or that i will take advantage of a full empty bed
no
there is no trauma
but i will miss you terribly
like there is
for every minute
of every day
until you return
to my arms
and ill show you
how iʻve saved your space

I avoid this city

i avoid this city
tred lightly on the cracks of its concrete
not wanting to leave a mark
not wanting to be remembered
to give any part of myself away
i have worked far to hard for every inch of this body
i shake myself hoping not to carry the dust of this shattering glass ceiling home
no

i desire very little of it all
spend so much of my time
unwilling in the face of change
maybe growth too
definitely of anything resembling service to this city
i am a caged and hardened skin of a woman

and iʻve seen what a place this loud and fast can do
seen the way it has warped the bodies and minds of my own people
how they are often made stronger and better for it
how being stronger to them
means forgetting and failing to return
i am not interested in that kind of strength
i did not come here to be changed
i do not intend to become desired enough that i am asked to stay
i did not affix my name to that kind of contract

no
i am selfish in my pursuit
coming only to take
and observe
and i find it hard to be ashamed
after so many years
of trying to make the tracks of foreign interest disappear from the sands i call home
i find it so hard to feel selfish
when looking to the past for an excuse my for action
i find it so hard, sometimes
and im glad
because anything easier might
encourage me to stay

Kin of Cloud

She will not have seen my body burned

Fire trusted onto every inch of melting skin

How my Fingertips slipped like salty sweat to the floor

Parts of me continuing to burst

The heat of blood expanding through newly shrunk and smoked body

Shriveled and condensed over again

She will not see me watching

Only imagine

Someone sky like

Kin of cloud

Gazing down at her hands clasped

Tight

I will watch her hardened woman

Pew like

Erect

altar of a body

Overlying her self in water falling through

She will not see me watching

Admire the way her body conforms to mourning

As if in specialty

How I will worry it will remember this contortion in muscle

Maybe she might find herself alone in what was once our bed

Erect and statue like again

giving her water to the gods in offering

eyes not knowing how to shut

Afraid of the fire my body found behind the darkness

she will not see me watching

from behind my own eyes

Photographed and still

how even beyond the skin and bones left

closed

and casketed

there is a contorting game I will play

to fit myself

into every photograph that remains

to watch her

to pray in whatever light that may remain

how my body will be folded and harden too

I will have no water left to offer

But try

For her

To leave some sort of physical sign that I haven’t quite left

That she should not remove the trinkets and parts of my memory that have found a miracle way to stay

I try to tell her that I am here

By using my photograph stare

try dive into her body

And allow her hands to open

Eyes to close

Try to show her there are many ways to mourn

Not all ending in the drain

Of all that you are left

After everyone else who had loved me is gone

She will stay

Continue the pouring out

And I will dream of a way

To shatter this photograph

And join her

My arms stretched around her body

Spine erect

Alter like

Stiff as a pew

But as soft as our morning prayers

I will imagine my body

Returning everything shes offered

Wrapped around her skin

Protecting her

From the fire

Theif

there is a child in me
severed in half
a body blasted open by a fracturing slug to the chest

also a mother
someday to be
who will fear to do anything other than hold her daughter close
who will wonder if birth is irresponsible
if there will be no welcome for the fragile innocence of childhood

there is a sister
still learning to do justice by the name
not equipped with the thickness of skin to stop crying long enough to understand why this happened
her hands unable to lay still
searching for the soft skin of her younger siblings
the ones she knows are 6000 miles south west of these blasting bullets
of the shattering glass of winters quest promise
and yet
she will watch every minute of footage
every fucking second
searching for the eyes of a 9 year old girl
who reminds you of home - of a child she once held close to her chest
she will wonder if this is the penance you will constantly have to pay for allowing her heart to love

and beneath all of this...
there is a woman
i am trying to be
trying to hold all these pieces together
long enough to write it out
to gather all the shattered bits close enough to see an image
close enough to make sense of it all

but no
there is no sense
just a child, a mother, a sister and me
reading the news
watching the line of children skatter
watching their eyes turn dark
knowing they will never be the same
like i will never be the same
that something was stolen today
from us all

Letter to myself (for Colloquium)

