Resistance in a money filled fist?

Filipinos in America
How did they come to be?
Across ships and planes
And tumultuous raft like
Dreams

Held together by thin rope
Of determination
Why so determined to leave?
Country bled dry
That they drank own blood
And was thirsty for more
So mesmerized by the flow of ocean
Fueling desire to swallow more dreams
Until satisfied.
We forget how we've been bitten
Dreamin how to get our piece of the pie.

Breaking the spell
By facing the wound
Put the dirt to the neck
Feel the sting of how it still
Poisons us here.

Poison is the medicine for poison
Ask why does it hurt
When we're supposedly
Medicated
By the dollars we wear
To bandage
Our raw calloused feet.
We choose to make it
Passing homeless black men
And cracked out white women
Just to get to housekeeping gig
Sanitize sheets
Like a blank easel
For rich folks to forget
The sight outside
And pain the life
They choose to see.

We work cause
We have mouths to feed.
Kids growing up wanting
Nikes, down jackets
And thick plastic earrings.
Talking bout hella this
Nigga that
Living my fantasy
Protected by my commitment to work
For this American Dream.
So I can pass that man
Asking for change
And hold on to my silver in a fist
As resistance?

Survival is to play the game
I was taught to play
Cause to break the rules
Is to be tortured and rape
In a land not so far away

Yet there are those who speak
By paying for peace and privilege
Upon the backs
They step to speak
Higher in the halls of power

II.
Slowly memories emerge on my skin
Surfacing calloused hands
Tight lips
Heart sealed shut
Ice cold blood
Frozen in this concrete jungle.

I learn to wear wrinkles
Like tree rings of age
Silent
Because they prey on boisterous
Youth blossoming their fragile petals

Back in the day
We trained to walk stiff
Like soldiers during martial law
Curfew was the power
That ran us like robots

Turned off, turned on
Changing fingers keep flippin switches
Same way
When it was dark
Some escaped to another place
Only to find
New land timed
But the pocket watch
Of the all-seeing eye

They see us dance for them
But behind the smile
Eyes ungrateful
Crisp our bed sheets
Dust free are the carpets
Yet I've returned home
With hits and blows
Of telephone bills
Slapping me silly
Until I've turned ill
Leaving a legacy of struggle
For our children to witness
I adapt like the shell of an
Empty mailbox
When I retreat within
I search for letters
From another land
Instead I hear muffled
Echoes
Of street protests
My child's voice on a bull horn

I look out
Slowly
Memory emerges from my skin
It is a tear drop dripped from my eyes
My child's face opens like a blossom
Her voice are like seeds
Being carried away by the wind!

Critical Specificity

I am Filipino
But it took me a while to
Re-remember that
Born in Hawaii
It was not my land
Yet roots forced to ho
And crack
Through economic cement
In order to get ours
And plant that poisonous seed
To grow tall and spread
Across the island
Stifling with the illusion
Of a green paradise
But silencing the diversity
Marginalized to
Iced out back streets.

To be specific
I am Ilokano
Defined by my mom
Who would spank me with
A hanger when I refused
To go to church
Sulking in the car
Cause dad doesn't have to go
Why should I?
To rebel even more
I erased my first tongue
And replaced it with English
See mom,
I told you I would run away from home.

The say Ilokanos were the pioneers
Of overseas workers
The first to leave and forget
The systemic problems of home
Transplant our roots
In a new place
But what kind of fruit was grown?
A seedling that struggled to live
Poisoned by pesticides of plantation fields
Watered by tears of a grieving grandma
And held up by the strength of a mother
Who forced herself to love a man

What am I to prove
To be the good seed that grows
And gives birth to another
Generation of rows?
To live, what am I made of?
An appropriated being
Swaying by the Hawaiian breeze
In ti leaf skirts chanting
Eho Mai
Inviting ancestors welcome
In a tongue they don't understand.
To a land
They never really knew.

II.
Land of Mu
Bridged Mai and Hawaiki
Fell into the ocean
People scattered to highest peaks
Or swallowed by the sea
Memory of common ancestry
In language, dance, hands
That tell stories.

Essence produced
In presence of material comforts
Educated and my mom and dad
Sweat in the lawn
To raise green dollars
To pay for the blossoming sugar cane
Draining life of spirits of before
We prospered
As we poisoned
Ourselves and others
Standard of living
Told us our country
Not good enough
take others and
push others out.

We were cheap labor
Our value depreciated
Sub human
Guinea pigs to walk among
The mist of spray
To intoxicate us with
Monocultural dreams

As we died
Our children would desire
The homogenous
And forget the diverse genius
Of our ancestry
Living the language
Cooking and religion
Of family
But abuse and drug use
Confused youth
Looked to the mirror
Of society
And saw an ugly
Brown skinned flat nose
We chose the hard way
We fucked to play
Hung on to loose men
To see the next day
Until a baby was born
And we realized
It was never a game.

What memories lie
Like a stagnant smog
Spewing out the sugar mill
I am Filipino, Ilokano
Against my will
Hawaiian, American
The poisoned seed
Transplanted
And multiplied
In homogenous rows
Straight lines
As we grow strong
And tall
We marginalize diversity
To iced out back roads.