Flying to Hawaii

Outside my window, an untrammeled wilderness of clouds rear their heads over a sterling sea, and one can almost hear the rustling taffeta gown of the Pacific, laced with positive imprints of the air currents. Clouds commute toward the land, and out to sea again in Peregrinó colors—capturing fleeting glimpses of the spectrum, and the burnished gold of the morning sun is a deep ache of copper, or perhaps it’s Homer’s wine-dark sea, beneath us. An odyssey of thought escapes its earthly confines, as we wing west to the land of the ever-young. Or at least a hunkering back to the beginning of time. Perhaps we are all pilgrims here. Some are arriving for the first time, others returning home. One way or another, it is all a journey. A cluster of fishing boats, huddle like whitecaps on the outer banks. The wind singing arias. Strong headwinds leave us in suspended animation. Cirrus and stratocumulus clouds, odd lone whips of fog, perhaps a squall, I think of how useless the rain is on the ocean. Then a scurry of mare’s tails, scud clouds surfing on the surface of the sea, all following the currents, seemingly alive, a sentient slipstream or a dance cotillion. Clouds give way to the illusion of continental shapes, or ice sheets. Then, for a moment, I forget my worries, and think I am among the Gods. I am mesmerized by the separation of sea and sky, the horizon is both obscured and melded by the clouds. And that dark beyond, the great unknown, is both the nursery of stars and the crèche of death. The curvature of the earth is a subtle plain. Below us, the Marianas Trench, the deepest place on earth, and beneath us, the Farallón Islands, slip by unannounced, they are the last landfall and handholds of the Pacific Plate migrating north to return home to Pangeac depths, but the poles are shifting, north is changing its mind once again and the ice is melting, all that archaic sweet water, slipping into the bosom of the sea from whence we came.

Journal entry, 7/21/91, on the last flight home

7/21/91 on the flight home, I watched Robin Williams in Awakenings. The L dopamine story weaving of  catatonic events. When I opened the airplane windowshade I discovered that it was nightfall. I fell asleep, it was as if… Robert De Niro was fantastic as Leonard Low, the first encephalitis patient to awaken. I remember reading about the cases in the early 70s. And I was sobbing throughout the movie. It’s based upon real cases. Oliver Sacks was the technical consultant. I’m a big fan of anything by Oliver Sacks.

We are banking over San Francisco and I have lost nearly 5 hours on this flight home, leaving at 2 PM only to arrive 4 1/2 hours later, at 10 PM, San Francisco time. I opened my window to see the half moon in the sky, crepuscular, no distinction between sky and earth. Clouds becoming one, the transition of two elements.

On the other side of the plane it is deep sunset. Jupiter is visible on the edge of night. Above the declination line between light and darkness where the stars shine, the Big Dipper points the way north. North by northeast, where the darkness decisions upon us all. The bell curve of the edge of the earth throws its shadow against the universe, having harmonized with a moonshadow during the eclipse. We are all part of the universe. Periodic table is an absolute order, even within the chaos.

I thought I saw part of the Southern Cross, but I think it’s only visible in Hawaii during the winter months. But I have seen the Southern Cross shining over the Pacific as we descended the Nazca planes in Cusco on a similar summer eve.

We have not quite reach the apex of summer, and transitions, and many awakenings are about to unfold. Never have I felt so much at a crossroads, as now. Only this time there is a little anxiety or fear. I‘m cognizant of the events of change unfolding. Usually we go through cataclysmic change with only hindsight as our guide—unaware of the apex, or the agent of change until long after the fact. Recollection reflected in tranquility. Call it 20/20 hindsight vision if you must. I can see clearly now.

Journal entry, 7/21/91, our last day in Hawaii, Imelda Marcos

7/21/91, our last day in Hawaii, we ascend to the Valley of the Temples. To our left a small refrigerated tune is nestled among the pines at the top of the graveyard. Kathy points out the Philippine flag next to ours, saying, when Imelda comes to visit her husband, the place is filled with cars.

My friend can see her arrival entourage from her kitchen window. Imelda refuses to bury her husband in American soil. I asked who was paying for his above ground internment, air-conditioned at that. She said the people of the Philippines. Creepy to think of Imelda Marcos visiting her husband who is yet to be buried. In a refrigerated vault, he waits for the political climate to thaw so that he can be buried on native soil. And all I can think of is, does she have all her shoes stored in the vault too?

