Do not deny my love

Do not deny my love
Many times I have come
To find that gentle touch
Instead I was grabbed, then stolen from

I was a maiden
That gave to the sun
Letting my skin brown
To take my youth
In return, I aged with my roots
Immersed
Like children swaying in the day
Then content
Under the blanket of the moon

Another time I dreamed
Watching dust rise from
Little school girls’ feet.
Their black shiny shoes
Would not get dusty
For dirt twirled around me
In the day, I laid on a mat
In a house that inhaled
smoke of the road
And the cigarette breath of the stranger
Would exhale into me
With toxic dreams
To be far away
Never miss where I am

And so I was taken
To a land painted white
And I was alone
Flakes would fall like icicles from my eyes
I died in a boxcar
As the speed of the times
Grabbed my soul from the window
Body left behind
Slow as a corpse
In the land of snow

I had a cold, tombstone demeanor
Features weathered
Like engravings eroded through time
No flower adorned my ear
Forgotten, like ancestors unknown
No wealth in heart that shines
Like coppery gold
Because mountain mined
Wearing my dignity upon his wrist.

How far have I come to be taken from
When can I be given, instead of abandoned
I will run laps shaped in circles
Toward the sun
Perhaps seasons would change
With my footsteps
And the minds would gain wisdom
Watching the patterns of leaves
Turn from green to yellow to orange
To a dying brown
Sacrifice for the next again.
The pain not acknowledged will return
To wither the limbs of stability

When can you hear me?
Amidst this story that invokes tears
But do not cry for the heartache
It is our ancestors drumming
To lost dances buried under modernity

Can you dig deep
With our tears tracing the way for water
To widen the cracks to our vulnerable hearts
Waiting to be healed
Because when we hear the unsung song
In my voice, you tremble
It is familiar
As the crossing of borders
Violation due to orders

I sing these words to set us free
And live with memories
That we hold like a burden of truth
A child unborn
We cannot deny this love
Of pain, and sorrow, remembering
The hollowness
Only then
will we
begin
to fill.

To Daddy

I wish I knew
how it was back then
so I would understand
why you are the way you are.

I can tell it was hard
in the way your voice
punches through my chest
and pulls out my heart.

I wish I knew
how it was back then
so I could cry
at the stories I hear.

The screams I feel
in the prickle of my skin
when you and mom
fight in the kitchen.

I don’t know
how to feel
when I choose to study
my country of origin

Cause when I look
inside the book
I cannot find
a friend.

I don’t know
who to ask
when I choose to study
and exotic land

because my eyes are blank
when they ask me
if I speak my home
language.

I don’t know
where to go
if I don’t know
where I’m from

It seems that
Looking back
hurts
so much

I seems
to ask a question
is to feel
the eye of rejection.

Adventures of a Young American's Dome

Don’t tell me you’re democracy
Hypocrisy
your two fanged tongue
sliced the neck while we’re fed blood.
Damn you, I’ll be a vegetarian instead
never gonna take your laws
even if it was sizzling between bread
supersized
Americanized freedom
ran out of time
like time bombs blowing up in your face
why should I want
to trace your fingertprings
on the wiring
just wait a few minutes
you’ll confess in your boasting
in the courtroom
you and judge toasting
in the name of god
that drinks from a
Golden gemstone chalice
In seconds your credibility turns into ashes
And the institutions
that were strong and massive
as ancient mountains
begin to tremble at*
my snickering
my chuckling
my uproarious laughter
earthquake that brings rain
tidal waves
naturally I will bring disaster to your system
unconforming to your models
of what a young American should be.

I am not a minority

I am not a minority
I am whole
My nose is more flat than yours
I may be shorter
And my skin is brown
Like I rose from the soil.