I know girls like you

The kind to run when seeing stacks of words on top of each other

I know the way it makes every part of your body stutter, shake and shatter

How the insecurity you think you’ve locked under your skin

Comes flying past the surface

I know how the repeating consonants remind you of bars

And walls

Scratch against the back of your throat

Like dry chalk

How you will cramp and cram your tongue into itself

Just to make the sounds seem like they fit falling through your lips

I know how you will write

Write

Write

And not know why

Not understand the ocean of water falling out

Because you will refuse

To let a single word under light

Because you are second language

Second chance

You are back of the classroom

Without a hand

You are broken body

And beated tongue

You are poems

On poems

On poems

Because the thought of punctuation makes you want to crawl inside of yourself

Makes you remember

You dumb

You worthless child

With words no worth

Illiterate

They say

Illiterate you believe

Because your vocabulary don’t stretch far enough to understand

The way the attempt at that insult is laughable

No one understands

Not even yourself

Cant even communicate right

Got twice the number of words 4 times the feelings circling in your mind

Don’t make no sense

The ease of the other kids language

Only have one world they need to find fitting into their mouth

You

Clawing at broken century tongue

And colonial empire

It is a miracle you haven’t torn yourself completely to pieces just yet

So many things you don’t know

Cant understand

Can barely see from inside

That cage they built with the rules of their words

Make you believe they own your tongue

And all the fire your saliva spits

They don’t know how you’ve severed all their language in half to make it stable

To make it mean

How bright that light of you shines

Who would have thought your future would be in words

Not you,

I know

And because you were the last to learn of your brilliance

It will be your job to remember

The fractures of beginning

The way you built your own fortress from nothing

Took those words they called broken

And misused

And lined the whitest of Houses with your dirty brown speech

Don’t let their walls, cages, rules and commas name you anything other than genius

Than strong

Than beauty

Because you are transformation embodied

Evolution acquired

You are two worlds

In one throat

The closest thing to coexisting

That survives

You are Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio

A chant sung to the heavens

You are made of words

Built of language

And the last thing you should be afraid of

Is yourself 

Untitled Oli nō Hōpoe (first draft)

many men have told my story

have uttered your name into speech

some 

have carved it into stone and pepa

some part of you 

and i 

live forever in the margins between sound and solid

but no man

no woman 

or soul

no body has written or known the words we shared

no one ever attempted at their brilliance

those parts of us were only held in body

in leo

now

stay carved in the creases of my palms

so that every part of this earth i hold - has a moment to know your touch

because maybe our words are best kept for two

but the manner in which you glided over and danced with papa deserves to be shouted from my palms

so i will resist

as i always have

the letting go of the ocean of you that often tries to fall through me

i will hold so tight these hua

so that they may lay still in the center of my belly

when feelings swell like oceans

in memory of the site of you

evaporating into sky

a brush burning into night

after too many mournings

of my body being worthy of the name distance

those parts of you we shared in quiet

i promise, 

they will not spill open

because it is right that only this earth knows of the words we planted

only the lehua can ever claim our love

it is right

even if they too are gone now

To Iliana on your 18th birthday

i dont remember how i spent my 18th birthday
not what i ate
or the company i kept
and i find all of this disrespectful of this day
and how much i wish you were here long enough to forget milestones like i have

i also remember very little of my high school graduation
those kinds of things seem to slip out of me
the way water fell to the ground
every moment has its own constant
mine comes in water
a forever reminder of my own infinity

but you will not forget a day that never came
and we will not forget the way that lack
strikes us in the space between ribcage and chest

you were barely 11 years old
the sunday we sent you off on the clef of a song
i was 15
and trying to stay still enough to sing
my father is good at these moments
pouring metaphor over melody in an attempt to delay the sting
but tonight i wonder
if he remembers the way your father waled the lyrics to the days of my youth
i wonder if he knew that song would forever conjure your face
and leave me silent
and wanting nothing to do with beauty

there is no new way to say goodbye
so tonight
i play songs that make me uncomfortable
that make me remember
make me see your mother and father
and mine
and a pastor
who i realize now is no longer here
because some milestones will surely slip through my mind like molten silver
but i hold you
and those voices
and those hands close and tight in the ducts of my eyes
and i slow the faucet of falling sadness to make sure i have some to keep
some of you, and the 15 year old version of myself
re-realizing morality
and injustice

i do all of this
to be sure
that you will not leave
not again
that i will not
let you go
without a piece to keep

Day 29: tonight

dad sings about times that were
and i am just listing to a song that was
on the tip of everyone tongue

everyday
someone leaves
today its me
stumbling over words
and guitar strings
trying to slip out a melody
but there is only rust and sand
goodbye
and lost lives
and a girl too young to watch
so today it is me, leaving

some nights i am brooklyn bound
C train stuck
trying to build my home in the ruble of crumbling buildings
some nights i am pacific
open ocean
distant

tonight i am a million empty miles in every direction
i am the hollow of my fathers guitar on nights it lays forgotten
and the melodies we've allowed to slip under our skin
the ones we refuse to mention again

tonight
i am slicing every inch of this distance
trying to find a metaphor
convinced there has to be something serious hidden in the nothing that surrounds me
i am wrong
and stubborn
and trying to ignore the pieces of me falling out

