sovereignty

sovereignty
born somewhere absent of ancestry
but only in my nationalist mind
where i constrict pre-colonial globalization
to the confines
of eurocentric carving up of the face of the earth
southeast asia, is beneath east asia,
micronesia, melanesia, polynesia
racialized groupings according to skin tones
judged by racist standards of euro american industrialists,
missionaries that drink the blood of savages
as vampires sent down from apocalyptic planets.

sovereignty
i seek to self-determine the mystery
of who my ancestors were
navigators, tattooed, marauding, pirates,
lovers, writers, spoken word orators,
who read the ocean like text
who read the birds like song
who read the clouds like film
who read one another like dance
literate in the manifesting of life
yet betrayed by those amazed
at our intellectual riches
desire for empire through bartered iron
sold bodies of slaves and women
yet our visions undocumented
as not worthy: pagan
in the minds of hordes coming from
baroque cathedrals
stifled magic into the dark tortured souls
where scientific categories
sliced and fragmented beauty
in patriarchal chambers

sovereignty
daughter of migrants
deterritorialized identity
that follows like an umbilical
severed,
but as it laid in the dry soil
tears of lonesome grandfather
sprouted lineage in plantation field
and so we began as diaspora
settler, laborer, invader, dreamer, builder
people of the daga
people of the soil
weaving sugar cane stalks with machetes
upon lands of kanaka maoli
whose ghosts roam with measles and
small pox,
and together, we meet
as christianlized heathens
yet we see the soil as life
all we have.
we have this burning memory of pain
but afraid to explain
cause what will the other think?
when we expose our complicit relation
to that which uprooted us?

sovereignty
my love of land
cannot be bound
like my love for you
who dwells everywhere.
in everyone
only if we could always
be in the state of mind
where we re-imagine what it means
to be our own, but in relation
to each other.
not confined to dominant categories
not confined to agendas of someone else's dreams
but realize our ability to manifest reality.