I am not a minority
I am filled
With ancient history
That navigated SE Asian waters
Traded tinalak, pottery and
Our paper leaves floated across oceans
Like our boats rowing
With people radiant as pearls
Noble words worn like Golden necklaces
preserved behind ivory teeth
That were doors to oral knowledge
Balagtasan
We were warriors with our tongues
Potent like the lungs of Lapu-Lapu
Blowing against the consuming flames of colonizers

We battled with our tongues of fire
Making love
Embers converging
As the passions of resistance
Became one with another
Spreading like wild fire
Charring our indigenous identities
Like trees,
Now black stumps.

But somehow, new saplings grew
As the breaking down of survival
Mixes with foreign invasions
Our roots are held down
To who we are
Filipino.

The cosmopolitan of Asia
The gateway to the East and West
We traveled through the galleons and globalization
Taking with us
Our culture complex
Vexing as dreams
Or are they memories?

We feel at home anywhere
Just look in the ocean, in the water
And we will see the
Reflection of native royalty
Look back at us

Reminisce on those days
We floated on our boats
Like those love letters we wrote on paper leaves
And let them sail into the hearts of another.

I am not a minority
Because I love who I am
And it is not minor
To understand the richness of my identity
That I go back to centuries of people colonized, invaded from
Tribal and divinely ornate
Still holding to the inner strength
The gold within us that keep us grounded
As we transcend borders
Between nations
Building bridges
Between spirit and physical worlds
Crossing existences
Between past and present
Never flinching in resistance

I am whole
My history makes me more
Than just a minority.

We remember where you are leading us

We are not just dollar bills
I know because
skin thought to be flimsy
like the leaf from tree of knowledge.
Paid my flesh just for the sweet of success
Would you give your body
just for the change of stink breath
attempting to cheapen your soul?

No
I am worth more
than your scheme to rob me
with your games of temptation
yes you want me
because I am golden within
the child who is filled again
after you stole dignity from the mountain
I looked upon every mornin

I have awakened
from the nightmare of an age
exploited and raped
never I knew I had to pay
but I did and sacrificed my name
gave up what was sacred
just so children would not be shamed
Identities have no gravestone
when under cement
We paid to lay them there
yet whipped when we repented
no sense for next generation
to have blood shed
by just looking back

Driven underground
in the shadows of
Martial Law
Forced to crawl
Spoke in dissonance
under your breath
People Power
My silence pulled you down
A shout in the streets magnified
you never knew was there
Repression breeds resistance
you can’t stop our hearts from beating
you can’t stop our hearts from beating

Hustler in hushed intelligence
Don’t try to demonize me
What I smoke is to poison society
I inhale your drug
to get high on reality
Every morning
the sun will
crack
thru the darkness
like the underground
rumbling against the oppression
the stomping of struggling footsteps
have knocked on the doors
so spirits
resurrect

Love oneself, one identity
give back to countrymen
stop sellin out the people
just to feed the empty hole of
self-hate
trying to paint a white face
to fill the pocket of uncle sam
love our land
stop scratching an empty hand
gouging the arable skin
just to profit off sin

I am underground
from the shadows of
Martial Law
speak dissonance
under your breath
People Power
Silence shall push it down
Like a shout in the streets magnified
It never knew was there
Repression breeds resistance
It can’t stop our hearts from beating
It can’t stop our hearts from beating

Born and Raised

I am a product of Maui.
The child of the rich and poor,
the increase of drugs in communities,
beautiful million dollar homes on beach fronts with sunsets for a view,
dilapidated plantation homes on narrow streets,
dogs barking furiously limited on short chains,
local kids wearing surfshorts and slippers talking about surf,
salt making their brown skin look ashy,
crying pregnant girls tugging at their baby’s daddy’s shirt at laundry mats
while he stands coldly looking the other way, arms crossed,
In the arms of my friend from SF
underneath the full Hana moon,
staring at the night sky while lying on the carpet like grass in front of the Church,
Being stoned through highschool and getting straight As,
afraid of being knocked up after making love to my high school sweet heart
in my car everyday
after school.

