Dormant daylilies flaunt dead brown stalks. Assorted wild plants compete for attention baking in the noon day sun. A super highway of vines tunnel beneath bromeliads skirting salmon bougainvillea teasing papyrus with probing tongues. In the adjacent plot, lavender, white and yellow dendrobium mildewed from excess moisture, exhibit bottle green weeds in various stages of…

Your chant commands the room. My heart swells, a witness to your power. Your ancestor’s spirit’s soar through you on native wings, above the clouds of Mauna Kea and Kilauea, watching Madame Pele’s unyielding river of fire and smoke. They hover on the lookout on top of the caldera, then plunge into the heart of…

A birthday makana to a kapa-loving-pounding wahine koa, A’ia’i..,mahalo for the gifts you share with us all.

I once rode a mule down a path carved into steep cliffs sliding through mud soaked ruts thick with slime and loose stones on top of an ornery mule, named Hoku. Hugging sharp ledges using my leg as his ruler, parallel to the treacherous ledge and rocks below. Stopping at the beginning of every switchback…

A gathering of four Hawaiian wahine preparing wauke to pound kapa, practicing mele and ‘oli, talking story, remembering all our relations…sharing under the Hua moon.

Fountain water splashes echoes across the koi pond. Clever Great Danes bark their hello, jump into the air to chase after chew bones anxious for a moment of attention. Sultry trades shift manila palm branches nod their approval. Plovers march across manicured lawns searching for tiny morsels, recently back from Alaska. It is late afternoon-…

Frankly this opinion comes at midnight to a dark blind man with a hearing aid, plunging off the edge of a cliff. I would rather eat a rancid piece of meat. You are a viper, slithering along the bowels of the earth dragging the feces of dead rats on your underbelly. Your venom is cold…

We get plenty chickens over here. They like play “chicken” with my car. Sometimes they take off wings flapping, like one jet. They like race with my Huyndai. They not so smart. Bumbai they going lose their tail feathers to one pupuele wahine stay Kahaluu.

I can feel your saliva dripping onto my big toe. Belching as you lean against me satisfied as I rub your neck massaging behind your ears. Staring into the distance breathing in the neighborhood listening to the sounds of the valley. Wednesdays Thursdays and Saturdays are big days in our datebook. Me–stuffing gray and blue…

Dedicated to Neda Agha Soltan who was murdered in Tehran, Iran on
June 20, 2009