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.

Unrequited Pacific Love

Desire for love
to return to some safe place.
That is an illusion of security
in this labor
of reclaiming space

physical, internal, imaginative
or otherwise
create bricks from evidence
deposited in archives,
books, words and songs,
foods and dance
lands and memories,

such an arduous journey!

Yet no rest for the weary
nomad
whose genetics is to be
a wanderer,
lessons of ancestors
travelers across
floating worlds
that sunk and rose
in the fluid universe
of homelands.

Where then
can I stop to drink?
Take a rest?
In the temporal space of embraces
and loving making
that eventually ends
in the morning.
And the permanence of absence
is the only source of sanity
in this materialistic realm
that reduces magic
to physicality.

Oh, can I love
this ephemeral mystery?

Can I risk in
unfixity?

Will it ever beget a body
of my dreams
that is hooked from the sea,
manifested in prayers and dreams
for the days of peace?

Or perhaps again
I fall into
the prison of illusion?

Whoa is me...
Living in the mind
that seeks
bricks to build
rather than
courage to erode
and live underneath
fragile sandcastles,
units of infinite homes
that connects resting places
of ancestors who rode
canoes, boats, villages a-moving
to the currents of the time.
evolving, surviving
never left behind,

Oh, Self!

Let me love this truth
Let me love,
these roots.

My Love for You!

much love for my homegrown
multicultural peeps
grew up amidst intersections
of migrant and indigenous pathways
lost, found and lost again
roads that they walk and
create as they walk
becoming the love that they reclaim
in their bodies,
where different truths synthesize
to run blood in their veins
undocumented, unfixed
geneologies
that are in texts of written words
stories
music
food
lands
human bodies touching
and read with fingers
that trace carefully
like when we study books
of our friends and families
faces
like when our feet
walk ever so softly upon
the text of the land
so deeply,
we learn and come to know
so much knowledge all around us.
Blessings for the way
we are given our senses
and indulge in the wisdom
around us,
always.

to my lord: walk with me on this journey

This school
on the surface
levels
feels so
different
intentions
in the air
in the building
archi
texture
in the vibes
of people.
competition
of thought
thinking of truth
seeking truth
but what structure
of truth?
when we grow down paths
farther and farther from
you.

you who is
everywhere
pervasive
yet unseen.

our minds are
to the illusion
upon facades
of buildings
upon faces thinking
hard
upon shaking hands
clinging
to cigarette
butts
pens
and pencils
fingering
at keyboards
seeking to
fulfill the intention
of these
institutions
we are
embedded in.

And yet
you are there
mysterious
unseen

outside and
within
these paths
over beaten
over walked upon
logic of thought
frought with own mystery
to no where
but anxiety
and nervousness.

And yet
you grow
along side us.
Like the breeze
that is not felt
unrecognized
but shudders
the cold body
who has forgotten
that you offer a sweater
always
in the sunlight

that the trees
and plants
know.

but human minds
upon the path
to absence
invisible
abstract lands
where life is
growing
simplistic truth
that is
not complex

yet you are
complicated
and the sense of you
makes me cry
want to cry
amidst this place that seems
like
the no crying zone.

cause the people
are the bricks
upon building facades.
and our minds
are the grout
that makes cohesive
this thought
of building empires
of simplistic truths
concretized
that we lose our feet
to feel you.

disembodied into the sky.

we stare at the blank blue
simplistic
abstract
freedom?

o lord,
i pray that you
keep me warm
in your heaviness
sadness
that others feel
but deny

like manicured gardens
poisoned in toxins
of perfect minds

please help me
be like you
unseen

but thrive amidst
this world where you inhabit
but not only

How much I love you
but will never
grasp you
because you are more
than this building
this brick
i think.

you are this brick and more
forever
i seek to fall among
these thoughts
that build high!

Postcolonial Poetry

Its the kind of writing that makes you see yourself within dominant systems that organize the world. To recognize our complicity in what we call unjust or corrupt, helps us to recognize the mechanics of colonialism and neo-colonialism.