10,000 carp amass in the ponds of the Byodoin temple, the water is thick with their bodies. They make excited sucking noises as they anticipate food. The Japanese family is gathered in the temple, a replica of the Uji temple, built 900 years ago, to intern two loved ones on the altar in small brass boxes. I marvel how a human being can be reduced to such a small mass. The Abbitts prayer beads and two brass boxes at the foot of Buddha. I want to take a photo of his face in this house light, but it would be disrespectful.

We ring the bell, I love how the final notes resound through my body until my bones resonate too. 3 tons of brass homes a sound of deep calmness and peace. It is said to clean the mind of evil temptation. I believe it. I cannot think of anything else as I enter the temple.

On the roof, the phoenix waits to take the departed’s ashes. There is always spiritual hope. The carp align themselves until the shape of of water begins to swell, domelike. They symbolize order and perseverance. The Buddha of the western paradise watches over all of this. He is a 9‘2“ representation of Amida, a Buddha unique in all the world, the largest wooden Buddha carved in 900 years— 900 years is a long time.

Rabbit Island, Oahu, Hawaii Journal, 7/21/91

I spent yesterday snorkeling off Waimanalo across from Rabbit Island and the fictional Robin  Masters estate from Magnum PI. Superb coral garden to the west, few fish though. I especially liked the strange islands of coral that rose up circular like barrels in blue and green and yellow and white. The Big Island still has the best snorkeling.

Kathie and I went to a beer tasting party in Kailua. Mostly military types. Kailua is that kind of town. People probably didn’t have a whole lot in common with us, I can’t remember their names but Kathie and I got to talk and hang out without her husband David or my friend Marilyn around. Marilyn went for a drive and had dinner again at Koko Head. She wouldn’t have had a good time at this party, guaranteed. Kathie and I sucked back a few beers and ate great pupus, even pipipupus which is beef. To peepee is to go shishi. Tres chic. So you have to be careful.

We took off our swim pareaus, Hawaiian pronounce every letter, soaked in the jacuzzi. Most everybody was from the mainland at one time or another. There were a few Hawaiian boys in this haole madness. The hostess Joanne is small and dark. Joanne’s husband Buzz is in the National Guard, he’s a beefy blond tough guy with speech patterns to match. He seems sweet. A dollar on the billiard table builds the excitement inside.

Kathie and I sit under the eaves, fresh rain has fallen and cleared the afternoon mugginess  from the sky. Someone asks for a Moosehead. Buzz looks in the fridge saying, no moose heads in here, but plenty of beer.

Kathie explains Greek and Sicilian to someone and everybody think she is from the islands. I am tan enough that people aren’t sure if I live here or not. I went to the party in in order to see urban Hawaiian life. Most of the women were racially mixed, while we were white. Military is one of the biggest employers here. And it is colorblind. Kathy says local businesses were hurting when the military was involved in the war—especially the bars.

David works for the military, as do most of the people in this room. Not necessarily enlisted, but as civilians. David does carpentry maintenance and said he had to sign an agreement of non-disclosure—any information he saw or learned on the bases stayed on the base. Clearance codes are like badges, he says, he doesn’t want to know what’s going on. Whenever something comes out into the paper, then he can discuss what is already public knowledge.

He had to sign an agreement that he wouldn’t disclose anything he learned for the next 50 years. The military is worried that the Russians might get those secrets. Ironic in that I just returned from Russia and I say to him, I’m probably on some list, you know. David says during the Iraq war, dolphins were used to retrieve torpedoes. He said contrary to what people think, the Navy isn’t into killer dolphins. They’re too valuable an animal to use on a kamikaze style mission.

Glancing over the library shelves is always a good indicator of character. Both David and Kathie are avid readers. I find William Least Heat Moon. and Blue Highways is next to Larry McMurtry and the Adventures of Marco Polo. I’m too lazy to bend down and see the author. I figure the book is a classic, it’s been around for ages. Several of Isabel Allende’s books, Tolkien is de rígeur. And the Stephen J Gould trilogy. Coffee table books on The Beatles, Baez, the movie industry, Hawaiiana, London, and a fair amount of pulp fiction along with collector’s editions of Shakespeare, Little Men, and Call of the Wild, etc. 