Day 28: When we Finally Realized

when we finally realized we were the language...

we scraped the silver lining from our shackled skin 

tore ourselves back to black

and brown at the edges

let the screaming dance escape

when we finally realized...

we became a home

with salt and sea protection guarding a place worthy of our roots

when we finally realized

we planted something that could grow

threw away their parts of speech

the ones that had us cuffed and cored

we executed their verbs 

and pro nous

returned to our ku'u

to our kåkou and 'oe

and let the 

she and he's

her and him's

the its and me's

let them be a broken shimmy 

down

down

down the drain 

when we finally realized

WE could name our bodies

we held our tongues

and danced the sight of it

to sound

Day 27: I dont want poetry

I dont want poetry
i just want sleep

Day 26: To Hiʻiaka

To Hiʻiaka: An Apology for my inadequacy - from the kind of ʻimiloa who falls apart in distance

For the better part of the last year i have tried to hallow out a crator of your story
to build an echo of a song worthy of your voice
i have traced the lines of yours weʻve remember on the underside of my wrist
a promise
i have turned every lover into a flower resembling your Hōpoe
a memory worthy of that sacrifice
and made an event of your memory
never taking a moment to recognize my shortcomings in your depiction
in the aligning of your brilliance to my mediocre

so instead of spending this evening writing lines to form a voice that i cannot capture
tonight i am scribing you an apology
for pretending i had any right to speak your story
when every part of me is too weak in your footsteps
when every part of me crackles in this seeking
in this distance from home and lover
in the same instances that you seemed to flourish

i cannot promise
only hope to turn this journey of mine into something worthy of your name
turn these words into something resembling what you have left behind

Day 25: rain

silver pieces slipping off the edges
minutes combed over
to one side
the way time passes
pushes
and breaks
makes me something special
sometimes i carry the sparkle it shakes in my skin
wait for the rain

make it wash away again

Day 24:

im scraping alll the cracks here looking for a sign of life

only to see the remnant of the way things died

only scar tissue shaking itself to dust

under the shake of this cities steps

Day 23:

I am completely uninterested in catching up

just catching on

only want a little space to call my own

and enough words to write something inspiring every once and a while

only want to be worthy of the words im been given

only want a little time to grow

proper

Day 22: Arthritis, A Haiku

fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck

fuck, i hate my fucking life

fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck

<3

Day 21: ʻIolani Palace

First a symbol

An idol erect

Showing strength

And luxury

And civility

First always a symbol

Second to gather

To come

To be come

To dance

To sing

To remember

Second to gather

But First a symbol

Third a home

A place where to rest his head

A king with a crown created

A crown adopted

A banner of how genealogy might translate to English

Third a home

After they gathered

To the symbol

Fourth to morn

A place to return

A woman remembering the cold

And his smile

And the rain

And the man

The final note of his moʻo

The man under the gold shimmer

Fourth to morn

Within the home

Once they had gathered

To become a symbol

Fifth, a faith

A woman rising from the ash of a brother- failed

A woman within the word of god but true to her moʻo

A resistance assembled so

In music

Or constitution

Fifth a faith

That spurted from morning

Within the home

That they gathered to

To make the symbol true

Sixth a prison

Not a metaphor, no

A prison with columns turned to bars

Holding her captive

With only her song

Only her god

And her love for her kanaka

Sixth a prison

For 6 months in 1896

Sixth a devil

She endured in strength

Now a museum

A castle full of memory

not allowed to touch

what symbol remains?

