Pikake in the Valley

 

The Blue in the Stratosphere 

There is a light gleaming

From across the vast and empty sea

It is blue, like headlights from a

distant far off place of stars

Death

It wears on a human like a robe of

shining stars

Like the pirouette of a dancer

Like violets toward a distant moon

Sometimes I wish I could fly away

To that vast place of Heaven’s edge

And become a part of

The blue stratosphere in the sky

 

The Empty Ballroom of the Schonbrunn Palace

Life flew by like a snowglobe or Yuletide melody,

A dancer forever rotating on a lake of ice,

Sung within the crevices of her heart, asking

When was the day that she would fly.

I walk this path holding this heart of mine,

Through sun and snow

Walking in the palace of heroes

And the thrones of Gods,

Watching the gold lacquer on the tempera painted walls

The marble carvings of Greek heroes

Dance and flicker in the quiet ballroom light,

And she felt like it was a dream locked in a time long gone,

A place of wonders,

Where her heart would meet her prince once more.

 

The Meat Market and the Butterfly House

There were thunderstorms where she was from,

But a place that never snowed.

Here there were ringing bells

as the butcher cut the

slaughter.

Fresh like blood upon a place of

dreams.

Red like oranges from

The gardens of Babylon,

Or flesh oozing between their teeth.

A dancer lost in a crowd of black haze.

A somersault in a Winter rain.

The lost princess became a butterfly in the city of princes

Trapped in a glass dome

Where life was

Eternal summer.

I walk upon their forever home,

A traveler from Hawaii,

And watch the bleeding

Rays of fire,

Engulf upon this foreign place.

And felt love,

For the people of the modern land.

The airplanes, sky, and

Seven seas.

 

Eucalyptus Groves at the University 

It was a place so far from here where Spring

would thaw the Winter snow,

and what felt like eons, passed in days to the gardens

of forever Summer, Hawaii, my home.

It felt like living a time once more

In the warm embrace of ocean wind and Summer humidity.

As if not a day has passed in between our boundless departure.

And the people, with tan lines and sandals,

Waded through the shallow banks of our oceans and bays.

I was a student then in Hawaii, and the Spring nights

The campus gave rise to a grove of Rainbow Eucalyptus trees,

the seeping aroma of a deep and fervent, spontaneous kind of scent

Like the dark outline of a rose, like the flight of albatrosses

Across the darkened sea.

It felt like midnight at the ice cream parlor,

Holding hands with destiny,

The return of my love to my town, my city.

Honolulu, the place that long had been my home.

Sometimes late nights felt like a dance of life and sorrow,

A world where all the seasons lived as one,

And local people thrived like grass beside the shore,

And I, sitting at the bench at the bus stop,

Watching as our world passed by, through hope,

Through calmness, and the internal beauty

Of an unspoken silence.

 

Dracula, A Pop Comedy

When I was an undergrad in North Carolina

I watched Dracula, A Pop Comedy.

It was a play performed at the Allen Hall Theater.

It was the protagonist of the female fantasy,

the stage prince

That haunted young women to their hearts.

The villain was the new anti-hero.

And I sat there,

Thinking and thinking,

About how laughter hid a thousand strikes of pain,

The realm of comedy, the plays we saw at Stratford,

The Shakespearean classic of

Laughter medicated us.

Here, we learned about lovers in the rose garden,

And lost brothers and sisters who reunited in serendipity,

And it was a English happily ever after,

Without an Asian heroine.

I wondered about representation,

Or the boy who could cure the heartache,

Like a Renaissance for the black haired boys and girls,

Walking the streets of New York, Durham and

Lavender fields of France.

Dracula, A Pop Comedy, was the moment

I thought of home,

A passing glance of someone distant,

Caught suddenly in the light,

The flutter of some waiting love,

The boy and girl heroine of an inclusive and colored

Classic masquerade.