I can’t write a portrait of a woman in a white room, my current passion, because this room is of paneled wood stained gray. I wonder if she’s happy here, or merely surviving life’s trials. They’ve both gotten plump from too much beer. No kids ever came along. She has a friend who started a Romanian child adoption agency. I wonder if she will pursue that avenue. I try to bring the subject up referring to myself saying that I have given up on having kids at this point because at 38 years old, I still haven’t found Mr. Right. but she doesn’t bite. The cats have become their children.

Oahu, Hawaii Journal, 7/3/93, part 2

When Perseus threw Medusa‘s head into the sea, the snakes turned algae into stone and coral. A sign of good luck. Rapture of the deep. At the iron gate on the old Pali Road, a Styrofoam cross and a faded red shirt, small black squares like raisins tied to the tip of an ohia tree. I throw píkake blossoms, someone’s abandoned lei. 

I can’t get used to the hordes of Japanese tourists doing everything en masse, like the random choreography of starlings. Someone’s remembered suicide, the Pali winds didn’t blow him back up, like in the legend. No reprieve. But even though today there is no wind, the wind is blowing floral offerings to the gods of the sky. A suicide remembered. 

Tomorrow is the Fourth of July. And patriotism makes me nervous. Oleg found our graveyards strange. Red flowers equal death on all the graves. A mynahbird pecks at a fallen mango. I’m feeling sorrow for the parting of lovers, the suicide of the heart. The rain is falling like tears—all the clichés to haunt us. Oleg says the sky is the color of his heart turned to stone. The lover’s gaze, an unseasonable summer rain.

Sunset beach—a squall to the west, rain over the ocean, pink from the volcano, Sunset, the golden path of the sun. False calligraphy of clouds. Turtle Bay was murky but along the road, a Chinese man driving a tractor was followed by a cloud of egrets. A white frenzy of wings writing the air with the feast of feathers.

This sunset promises to be a good one, rosiated hue. It was hard to relate to the penguins and the flamingos sharing the same pond at the Waikiki Hilton. Mind boggling.

Turtle Bay is Mormon territory. White-skinned women who have never seen the sun draped in pahoehoe shawls. The men, with their sharp angulations, look like aa, which is fittingly, male lava.

In the place where I buy my second pareau  the owner discusses Japanese buying habits— just as a busload stopped and bought $3000 worth of clothing. Less Japanese here now. The natives are grumbling, but the building racial tension is stanched by the flow of money. We all have our gauntlets. Party boat coming in packed like sardines.

Marilyn walks along the beach in a red toga matching the sky. The squall deepens into purple and becomes opaque, falls into the secret of the night.

Oahu, Hawaii journal, 7/2/91, part 1

I’m feeling a little grumpy because our room, Marilyn’s and mine, in the Hawaiian Monarch, with its advertised corner window and water view—is a minute corner of the Alawai Canal. It has no lanai either. Psychologically I need a lanai to step outside this prison of a room. 

Earlier, I fell asleep beneath a palm tree at the Hilton Fish Pond and I am red enough to prove it. I woke up this morning with a headache and I was doubly grumpy. Such a dramatic change in surroundings. Life has left me feeling discombobulated. I am more tired than I realized. Bone tired. A deep exhaustion factor. Hopefully the Islands will soon work their magic. 

Waikiki has gotten even more so Waikiki on steroids, and the guides blitzkreig us with color and chaos, they offer little by way of bargains. Definitely a more expensive town than when I was last year four years ago. Of course, I stayed with my friend Kathie the last time, in Haiku, and so avoided the whole tourist mess. 

This is Marilyn’s first time here. So we’ll be touristing somewhat. More Japanese and European here than ever, though, Waikiki, which means the gathering place, has always catered to a cultural admixture of folks and everything is either bi/trilingual. The selling of a dream in foreign tongues.

Polynesian paralysis! Oahu, Kauai’i, Hawai’i, Journal, 8/4 -12/84

July 31 

(see Letter to Jim Byrd: Mid-Ocean, Enroute to Oahu) Well, there's land out there— Must be getting close. Mauna Kea. Through the clouds, the low flat tongues of Molokai's shore. 

Oahu: The water is so warm, I had forgotten the sheer joy of it all. Welcome to Hawaii. I'd forgotten about the slow pace here. In spite of 9 million tourists, Waikiki is still manages to be friendly. Waikiki is like Disneyland, or LA shrunk into a dream.

I'm in a room crammed with first-time haoles and not so haole visitors. Very difficult to think. Heavy. Pacalolo means I no can remembah, with an H. So much for intellect. Wish I could leave. Hanamua Bay is waiting, and all those fish....