Writing while the sunset listened to my thoughts
and the palm tree was the shoulder I cried upon.
And the wide Maui night sky was the inspiration for wishes to manifest.

i am a product of Maui.
A place where two stories are unfolding,
contrasting each other like the dark skin of the kanaka
and the freckled skin of the haole,
yet colliding into one other like the confusing beauty that is the hapa.

I have always stood in between both narratives.
Listening to each story,
each struggle being told
and finding my voice in the words I borrowed and repeated.
I interpret.

I stand in observation
in the shadows
in termite ridden homes,
on the marble floors of mansions
being madly in love with the stories
that were being played out
bringing tears to my eyes
bringing great joy and hope
on the illusive stage that is Maui
The paradise, the place of play to many
But I am a product of it.
The audience that learned it is reality.

katrina

Katrina, Katrina
Let the world see
the whites of our eyes
are tainted with glee
cause they are safe and sound
within their suvs
and the one who cries
flows like leaking levees.

Katrina Katrina
thank you for coming
brought your little sister
to say you're not joking
family is one
yet we're still divided
people disconnected
yet still we deny it

Katrina Katrina
can we understand your song
so we can sing along
together call and response
we need a dialogue.
Listen to the pain
inflicted on us all
Some are walking tall
but others still crawl
tears fall harder
when you stand too far.

Katrina Katrina
great teacher
teach us to add
the past and the future
the numbers won't fade
if we hide the answer
all must do their math
for all to be equal

Plantation Race

I was born of the plantation race
A quiet dream obscured underneath the sugar cane's shade,
While cracked bare feet raked
The red dusty soil
During entranced toil
That would one day awake
And feel the glorious sun and wind kissing their face.

Far and away from familiar place,
Where the scent, sight, sound, taste of the air
Did not share the flavor of wide tobacco fields,
Did not invoke prideful duty
Of the carabao pulling with strong struggle,
Hearts long to return to what was real
To let go of the sepia memories printed like fading photos.
To go back to the embrace of the mother, the home.

But the words she had told
On those days of departure,
Life must go on for a wandering farmer,
Searching for new land to watch seeds grow.

For home has gone barren
Centuries of dreams gone arid
Like an endless desert
No more water could feed the leaves
To flutter and wave at the heavens
Because no tears of joy flowed from her face,
To satiate thirsty open spaces.
No ditches could be dug
To fill water jugs
Because Mother had not sung to hungry babies
That they could be strong where they came from.

But instead they must become
The foreigners tilling another's field.
Only thing that kept their bodies working
Was the dreams.
They were like the beads of sweat
Cooling exhausted faces.
Only thing that soothed the displacement
Was the imagination
That the new generation would be so tall
Like the sugar cane stalks
Rising above the ranks
Cause the plantation race bent their backs
So they could carry me to see past the obstruction
Of thick rows of fields.
So I could see the expansive sky
Instead of the confining tangles of cane
That was their pain,
Scratching their dry skin
Calloused by the discipline
Of centuries being beaten by somebody else's sun.

But only now does the drawing of blood
Onto foreign soil breed fruition.
For I am born of the plantation race
Like the tall stalk of sugar cane
Rising above their heads.
The seed they have planted with their toils
The product of dreams cultivated in diasporic soils.
I know reach for the sky
And soak in the suns and winds kisses
So it cools those before me.
I grab rain clouds and squeeze them to roll down my skin
To irrigate my feet,
Because they are rooted in the footsteps
Of laborers who dreamed
to bloom
within dusty fields.

Selling of the Child to the Monster

Whisper in my ear
Subtle, like you’re not there
Cause you aren’t here
Like my future,
Like my present
I do not exist
Because food comes
If I can use my lips
As a means to eat.
When some use their hands,
Others, their minds,
I throw my skills out
As if they are clothes
And I serve you
With all of me
To consume my dreams

My poverty is sweet to you
Because you can lick me
And it is the only chance
I feel warmth
My land has been raped
With nothing to protect me
And so I am left alone
To fend for my life.

