"Orchids, ti leaves, and plumerias all craving for my attention."
"It dances, like a fairy, to the music of a million flowers."

Night falls the air is stagnant and sticky with white gardenia, stephanotis and pungent citronella. A fountain sprays into a koi pond and echoes across the valley. At the appointed hour a silent bufo army advances, each to their own predetermined spot. Out on a lonely stretch of road beneath the glow of a street…

In the corner of my eye is a thick hedge of yellow hibiscus and three papaya trees plump with golden ripe fruit. Four graceful palm climb along the shoreline watchful, their fanlike fronds bowing in the wind. Where are they? Perhaps they are lurking beyond the horizon. The common mynah would know. Suddenly it looms…

Senyru

A response to the last renshi. This one line kept buzzing around in my head about ‘nasty girls like wasps’. I wrote it down somewhere and it has finally found a place in this poem.

He stay real smart – He know what I trying fo’ say when clarity falls through da pukas in my sentences cuz my English stay all buss up like Jesus when they hung him on top da cross. Every time I gotta talk I come scared cuz I no like sound like I neva go…

more mana’o for this time of year – Makahiki. Time to reap the fruits of a good harvest (a good year or good works)and to enjoy life! Lonoikamakahiki!

Birthday poem that just kind of spilt out as I sat at my desk at work.

Watching my roommate draw, she literally sniffed the colored pencils to tell the colors apart. Also she can’t cook for sh*t.

Between the cardboard covers there is paper and there is ink. There are smudges, doodles, coffee stains, and black scribbles marking mistakes. There is the occasional legible word. There are black, white, the occasional blue, sometimes red, but never pink. There are no confessions, no revelations, no confidences, no revolutions, no contemplations and no resignations….