It is so beautiful here, how can anyone possibly make plans for anything?

August 4

Waikiki, Oahu. Coconut palms grow along the shore, the green nut extracts clear water from the saline sea. We punch a hole in the coconut with a screwdriver. 

The Vietnamese man told me how he gave a local a ride back from Hanamua Bay. Passing the coco palms, he reminisced of the foods he ate in Vietnam. He said: I've been here 10 years. Not the same. The native Hawaiian ran up the coco palm and picked me ten coconuts. It took me four trips to get them all back to my hotel room, he said. 

Seeing me on the lanai above, he offered me a drink, placing the straw in the hole. We sip the faintly perfumed water tasting of traces of salt. There is a drought in Oahu, he said, tourists flush water into the bay while residents take turns watering their lawns. Coco palms grow along the shores of Waikiki, making their own water slowly, slowly.

After the canoe regatta, the women winners say, as the coach falls asleep at the Jolly Roger restaurant at the Coconut Plantation. Our coach goin' down. How you do, Miss Chang? Shaka. Hang in there brah. I not forgettin' notin'. He standed up against the door thing.

August 5

In the hotel I am meeting no one but the shopkeepers and I swap tales of homeland and of journey. Traveling alone, feeling safe, no need to worry.

At the zoo fence, a watercolor artist and I discussed left-handedness and right brain theories. We are defining the role of discipline and art. I came here to write. So far it's all been rubbish. But I'm collecting so much data I feel viscerally ill after each day. 

Polynesian paralysis has taken ahold, slowly it comes when you sleep, and it stealthily slips in like an errant lover into your waiting arms. I keep losing my camera, my keys, my wallet, camera bag, and I am nonplussed. I'm not losing them, I keep misplacing them and then can't remember where I've put them. 

Small kids clamber over and say hi hi hi. We smile, the best of friends. Kathy's nephew Mike and I putter around Hanamua Bay on a raft, we're sharing a snorkel. It's if they were all my children and we are all friends. I discovered how easy it is to be 10 years old again. 

There is something about the Hawaiian tongue that takes hold like a religion. I want to chant Napali, Napali, Napali. I find place names, searching for a place in within me. Lihue, mahi-mahi, Hanalei, pakalolo, talk-talk pigeon. Soon not long you talk like natives. Sentence structure and grammar are as cumbersome as a wool sweater in the tropics. No slack key here. Dakine. English as we know it becomes obsolete. I am convinced the tropics put you into permanent right brain mode. 

Right brain is capable of simple language structure and expletives aren't difficult to dredge up. Listen to the language of the tropics, an excellent reason for Polynesian paralysis. Right brain is inhabiting the timeless creative mode, full of concepts. Left brain is the administrator in Hawaii, and even administrators get a little slack key sometimes. Shaka brah! Hang loose.

August 6 

I spend days in paradise waiting to write something inspiring, earth shattering, nothing comes out. What words can compete with this truly soft caress of the ocean air and the warm blue water breathing on long reaches to the coral sand?

Honopu Trail: Passion fruit, small wild fuchsias, I eat strange red berries, similar to huckleberries, and their flavor reminds me of blackberries. It is so dense, so much undergrowth, I keep my arms and camera above my head. My feet follow a path I can't see. I notice how similar the land is—yet, different. Volcanic soil, blood-red, caked like adobe, yet slippery and porous. The trail I'm on is more than poorly maintained, it hasn't been maintained in years. So many down trees, walking is difficult. More like crawling.

August 7
I feel like I'm coming home to Kauai'i, a place where I’ve never been. Every major movie with those lush tropical scenes was filmed here. Bali Hai rises above us. It's truly what the song says it only rains in the mornings and evenings.

Hanalei: I take the Island Voyager up the Na Pali Coast, and see frigatebirds, tropicbirds, egrets, lava tubes, and caves, we breathe the warm ocean breath from the inside of a sea cave. I swim with sea turtles, barracuda, porpoises, and large schools of mannini.

The water is much cooler than Hanamua Bay. I am transfixed by iridescent seaweed, sea cucumbers, white and pink coral tinged with lavenders and blues. The ride back home was rough. All those following waves. We went inside to see crater, open to the sky—like the wall the Chichén Itzá. Lava tubes sleeping with waterfall to the ocean.