The Realm of the He'e
by Ellen-Rae Cachola
June 14, 2009

The wandering fish of mu
travels through
the realm of the he'e,
an octopus that sucks truths
like a hungry ghost of landmasses past,
Forgotten, misunderstood
in the back of memories

He shoots
tentacles far and wide
to feed off wisdoms
that become centralized
in his computer like brain.
Some say
in Haleakala and Kihei

Don't you know
the he'e's suction is thick?
To slough
it off
is tough
cause its like quicksand traps.
Can't get out
like abusive relationships
between nations
thought to be in love.
But really,
where is the love within?

And on those long tentacles
that stretch,
thousands, millions, quadrillions of suction cups
grow like opihis mutated
with teeth,
bloodthirsty
tastin salty
quick to judge
good or bad morality.
and yet people eat them
like nothin'!

And then
when the person take one shit
thats when they spread
to different lands
cancerous coming up
indigestion of consumptions
pullin triggers of guns,
as if bullets were dollar bills.
Pay for a future
that can be worn
not to heal the wounded heart.
Broken shards
floatin onto shore
sportin aloha shirts
as if all is well
when the soil grows
too expensive neighborhoods
pushing into backwoods

what is left?
but the rage
when the message of survival
faces title
waves drownin the Hawaiian landscape

Addictions
just to get by
land prices
keep risin like insecurities.
Jobs and education
for born and raised feed
disconnected stems of proteas
lie at unmarked graves
displaced
names
waitin to be regained
by those those who seek to retrace the footsteps
1898
manifest destiny
when the world
was blinded by colonial mentality
crystallized
the erasure of memory
of the he'e who brought to life
culture from east to west
west to east
turned him into a beast
when he is just forgotten, misunderstood
in the back of your memories

Welcome, to the head of the he'e
some think they come to escape
to run away from the discontents
of suburban landscapes
or fast pace of city life...
Consume exotic fruits
to include oneself in the garden of eden?

The truth is that story's value
was subject to inflation
commodification
reduced to economic narratives
of divide and conquer the wealths
that lived as land bridges
across island nations.
and in the poverty and absence
lives the wisdom of endurance
amidst a world blinded by arrogance
and yet, the songs of the past
played a rhythm of bodies paddling across
vast oceans
farmers striking injustice of unemployment
and dreams planted in rows of Hawaiian soil
waiting for the time
when children would
sing knowledge of ancient lands
echoing in the doldrum mindsets
of masses

This name is the frequency
indebted to essence of memory
planted in land
and grew people who choose to eat
for continuity.

Respects are paid
as food laid out
to the he'e
entangled in all our histories...

i want u

i want you
to teach me
how to be in love
in ways more
than we commonly know

i am not just
desiring your touch
body kisses
and words that
weigh warm
upon my chest.

but the chance
to be in silence
and aware
heightened
cause there is more
than meets the eye
when we
share space

our forms
will touch
and enjoy
the gifts
we are given
but our love
expresses
the depth of
how far we came
through lives
let go
of masks
charades
and now
we are able
to not pretend
but be
our real
naked
selves

Can I Love

Can I love
and believe
I am worthy
to be free.
not confined
to the borders
of narratives
that exploit
across the lands
and seas
where I bleed out from
and into.
Diffused
identities
I am not familiar with.
Offspring
I am alienated
from.

Can I love
and feel beautiful
in my skin
that in my land
I belong
and feel fertile
to nourish my soul.
And the buds
that emerge
are the markers
of my continuity
prosperity
thriving
the markers of
balance
a chance
to live.

Can I love
to express
more than just
a body
but a spirit
that isn't to be
bought or sold.
Our exchange
has no law
that determines
our roles
as we lay together
express the awe
for each other.
the sacred moments
we share upon this earth.

Mama

The cool breeze
smelling the pillows,
apo house smells,
Philippines in Hawaii.
Memories ingrained in fibers,
osmosis
from the mind.
When the migrant's
head
dreams
scalp, sweat, threads of hair
dreams of back home.

Now at home
lying in bed
immersed
into the room
inhale
exhale
sleep with the ocean sea breeze
coming through the jalousies,
caressing the lace curtains
that expand and plumped
like a tummy full
pregnant.

Mama gives birth to her son
Away from home.
But locked in a new one.
Everyday
waking up to breast feed
and then sit on the couch
While child sleeps.
Maybe look out the window
and count the clouds
pass across blue time.