Who is this man who comes
To my village
Telling me his way is better
He comes from the paved road
And I watch him from my thatched mat
That has been my support
All my life

Now I lie upon a spring mattress
Its material is now worn
And stryrofome peek through ugly
Like mens’ eyes through windows
I am a doll that is lifeless
and cannot make my support
Instead they pull me by strings

They keep coming hungry
But their bellies are filled
Tongues reek of fish sauce and coconut milk
Dogs, they lick my bones of starvation
they treat me as an animal
But it is they who are caged in greed.

They say it is not my struggle
To speak out against what men do
I must lay and accept the truth
Of being poor
Stolen, my virginity
Robbed, my country
Deprived, my humanity

Who are they to take insatiably?
Fathers and sons to women and daughters
Manhood of nations
Stealing the origin of life
Exhaustion of self love
Shall demonize the body
And kill all around
Until no one is left but the monster.

Racism
A pain in the heart for some
Fills the heart with greed justification for another.
As some were trampled under feet
Another danced as if it was just life
The song of the evil one
Waltzing with a pitchfork
Courting bodies
And twirling them in his confusion
Until they throw up in his hell
Tossing them aside like rag dolls
Used, no longer a vessel for his fun.

The evil one lurks
In the hearts of humans
Sneaky normality
Justification in taking
Dignity
Are we in hell
Our souls have been bought
Capitalist thought
We can only afford resurrection
Pay our souls to religion
With our bodies sacrificed
For the coin
And their walls are lined
With the gold of our blood.

Widespread and pervasive
Is the net he casts
Capturing the first and the last
Each of our dreams tainted
Looking at the past
To reclaim fragments of ourselves
Subjected to enslavement
Of our bodies
Of our minds
Lack of education
Fear of integration
Misunderstanding pain
Forcing focus on hurt
Forget what is illuminated
Only revenge is fullfilment of
These moments we only got to live.

Because the trend of this world’s politic
Is that we’re on a race to destroy ourselves
Rain to us, tears for others
Closed our hearts like cemented dirt
Separated the wanted and unwanted
Into different worlds
When that is still
The act of whipping and chaining
Those to subjugation
The new slavery of economics.

It I the assimilation of people
Into one system
Forcing some to displace their own way
Of being
For a foreign one
Force the children of the system
To accept the burden:
Less for them
And the patriarch
Still got the benefit
More asses to fuck in secret
While portraying a happy family
In peace and security.

Even in this world
I do not feel safe
Because I can’t trust others
Or their secret desires
Hidden by masks of innocence
Riding the wave of mainstream thoughts
When destruction was its beginning and its end.

Sovereignty

Sovereignty
Free third world nations
From the grip of exploitation
Imperialism, Racism, Sexism
Classism, Capitalism, Feudalism
Colonization

Free third world nations
As we
Free our minds from
Mental shackles
Of history
Whose story
Where is my story
The other story
Her story
Their story
Can you handle these stories

Of how this country
Was stolen
And across the seas
They rob riches
And say its their own
They build this nation
With hands they think
Not good enough to pay

They dominate the globe
With their words
and
Other ways to speak
Are minority
Unimportant
In these days of
Increased communication

Feeding children
Supremacist propaganda
Channel their anger
Of struggling communities
Into hate for another
When what is needed is attention
Of how our diverse abilities
Can comprehend the needs
Of multicultural cities
Set us free
From the system that keep us
From organizing economies
That give jobs to people
So they don’t need to leave

Set us free
From the robbing hand
That takes our wealth
So we have nothing to sell
To prosper

Set us free
From the disease
That you began
With your hate
For humanity

Set us free
For we deserve sovereignty
The truth is that we
Must be returned our needs
That have been taken since globalization
Enslaving others
While another has the right to luxury

Set us free

So we can live
And know how to thrive
Without benefiting corruption
But for ourselves and our children
So they can know the way of our ancestors
And love themselves
And see how the color of the skin
Matches the soil
Where the plants grow
And nurtures all of us.