North of Hanalei, there are one-lane bridges, lush vegetation, philodendron, water hyacinth—all in lavender hues. This looks like the South Pacific. I wear a crocheted open work rayon blouse from Bali, with two large hibiscus strategically placed, at the center of those flowers is an offering of life. Women wear hibiscus as large as their faces, behind their ears, and nothing seems out of place. Color has a way of getting tamed on the islands. In Waimea, an orange truck was almost invisible against the red earth.

A father instructs his son to find a yellow fruit, it's ripe, he says, Suck on it but don't eat the seeds. Potentially poisonous fruit as the poison is usually in the seeds, not the flesh. You have to really want passionfruit, it's like pomegranate, only it's orange, and not as juicy—you have to want it passionately.

Over Maui: In this place where land is at a premium, the military is still using Kahoʻolawe, the smallest of the Hawaiian Islands, for target practice, Its tallest point, 1,483 ft, reaches out for help. Kaho'olawe is part of Maui Nui —the original island of Hawaii. The Target Island, Its red lands bleed into the sea, she is curled up, fetus-like, hemorrhaging, as if in pain.

Oahu: at this point I have the instructions for evacuation memorized. It is always good to know all possible escape routes. Crash landing sleep little choice. 

Over Pearl Harbor Quonset huts covered with trees, strange arches, caves where men lived during the war. This flight makes two stops. I'm making the most of it. In high-altitudes, liquor works quicker. The DC-9 gets to a Oahu too fast and we get merry belting our beers down in five minutes flat. Someday I will see all the islands.

See:
August 8 At the coffee plantation, Hawaii journal
August 8 Kona Lagoon, Hawaii journal
August 9 Ke'ie Beach, Hawaii Journal

August 9-10
Big Island. Mauna Loa's curtain of fire. Pele migrated from Nihoa to Halemao'oma'u, in the Kīlauea cauldera. Pele brought offerings of fruit, leis, fish and pigs. As I stand in front of the seismograph, I watch four earthquakes, and two volcanic tremors being recorded within three minutes. It's a seismic calligraphy dance.

Forbidden fruit: While drinking Kirin beer and eating mahimahi sashimi, I think of him, and the fire we both are. Is it balanced, or would we consume each other in our hunger. 

See prose notes Kamapua'a and Pele on Kilauea, which becomes the poem, NOT THINGS THEMSELVES.

August 10

Saturday I spent the day snorkeling. Ed took me to keep a beach Ke'ei beach onto the place of refuge like the edge of a caldera, an exquisite reef, steep mountains of coral, and fish of every description. I swam over 20-foot cliffs without fear and over the blueness of the caldera, such peace. I hope it will stay with me during those times when life gets rough.

August 11 see Letters to Pele, Hawaii journal, Volcano

August 12 

Captain Cook. From the kitchen window I can make out the palm trees of the place of refuge, Pu'uhonua O Honaunau. They say that those who broke kapu, could flee to the city, and seek asylum, but they had to run 5 miles barefoot over ropey lava, while stones were thrown at them. If they made it to the place of refuge, they were safe, but when they did, what did the stones have to say?

Kona, Captain Cook. My cousin Eddie quotes from T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland, while we pick coffee berries in the rain. And he talks about asylum, a place where we all have lived at one time or another. The fragrant coffee blossoms are like gardenias. Ed says they're related.

August 13

After spending five days with Ed, I am content with my visit. It seems that we never get tired of each other, it's as if I've known him all my life. This is one friendship I cherish. So easy, the meals, the boasts, complaints, secrets, and the laughter we shared at everything under the sun. He is as flippant as I am. I will be sad to go. But go, I must. Time to catch the inter-island shuttle to connect to the Red Eye out of Honolulu.

Oakland airport: it's now 5 AM Hawaiian time. Two guys play frisbee in the Oakland terminal arrival lane. I am so sleepy and eager to get home. This time the timing seems right, although I am saddened by the thought of leaving Ed, and I do love the Big Island. Aloha, mahalo nui.

added 9/17, revised

SHORT OAHU poems

The Punchball Crater
serves up a strange broth,
bones of the dead.

As we rise in elevation,
they roll the beverage cart down the hill
to the thirsty galleys of passengers.


Molokai very barely visible in the mist.
Haleakala, the house of the sun,
rises up above the clouds, and yawns.

The pink cuticle of the sea at sunset
pushes back the night
the mountains of the Big Island
rise up for miles and miles and miles.