The the child stirs
and mumbles moans
awaken from
day dream,
little trip,
back to life
And go to cradle
hold baby in arms
like the arms of a clock
tick
tock
heart beat
waiting until 5:30
When dad would arrive.

Next task is to prepare dinner.
Dinengdeng,
inapoy,
saluyot,
sida,
sili,
carabasa.
Danum, bauang
Stove burner
gas smell
flames.

I hate it here.
I want my own home.
But its not said
just plastered on her
unsmiling face.
Serving dinner
no forks or spoons
Ag kamet tayo.

So long I have been from

So long I have been far from
Mom and Dad
Apo Mary, Amang Juan
Apo Aning, Amang Everisto
Manong, Snowball, Choco and Moco.
Because my head was in the books
Thinking
Who we may have been
Who we might be in the present
Who may be in the future.
I pretend there’s someone else
like you
out there
That I can live with
Because you were a part of me
That will never change
Static
Past

And I thought I was on this flow
Moving forward
Somewhere
For us all
For everyone left behind
For the children to be

Little do I know
That you
Were moving too
Living,
Making ends meet
Sweeping the back patio
Feeding the dog and cat
And praying.
Going to work
Making music
Dreaming.

That you were with me all along
In the books
In the words
In the people
I meet in these lands
These new worlds I have been

You are the stories I tell them
You are the memories that rupture
Linear time
So that moving forward
Is weighted by the past
Of where I am from
Your stories have gone
Many miles.

Blessings

Blessings
When you are around me
And prophecies are practiced
In this way that we build relations.
Who we are,
Histories plastered on our skin
And our eyes tell stories of the past
Desires, hatred, fear, pain, love, hope, remember
We were together and we cried
Like the mountain bleeding
Until we drank to our own death.

Time and again,
We flowed across waters
Currents we ride
A stone fell and created ripples
And we washed onto shore
Rebirthed,
In chains.
Perhaps the stone
Was the fist closed
Holding in so much
Unable to unfold.

Blessings
When you are around me
Cause my heart opens
And my arms open
And my eyes open
Around you.
My skin unfolds at your touch
And I read histories in your presence
Remember,
In dreams,
We live together.
Walking in each other’s worlds.

Amerasian message

Its not my luck
As I lie here and you fucked me
Tucked me in this blind lust
Hate, taking the form
Of crust left upon my abdomen
Stuck bottle and umbrella
Inside
My cries run quiet
To your moans of indulgence
And I look into your eyes
Searching
For a fire of memory.

Perhaps you enact a past
Of grandmomma being raped
By slave masta.
And the whips upon his back
Made your daddy slap
Her face when she was pregnant
With you
And she was left alone on cold streets
To raise a son with role models
That sold crack for greens
And you were left with dreams
At the end of gun barrels

I look for a light
Dim like the red laterns
Of the district.
And you continue to suck me
Dry.
Skin and bones like children
In shivering homes
Frail and hungry.
Rice patties blossom
But so do land mines
And they bleed
Like my pussy
And you thrust like
The cum of a maxim gun
And I cry like they must have bled
During World War One.

Perhaps the barks of drill sargeant
Built a fortress around your heart.
Because underneath armor
Do comrades wear swastikas.
And they tease you for being a piccaninny
Cause you dared to smile at the red sunset
Above a green plain.
You came to the bar to erase
A past that never ends.
And the body desires exit.
Fill a vessel with
Tears
from generations.

I search in your eyes for a memory
When I arrived upon your silted, delta shore
In a double hulled canoe.
I saw you from a far
And brought a jar engraved:
Ma hal ka.
And your spirit heard the song.
Followed the melody back
To a bamboo forest
And the tarsius monkey’s eyes
Shone like the moon during an eclipse.
And its gaze witnessed
Our love that spilled the riches
Of caori shells upon brown
Fertile soil

Perhaps the child held
The memory in its cells
Despite the lines
That divided our lands
Severed, we struggle to remember
Amidst the silence of looted legacies.
Perhaps this violence brings us together
We lie in the heaving of trauma
Filled with sadness splattered
Skin to skin, cold and hot sweat
Collision gives birth to memory
Who breaks the myth of boundaries.