Set us free
So that peace is genuine
Because you fear
The unrest in the streets
Is going to turn your guns
Against you.

Set us free
Because the earth is watching
And breathing angrily
At her children careless
Ignorant
At how we are born from one womb

Forever connected
We are
Black as night
Rests upon the brown of dawn
Eyes open to the yellow sun
Rise with the pink flower
That awaits the red sky
Where it will return to her again

As the wars of a nation
Is the wars within ourselves
Across the world
The vibrations shake foundations
Of civilizations
And Earth is arising
With natural disaster
Reflection of inner turmoil
Breaking through the compartments
Of thinking
Because that way of existing no longer fits
These changes emerging
As people are moving
As landscapes reforming
Fluidity is facilitating
Globalization blending

Set us free
From the chains
Of the old order
And let us live
For the future.

Set us free
To be flexible
To the laws of the universe
As we must be prepared as nothing is set in stone
For that erodes into dust
Which is much more durable
according to where the wind blows

Set us free
Set us free
Set us free
From archaic missions
Centralized intentions
Set us free

Sometimes they want

Sometimes they want
The wise poet to have the answers
But I got none.
Only my observation
Trying to make sense of the chaos
And see the clouds part
Into clarity.

Maybe its not wisdom that is needed
But strength
To look into the face of oppression
And not be afraid
But touch it

Touch the hand scabbed
From being scratched
For centuries
Being stolen from

Even you want more
But do you ask its origin?

Caress the face slapped
Being told is not good enough
So that tears streak black
Like soot on the face
From living
On the streets

Do you have anything left
To invest yourself?
And question were money is spent
And who is forced to repent
In order to live
In this segregated world
Rich versus poor
Color versus blank
Thankful versus greed

Some sit to listen
to someone speak
To become a groupie
of a famous person
But can someone sit to become inspired
By the fire of a thought
That is endangered to be embers and dying
Unless you
In the crowd
Can carry the torch
Risk being scorched
And burn this fucken system down
With an illuminated thought?

Do they Know

Do they know,
Those men,
that I feel the pain
Of women raped
And when I resist
I am then a crazy Filipina

You know, those kinds
That are like
Emotional roller coasters
Said one white boy
About us

Do they know
That we,
Are a shamanic culture
That we traveled between
The worlds of different races and nations
Sojourning, leaving, escaping
Going back to the abject poverty
Of our families
Of our country
Of our souls unfed, untold, miseducated
Wounded by these times
Of people not knowing

Do they know
That we,
Are a shamanic culture
That we travel invisibly
Into your world
And we sense your feelings
Ways of knowing inherited
By an intuitive culture
We feel you molesting us with your eyes
Familiar as uncles and fathers watching us grow
into our long legs, black hair, silky skin
we are not oblivious to intentions of greed
and insecurity
for our nation has been plagued
since racism implanted by the seed of imperialism
in our soil.


Do they know
That we,
Are a shamanic culture
That we traveled between the worlds
Of humans and spirits
Sojourning, leaving, escaping
Going back to the ignorance of humanity
Of forgetting our divinity
And how it is not given
But earned through lifetimes
Of knowing,
Who we are.

Do they not know
Because we don’t know
We are still searching
For identity shattered
Into millions of pieces
As we traveled between worlds
Losing, leaving, forgetting
Finding once again
Slowly by slowly
Regaining wholeness

But sometimes they hold the pieces
We have lost
And they try
To reconstruct us
Into images
Distorted reflections of a broken past
Stabbing us in the back
Forcing us to conform to them
Lodging shattered pieces of mirrors
Into our skin.

But do they know
That we have felt this pain before.
It is not new
So we know the path to healing
And still their wounds are festering
Unattended
And we shall ascend sooner
As the hell they have created
We have climbed over
And traveled between worlds

Do they know who we are?