8/7

Oahu, Hawaii Journal, 8/5/84

In the hotel I am meeting no one but the shopkeepers and I swap tales of homeland and of journey. Traveling alone, feeling safe, no need for more of the same.

At the zoo fence, a watercolor artist  and I discussed left-handedness and right brain theories. We are defining the role of discipline and art.

I came here to write. So far it's all been rubbish. But I'm collecting so much data I feel viscerally ill after each day. I keep losing my camera, my keys, my wallet, camera bag, and I am nonplussed. I'm not losing them, I keep misplacing them and then can't remember where I've put them.

Polynesian paralysis has taken ahold, slowly it comes when you sleep, and it stealthily slips in like an errant lover into your waiting arms.

Small kids clamber over and say hi hi hi. We smile, the best of friends. Kathy's nephew Mike and I putter around Hanamua Bay on a raft, we're sharing a snorkel. It's if they were all my children and we are all friends. I discovered how easy it is to be 10 years old again.

I think of Jim, and Lee, my fat stomach. I notice my tits rest on my rib cage for the first time. Still there's a hole somewhere dark and soft, for a man, for a family. I push the feeling aside, once again I push it deep into the valley where there is no measuring of time, there is no future, and I stroll across the parking lot saying to myself I'm here. I'm right here.

Is this the way it is because I am an artist? Is this a myth? Can one have both? Have I already slipped imperceptibly into another life? There were so many could have been's. Shoulda. Woulda. Coulda.

I left Jim at the airport, saying, Don't worry I don't want a relationship either. Three weeks ago, I was convinced I was still in love—but then there are those who stretch holes in my heart, ripping them a little wider

I discovered for the 87th time I once again confused. I can't tell if these periodic storms of love are real, or is the confusion that is real? We can't ask others to love us no more than we can ask our hearts to love someone who wants us to love them in return and we can't. The more experience love, the less I know of love, life, and what I want.

Lee, Jim it's all the same rock wall story. We're like picky fish on a piece of fruit on the edges of love, and then declare the center to be rotten, to be pithy, a void. The shifting sands whisper will it never stop?

For women, there is a different kind of time then with men. A different way of viewing love, and acceptance if somewhat a fatalistic stance. With men, it's a non-declaration. But we see it in their eyes. Are they cut off from their emotions? Is logic the only language? Left brain dominant.

How is it that we see, when they don't? We spend years arguing over how they won't love us. They make us a point of it, and continue on until one suspect that yes is no, and no is yes. Yes dear, I don't love you but tell me again anyway.

8/5/1984

Postcard to Donna from Waikikii

2 POEMS: UP THE PALI, GUAVA JAVA

UP THE PALI

Up the Pali, the Chinese called this place 

the land of Sandalwood. 

Ginger and plumeria laden the air.

A solitary gecko chuckles in the night.

Koko head, Koko crater 

last point of volcanic activity in Oahu.

Pele, the fire goddess went looking 

for a last home here. Found none.

On the plains of Oahu, 

pineapples grow green skirts.

Dance in the wind.

8/23? 1983

added 9/15.2016

minor revision

GUAVA JAVA

The sun sculpted rain on the mountains

exoderm of ridges leaving rigid lava teeth exposed

The weight of ironwoods anchored in Pali winds.

8/23? 1983

added 9/15.2016

LOS CAPRICCIOS DEL PARADISO

LOS CAPRICCIOS DEL PARADISO

 —one breakfast delight, $2.45 plus tax

The mangoes aren't ripe,

the papayas aren't perfect

and the last tango was in Paris.
Pineapples ripen ever four years,
bananas take seven,
mangoes come twice a year

and in Waikiki—home to the spenders of paradise,
no grass hut for John Steinbeck
or anyone else for that matter,
pods of bronzed bodies outnumber 
the Hawaiian monk seals before colonization

where every season, the season of the tourist.
There is an open season on paradise every two blocks

But the fish still swim in Hanauma Bay, 

their bodies drift with the current

like leaves in the wind, 

and all is forgiven.

5/23/1983

Oahu, HI

added 9/15/2016

POSTCARD TO MARIANNE AND DAVE WARE

POSTCARD TO MARIANNE AND DAVE WARE

Aloha from Oahu.

The birds of paradise 

seem to get stuck up tourist noses

And the only real cure 

is to spend some puka puka.

