Ghosts of Makiki

Sometimes Hawaii feels very much like Guam.

Coming out of the air-conditioned grocery store into the humid parking garage air just after 1am, I can't tell the difference; halfway I expect to see a sign pointing to Hagatna as I leave. Actually I can't think of a compelling reason why it matters whether I am here or there anyway.

Nearly thirty years ago I visited my father in Hawaii. He was temporarily exhiled back into the "proper" United States, a passing, if not uncomfortable, moment suspended between more permanant residencies in Guam and the Philippines. He stayed in a small white house in a quiet neighborhood. There are four things I remember about it- the color, the fact that he shared it with a roommate, the fact that there was pornography lying around, and the fact that his roommate had recently been pinched by the IRS for something like $13,000 in back taxes.

He took me once to a skatepark under a bridge, likely the Makiki park which is about 300 yards from my house where I now sit typing this. Life is truly a comedy. To think how funny it would be to walk up to him then and say "That boy will live here in 30 years"! Much could be added. "A few blocks from here his girlfriend who isnt even born yet will have acid dumped over her by a homeless crackhead and be horrifically injured". It is very likely that he took me to the Ala Moana mall where it happened, although I don't remember for sure.

Often on some side street I find myself looking at the houses and wondering if one of them is where he stayed. In the grocery store I imagine him buying mayonaise. In the dim light of a massage parlor, I imaging him forking over cash to the tired Chinese lady. I wonder if he walked here and there, or if he rode in a car or motorcycle. Those details were not impressed upon me. It's strange how we can do things and things can happen to us and the memories of those events be totally and completely lost to us, as if we were never there. Stranger still that somebody else may actually remember us from that moment. Maybe somebody remembers a daddy and little boy at the skatepark, who was too timid to try. The whores my father visited then are probably in their seventies now.

The first thing I remember from Guam is walking out of the air-conditioned airport into the humid night air just after 1am, and my fathers glasses fogged up, and the hopeful excitement on my mothers face.

Five twenty eight

 

When you come into my house
take off your slippers
and the rest of your clothes
and wear the tradewinds instead
that come through the slats and
slam the door.
Put on the orangish light of 5:28 pm,
it's just your size
and the color goes well with the apology
I imagine you offering.

I smelled the rain tonight
before I saw it, or heard it, and
the first time you reached for me,
I was in a small Vietnamese restaurant
by myself.

Lights

 

Up I went
Deep bends, left and right
Apex, sink the wrist
and squint as the throttle does its thing
Halfway I caught up with a truck
A fucking box truck carrying
who knows
What could they possibly need at the top of a mountain?!

Anyway
The hillside was full of couples watching the
sunset over waikiki and I assume they
thought the twinkling lights looked like stars
or something
But when you're alone
they look like fleas on the back of a dog.

Bougainvillea

Across the vinyl sole of my living room scrapes

gently

the fallen petals, the blushing faces of the Bougainvillea I

picked three days ago

and sentenced to death in a pickle jar.

It doesn't make much noise at all and

in fact

is almost lost entirely

when it mingles between notes of piano jazz and

traffic on the H1

twenty yards beyond my window.

But it forms the verse to a song

the chorus of which

repeats every night at around 3am

when the highway sleeps (making one of us)

and the adjacent brook, the fresh water from Tantalus

chats with itself about topics

only a stream could ever care about

and drifts through my window.

Silence may be golden but

you can't eat gold, or live on it

so jazz will have to do.