Black Streets

Black streets
Black dreams
Black sheaths
To cover the heat of our rage
Disengaged in the now
Triggered by the brow
Fists in the air blow
By a know how.

Assimilation created
This creature of consuming tendencies
Yet a history to shed
Treason and hypocrisies.
Mom and Pops taught me to
To be silent
Yet ancestors haunt in
Nightmarish dreams.

Black wreaths
Black trees
Black feats
To adorn the mantle
Of model minority
Born in the womb
Of momma’s western logic
Forming
Echoing in the chambers
Of her fruit growing
Plucked from the tree
I eat the fruit of knowledge

Black seats
Black treats
Black cleans
This white washed existence
Through the pulse
Of hip hop inundation
Elevation as a crab clamped
Identification
Yet recognition when released obligation
Reflection as addiction
Solitude as friend
To accompany me
As homelessness

Gift

I want to withdraw from the world. Just to rest and recollect, and come back to my body. Come back to caring for myself. I can't just put and put. I can only give so much. The end product, the physical product, is not the goal. But, the practice of working together ethically and rigorously. The practice of making many dreams a reality. My gift is to write about these dreams and reflect what people believe and hope for, to inspire them and bring them one step closer to manifesting multiple, diverse realities.

Our dreams will never be the same. We have all been shaped by unique experiences that only each person can self-determine their value. But there can be coordination and partnerships. Creating projects that has meaning for all of us.

peace to you world, and the many animate and inanimate beings. May we struggle to become our dreams.

Hawaii's history and globalization

We live in the belly of the beast
reflecting its rage
through drugs and alcohol
sending kids to war
our schools don't tell us shit
that remnants of the spirit
still within

we still livin
breathin

Imagine
through our actions
respond differently
create community
where we can think together
on our own terms
make music that tells
our sharp analysis

superferry chains
that island's
imprisonment
from schofield to pohakuloa
the practice on us like killing fields
kids dream of bullets
and mothers birthin soldiers
schools to make our minds
like factories
our bodies perfected to a technique
of cash registering
and this fake aloha spirit
complacence, non-confrontation
propaganda to silence us

I speak with a sharp tongue
to tell the effects when they come
reflect on the self
and histories of displacement
look on faces men, women & children
blood runs through each of us
streams in an ecology
we grew together planted by scattered seeds
uprooted from stolen lands
nanas and tatas got struggle written in their hands
hold them like a book
cause knowledge is wealth
eternal
in our selves.

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.

Racism and reactivity. Being Filipino is to be both, the subject of racism and the puppet of it. The systematic indoctrination of self as inferior to the white, middle class male. The reactivity to resist that competition. But the gratification in being the white, middle class male for one moment, to laugh at the blackest, the most inferior, the most poor, the most unwhite, unmiddle class, unmale. My assimilation has put in me in closer proximity to the white middle class status than the blackest African. Or the blackest Filipino. The knowing how much I don’t know the pain of being black because we were compared to the negroes in Africa. That which we were compared to to name us as inferior and savage. The negritos, the Aetas, and in our lowland, Hispanicized eyes, they were the ugly ones we ran away from, as we bathed with skin-whitening soaps. When in our dreams, they were the same as those enigmatic forest dwellers, who were our nightmares in the daytime. In our dreams, we lived in forests, and drank from streams, and loved our bodies with golden jewelry that adorned our sun tanned skin. Moist like the slippery rock glistening. We were, then we are. Running away from our pasts, ourselves, to hate our pasts, hate love, but rather be in a spell of self flagellation. Desecrate our sacredness, and we follow the tracks of those white colonizers to be and breed with him. In our desire to be who we are not. Who we are, but are not. Assimilate, we become his mistress, with illegitimate child kept in the back rooms of the housekeeper’s quarters. We are protected from the harshest of elements, and out of tuch with spirits, left back. Forgotten…

Fuck him…
He who does not understand the complexity
of pain
of being
assimilated, integrated and hated
and loved lusted object of his dreams, of his nightmares, of his fantasies.
The hardness of his member,
the second phallus he remembers,
and follows orders of bullets.
Where did you learn to love this violence?
This violence so part of you and you can afford to forget,
as you run back to a space where that culture is your face,
and you belong somewhere.
Assimilated everywhere,
where the way of hate has a foothold in every country of the world.
And you can stand among the elites,
the desires of self hating girls and guys…
and be the one lusted after for.
But, you lust after the ones who remember.
So that you can silence us
and continue being the star of the show.
Lies…