The waihinis in bikinis on Waikiki

give rise to mail expectations,

But, the fish don't mind 

and that's the current count in the end. 

We all shaka shaka bro, Da kine,

Okay, okay, we hang loose.

The sign says it's okay, okay

And da water, she fine.

No Pele tears here.

Pele, she quiet for now.

Missionary man, he slapped her down good.

But she be like yeast bread 

in a bowl, rising, rising.

Soon, she make ready for da oven.

Oahu, HI

5/23/1983

added 9/15/2016

THE BIRDS OF PARADISE

The birds of paradise 

seem to get stuck up tourist noses 

and the only real cure 

is to spend some puka-puka.

The wahines in bikinis on Waikiki 

give rise to the mail expectations 

but the fish don't mind 

and that's the current count in the end.

We all shaka-shaka, dakine, okay-okay, hang loose.

The sun says it's okay-okay underwater, she fine.

No Pele tears here

Pele, she quiet for now.

Missionary man, he slapped her down good.

But she, like yeast bread in a bowl, rising. Rising.

Soon she make ready for the oven.

Aloha, Mahalo, mahalo.

5/23/1983

THREE POEMS from Hawaii

CHILDREN OF THE SEA

The children of the sea, 

the children of Mauna Loa

Pele raging against the sky

The fish swim between her toes 

in Hanamua Bay.

Her crying reaches the sea,

her black tears cool in its depths.

PAPAYAS

Papaya trees holding their clutch 

from beneath their leafy crowns.

Papaya trees holding their plantations skirts 

above their clutches of fruit

Waking to the cooling of Japanese doves 

wondering where I am anyway.

BREAKFAST DELIGHT

Papaya, Plumaria, papaya 

papaya papaya papaya.

White doves on the lanais in the tropical rain

Mahalo wahini, aloha welcome to Hawaii 

Hibiscus sunrise. Mahalo, Mahalo.

One breakfast delight, $2.45 plus tax.
$2.45 plus tax.

5/20-22/1983

Oahu, Hawaii

added 9/15/2016

MANINI

MANINI

How does the current level wave

capture that luminescence from the sky?

Tiny transparent fish in the surf 

schools of manini grazing on the coral 

as the wave changes, they suddenly shift 

as if they were fall leaves blowing in the wind.

The shifting wave swings the aspen leaf 

bodies of the fish about, as if a sudden dance 

of fall stirred them to madness.

Pale rainbow fish, zebra-striped eels, blue string worms.

How can one describe the hundreds of fish in the reef?

May 20-22? 1983

Added 9/15/2016

FRAGMENTS

FRAGMENTS

The tentacles of the Banyan tree strangled, 

seeking wisdom from the earth.

Too much of a good thing is good for nothing.

Watching Hawaii 5-0 in Waikiki'i

is like déjà vu all over again.

The USS Arizona Memorial 

rests atop a thousand soldiers 

entombed beneath its decks.

5/19/1983

added 9/15/2016

RIDING THE NUMBER 20 BUS

RIDING THE NUMBER 20 BUS

Riding the number 20 bus

the driver singsongs the stops in duplicate:

Diamondhead, Diamondhead

Nimitz Highway, Nimitz Highway

Two types of coconuts over dere 

coconut tree, over dere, coconut tree.

Good shave ice. Shave ice. Kailua, Kailua.

Windward side, Windward side

Punchbowl Arena, up dere Yea, up dere.

Condominiums, condominiums.

See da banyan tree, da banyan tree

Ala Moana, Ala Moana. Hang loose, 
hang loose, bro, sistah, we almost dere. 

Almost dere. Aloha, aloha.

5/19/1983

added and slightly revised 9/15/2016

2000 MILES FROM SHORE

2000 MILES FROM SHORE

Flying west along the path of the sun, 

a perpetual noon blazing on the ocean, 

occasional clouds, carpeted white against the blue—

I awaken from sleep with words 

slowly crystallizing in the conscious realm of thought.

Where do thoughts sleep?

Clouds forming vast mountain ranges at sea

Clouds forming milk skins across the volcanoes.

Tiny islands, mid-Pacific, land catching the clouds, 

a shawl draped over paradise.
All cultivated lands look the same from the air.

The vacant gleam of dark eyes:

the twin summits of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea
watching the sky for signs.

5/17-18/1983

Oahu, HI

added 9/15/2016
slightly revised