Only that we once existed

And now cannot hold what is our own

With class panels

Like bars refusing the gathering to happen

The commune between mother and daughter

Not a place for the lahui to rest through the night

Not when the doors have been shut

Not when we must ask to be home

So still we mourn the loss, a symbol still standing

Mocking us of what we cannot have or touch

Now, only a reminder

A gravitation pull

To place and memory

Day 20: ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi

their eyes widen when the water falls out

ocean spilling vowels through me

kaona spurting from the salt

classmates stutter in silence

trying to repeat

sound locked in their shackle shaped lips

they do not know

the way their english barely breaches the surface

and i find it ironic

that i have been chosen

an artist in a mode

dictated by the superficiality of colonial tongues

for the first time in over 4 years

i find myself isolated by translation

remembering how comfortable i am in this crater

laying my body in the curve of Haumea's tongue

and yet, in contrast

how self conscious i have become of my presentation

and the way the others gaze

scopophelia spilling from the iridescence of their irises

making me sculpter like

walls building around me, a museum

until i am still again

silent

letting only the english

breach the crest

Day 19: 9/11

the soot of this crumbled city

sits under the skin of its decedents

the ones who havent fallen

who continue to walk towards tomorrow

erect and outstretched

they say the skyline looks different

but i dont know any difference

this place is still a mystery

covered

and clasped

kept from me

i do not see the home made empty

or withered away

or the bodies decayed

i do not watch the silver sky fall

i do not remember

because i was not there

but i stand here in awe

of all that has not fallen

Day 18: Pau ʻole

he maoli ke kanaka

he aina ka wahine

he pono ka piko

he mea hoʻomau

he mea pau ʻole

Day 17: melting

how sad it is

to long to be

turned inside out

beneath the sea

how sad i must

live this life

where water only falls

from faucets

how sad it is

to look out

and see nothing but the city

and to wish it to melt

into a puddle

or sea

or pool

or ocean

or anything

that might remind me

of home

Day 16: translation

Heoli's tongue is

shattered frames of glass film, try

to mend translation

Day 15: Symphony

Sweat collected in the crater of my neck

heat callused to my skin

blistered

and scabbed over again

peeling

over again

there is a process to shedding heat in this city

along with every worry

it is developed through a patient practice

in which woman

peel back the most out layer of themselves

over again

build over a masterpiece of the one that once existed

every evening i am reminded of the way the day can stick to you

and i find myself in ceremony

standing under a symphony of water falling over

do not let the sound of breaking out

not to remind anyone but yourself that the shedding occurs

over again

they know already

and need no reminder other than their own

keep your body quiet

let no one hear the tears turn

to symphony too

Day 14: Calluses

Dad says the calluses will come

that the broken bodies falling over my feet

i will learn to blind myself to injustice enough

not to let it cut at me

get caught under my skin

like a promise i cant keep

that maybe

the fact that my subway ride gets darker and darker the deeper i get into brooklyn

and the shoulders fall further and further

and life seems to get

harder and harder

that someday

those thoughts

of being heavy

wrong and hurtful

will start to slide off of me

like melodies strung from guitar strings

i guess these are the parts of life

you didnt realize you were getting

with your bargin apartment

Day 13: city of sound

i forgot this feeling

of wordlessness

of running out

and away

falling short

and over

over

over

again

there has got to be something new to say

and so maybe this leather skin iʻve been practicing

is making it harder to take time in my own skinning

for the reader

too much of me is already turning tough

out of necessity

but that was not the point of this journey

why stand under these flashing lights

if all the shine does

is makes me want to curl into myself

what is the point

if it leaves nothing to be shared

only fear closing me over

not a word left

to be said out loud

why move to the city of sound

if it only inspires my silent hustle

Day 12:

i fear the violence of your translation

over

the bound of your fist

Day 11: fear

i am told to fear the city in which i sleep

there is no solace to be found in these streets

just a people

broken by the economy

and me

a girl

who's never been afraid to walk home late

a day in her life

how this city will shake her to the core

even in the safest of space

make her wonder how strong she is

and if maybe she was born of something softer

sand like

not worthy of these

flashing lights

Day 10: a word from LIliʻu

To be honest it doesn't feel right for it to be my voice today. In celebration of the queen today I have copied her final speech as the ruling monarch.

E ʻola mau ka lāhui ʻo Hawaiʻi !!!


I, Lili'uokalani, by the Grace of God and under the constitution of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Queen, do hereby solemnly protest against any and all acts done against myself and the constitutional government of the Hawaiian Kingdom by certain persons claiming to have established a Provisional Government of and for this Kingdom. That I yield to the superior force of the United States of America, whose Minister Plenipotentiary, His Excellency John L Stevens, has caused United States troops to be landed at Honolulu and declared that he would support the said Provisional Government. Now, to avoid any collision of armed forces and perhaps loss of life, I do, under this protest, and impelled by said forces, yield my authority until such time as the Government of the United States shall, upon the facts being presented to it, undo the action of its representative and reinstate me in the authority which I claim as the constitutional sovereign of the Hawaiian Islands.
— Queen Liliʻuokalani, Jan 17, 1893[14]

Day 9: poem poem poem poem

Never needed a reason to love u
Only looked for a reason to not fear you
To hold u
Find a part of your body strong enough to build
Never told u how much I would fear your lips
In leaving
Never told u
Cuz it didn't matter

A love lost
Is a love never had
And I rather not continue the production of wiping away the past

Poem poem poem poem
Words go on
Saying nothing.

Day 8: broke

I find that it's easy
In this city
To hemorrhage money