Resistant Slave

Left that only remembers
how to move to the right
because when the back has been burdened
To curve is what it looks like

Country shackled and skin
Scarred with memory of chain
Although the feet are free
Hobbled feet refrain

From being a dancing step
trip, skank, and fall
rise up again and reach
voices tall to small

Between the lines of sectors
Among the shades of brown
Within collective dreams
Does the brow frown

In demand, yes in degrees
In struggle, yes diff'rent schemes
But in the pain of expression
Is our memory freed

Identity and land

Why do I focus on the Philippines?
There are lots of countries
and identities that make up me
and the world.
am I ethnocentric to fixate
by gazing on a land I was never born in?

This question of who I am
tugs at this place my first cries
never echoed in
Yet somewhere within my cries
came from a voice who spoke a language
that I do not understand
but she continues to speak
and plead that I do.
She cries next to a rocky river
with little pebbles
and she holds herself
rocking back and forth
while a bundle of something
lies lifeless
In the warm embrace of the sun
She holds herself mumbling
to her hair that covers her face
in a mess
I watch her and her bark like clothes
that wrap her body
her face ape like
characteristic of what kids called me in
middle school.
Mono
monkey
Filipino

What is this memory
I gained from a sweat
Crying in the dirt
because of visions of me hating self
in front of a smoky mirror reflection

This memory is a desire
to see my unseen self
a self beyond my life
that I trace to roots within an unknown land
but with memories farther away
in another secret place
that I don't know
I have know allegiance to.
No access too because
they were burned and buried
underneath lies of identities
I took on
wanting to be who I am not.
A Hawaiian girl
An American Girl
A Something girl
An international girl

Why do I look to the PHilippines
for the source of some answer
some insight
some clue
to this shifting self
that is doomed to explode and rupture
as earthquakes are necessary
as transformation is the nature of this life

Can this Philippines be the magma
that moves me?
Can this PHilppines be the core
that has accumulated pressure
and thrown me across the globe
to another place of other rocks

What is this country that looks like me
But does not reflect me
But states think me of it.
I stand on histories,
intersecting histories
imaginations
dreams
fairy tales
art
culture
that is me
I am not a root
but a sprout from a long branch
that originated somewhere
where the root was burned to a stump,
but somehow this sprout of a branch
was fertilzed in a new soil
watered by cultures that taught me
different ways to quench
What a strange place for me to ask
What of this Philippines.

This Philippines that defines the way the structures
gaze on me
and teach people to look at me
When I look out in defiance
with snarled gaze
with wrinkled forehead
with unapproachable demeaner
An angry beast
Roaming the grid line streets
Bottled in a body of easy
justifiable target
What a peculiar place to be

This Philippines
tells me what to hope for
in myself
What can I grasp on
to define myself?
What can I relate to say
this is myself?
A land that is not itself
that is sold like a slave
to a market of condescending gazes.
A land that is primped and pomped
to be raped and dumped
by international boyfriends
who have allegiance
to wives of their nationality
What is this dream that paints my
imagination?

The past is not happy
But one we fled
The self we fled
The love we fled

To get used to separation
To survive on separation
And now to think about the pain of separation
as a way to resist its continuation

Wow, Philippines.
Thats how I think of you
This place I hate
but now learn to love
because mom told me to love myself
as a Filipino.
But in my imagination
I do not love it for the same reasons
you tell me.
I love it for reasons you
have no understanding of.

I look to the Philippines because
I want to find the reasons why I
can trace a proud ancestry
and not feel alone anymore
in this place where no mountains
reflect my hope and dreams.
I want to tell my reasons
why I do have an identity
that is sad and angry
because the fire still burns
although you are afraid to see it.
I want look at the Philippines
because it incites passion
to be
to think
to remember
to feel what was to be forgotten

Fuck you who asks me
Why Philippines
and not other countries in the world
Because Philippines is who I am
and who I am not supposed to be.
I want to tell you otherwise that
it is who I am and who I am going to be
and therefore
telling you that I will not be silenced

Don't think I don't know pain.