Shipwreck prayers

 

I can’t play guitar like I used to

But there’s still

A song in my heart

And I don’t drink as much as I used to

But I still hurt

In all the same parts

And watchin my boy run

Through the milkweed

Playing tag with the afternoon sun

I felt for sure I was a hundred

And his life had just begun

God damn what a gift

Every moment we’re given

Right there on the cliff

Is when we start living

And I don’t know how long the wind is

Gonna blow this sail

But I know I’ll prevail

With help from the man upstairs 

And shipwreck prayers

A series of short stories about several different women I know well

She moves close to the edge of the nest

cocks her head sideways

Looks down wobbling, stretches and

leaps off into space

But her wings are overburdened with bombs

She gets up at dawn and busies her hands

hoping her mind will follow

A-hum, she makes the clink of delicate ceramic

against a silent kitchen

and the smell of tea

She bites without thinking

nips the finger, stains the bread

The skin remembers the club and the whip

long after the cage is opened

goading the snarl to rise

She knows a strange song

composed of notes written in cursive

“I could tell you but you’ll have to kill me”

is her only reply, brassily

when I ask the key

She whispers a defiant flag

to the tip of the mast of a tiny ship

adrift on a tiny sea

capturing vessels

twice her size and vanishing

She wraps her bare legs around a fly

digs her fingernails

into its back hoping

to catch the wings in her fist

and tear them off at the root

A current warm

I was at sea once
afar off from the safety of shore
nothing but the gentle sloshing of black waves
and the tug of a small wind
to hear, and in the darkness
no ships passed.

At some point
a current, warm
began pushing me with an imperceptible breath
small but determined
it carried me in for a ways
until I could see just on the horizon
the faint glow of home.

But in my confusion I
swam against it and
now I
wetter and colder and
a little lower in the water,
the long night sits down beside.

Purchase of Wings

The streets of your city
are concrete and gritty
to the touch
The rules drive me crazy
and I've never cursed this much
but the railing is nice
a clever device for two lovers to lean on
and take in the night
the lights and the cars
and the sounds from the bars down below

Your beaches are pretty
the palm trees are really
alright
Combined with the water
the sun on the sand is
a sight
but the twinkling stars
and the sound of the heart
racing inches below where my head rests
is best
There's no lights and no words
only goodnights from birds where we lay

Then I wake up
make coffee
check messages
I can't believe that we made it a year
Was it the sunsets
or dancing
or Grand Marnier
that caused us all of these tears?
Either way it’s a wash
bittersweet is the cost
that we pay for the purchase of wings
made of string

We walk from the station
to our destination
single file
I'm wanting to hold you
I'm wanting to scold you
with a smile
But we hurry to part
then we delay the start of
the future that scares us to death
Now it finally came and I'm boarding the plane
with your memory still on my breath

Then I wake up
make coffee
check messages
I can't believe that we made it a year
How could the sunrise
and mountains
and Grand Marnier
cause us all of these tears?
Either way its a wash
bittersweet is the cost
that we pay for the purchase of wings 

Yeah I know it’s a loss
There’s no counting the cost
that we paid for the purchase of wings

made of string

The streets of this city
are concrete and gritty
to the touch
The rules drive me crazy
and I've never cursed this much

Boys secondhand pants

From a mother they came

to a mans son

Denim camouflage sheaths, for the two swords

of a boy

Legs that would carry him into battle with

lizards, spiders, girls, a fear of darkness and

even other boys.

Carefully stitched twice over by

likely

some other mother with weathered skin

and calloused fingers, in a noisy foreign factory

who smiled gently as she toiled, imagining her own boy

in the brand she couldn't afford to buy him.

Midway down, spacious spare pockets that would

inevitably

become airplane hangers, archaeological digs, boat slips, reptile internment facilities, holsters and

botanical gardens

and a cuff at the bottom

for lapping up the dust on the tops of mountains.

Who could ever know what is in store for

these cotton tools.

The running ladies of Myeonmok-dong

At quarter to eight in the morning in Seoul
there's a sound that is rather intriguing
a curious staccato that cuts through the bustle
created by leather fatiguing

Young women from Myeonmok, due east of the gate-
to Gimpo, just south of the Han
spent five minutes longer, perhaps than they should've
in putting their eyelashes on

So now they are racing to make it to stations
to clock in and sit and be functional
but busses and trains do not tolerate tardiness;
Korea's relentlessly punctual

Thus asphalt is clapping their flats on the sole
reminiscent of greenway applause
I do hope they make it in time to their office
avoiding potential faux pas