I think I am beautiful.  I have a beautiful body, which I think is very dangerous and invites advances that scare me.  But in private, I love my body for its beautiful brown skin and long legs.  I love my petite body, it is very feminine and sensual.  I can be powerfully beautiful if I want to be.

I love thinking about the spirits around me that guide me and protect me and keep me strong through hard times.  I like to call upon ancestors to be with me when I feel weak.  I feel stronger when I think of them.  I feel that there is more to life than being around people.  But that in my solitude, I am most content and secure, to live in my imagination and be with my invisible companions that know me without me having to explain myself.  I can write and say things out loud because they hear me and they don’t judge me or try to critique me or take things the wrong way because they know I’m just trying to figure things out.

I love animals and the feelings of deeper communication I have with them.  This sense of overwhelming love is accompanied with understanding of their truth, not hidden by a façade.  Their love is strong and I trust them easier, than people.  Animals are simple.  Their characters are not fake but, their true spirits showing.

I think a part of me is struggling to love myself and be secure in myself because I feel I need to check the way my true self shows.  I am hesitant to be my true self because I don’t want to come off too perky, too ignorant, too internally oppressed.  Especially in this environment of critique, I feel like I need to be careful of what I say.  My truth becomes target for scrutiny.  I try to dig deeper to find a more solid sense of self.  That’s what I’m working on when I am silent.  Yet, I feel like I need to talk.  But that’s not true.  I feel like I need to prove my bravery in participation and hold on to what I said as some kind of measurement of how I did participating.  This is some kind of insecurity.  Inferiority complex, competitiveness.  Comparison to others.  Desire to be wanted, idealized, to be successful, to live up to expectations that I am doing something worthwhile.  Some kind of marker that my path to struggle is worthwhile and not some kind of mistake.  Or that I am not doomed to despair by feeling this life as the only kind I have interest in.  One of those doomed geniuses.  I am depressed because all of these markers of internal oppressions that was part of my life that I cannot erase.  The violence, the ignorance, the passions I have, the dreams, the comfort, the safety in nuclear, comfortable, middle class family, the guilt of being fed and safe unlike many others and how that continued because I kept quiet.  But also the guilt because I was part of violence and didn’t say anything enough.  I wasn’t arrested by the cops enough.  Yet, I feel the pain enough.

Although it wasn’t blatantly directed toward me like constant sexual abuse, or stalking in racist community violence, but just as traumatic feelings I experienced growing up seeing violence play out in relationships idealized to be safe and loving.  Thinking about cultures that don’t critique it, but perpetuate it.  Me being in it, complicit in being of that culture, not feeling anyway to release the pain of being part of pain.  So I am depressed.  I am envious.  I wish I was better to escape this pain, for a moment, a chance to feel free from my self, this life I was born into, this mediocre, middle class life of a kinda pretty, exotic looking girl to you—what the fuck does she have to cry about—this is what I have to cry about—being lied to that my life is a cover up for hundred years of pain that my body gets to remember living in luxurious sheets, lying in this medicated part of the world, sensitized with the desensitized, separated from the world that people call death, every fucker for themselves world.  My life is just one of those sporadic moments of accidents.  Out of the blue, a pang of pain, a random slap in the face in the nice family behind the white picket fence dream.  I grew up in a suburban Hawaii, took a trip to the Philippines and hated it.  Slept all day in my aunty’s bed listening to R&B rather than listen to them speak flip and eat their fucken kalding.  Or fucken dog.  Those sick bastards.  This is my life of lies, of lying that I love myself.  I love myself so much I shut up when my dad insults my mom for having a protruding tummy, telling her she isn’t beautiful.  I shut up because I love myself to not get my hair tossled in the violent wind of papa’s Pilipino machismo, the wind of anger the tornado of culture and memory whirring in him of his father’s spirit that spite him because he stuttered as a young boy.  This violence I sit pretty on my fucken pedestal.  But as it wobbles of all the commotion under me, I am fearful where I am above.  I’m fucken scared you bastards.  Scared of being pretty, old me, pretty, educated, world traveling, yoga doing, spiritual practicing me.  All lies to cover up history that pricks through this silk blanket of sleep.  Dreams poke me.  Don’t be surprised that I look like such a sassy ass bitch. 

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