The old road wears its history like scales
as it snakes its way through the past.
Sometimes it glimmers enough to see it
just under the surface
just under the cool heights of the cliff
I found your story.
Covered by the debris of years
and like the road,
overgrown with rumors and fears,
but there nonetheless.
So I read on, haunted as I went deeper,
now “I can’t get it out of my head”
caught like a vice in the little details,
that night you and your best friend set off for Kalapawai
to never return again.
Those bitter details.
Perhaps all you went out for
was crack seed or something sweet,
two teens, too young to love
anything but the weekend bliss
of sleepover and beach,
thoughts of shaved ice or musubi,
just seeds indeed
swept into the cruel current of their destiny.
From a cracked seed blood will flower
into the unconscious,
something unique and irreplaceable,
riddled with lead
and left for dead
in a sacred spot where many before you have fallen.
Was that night still?
Were there trades passing gently through the waves
and the ironwoods that line the beach?
On a beautiful tropical night
did that orb of light take away your speech
as it darted from behind clouds
and through breaks in the palms and monkeypods?
Was it the moonless kind that creeps up quickly in a rainforest?
Soon all is pitch black.
A flash of chrome in the dark and he would take you there.
Under the roar of an engine, behind the growl of a command,
in pursuit of that dark all else be damned,
drowning out the plea in your voices
“Why don’t you let us go”
tiny in the deafening flow of what would be.
From a cracked seed blood will flower
in the season of heavy rain,
from uncontrollable urges in a man’s brain,
the horror flowed forth
along its twisted, blackened course.
How surreal that ride must have been.
Beginning with the sound of tires over gravel,
pulling up alongside you.
Once initiated, this ride through your hometown
would careen past the familiar street lights and signs
of roads you crossed countless times.
Kailua must have assumed the eerie glow of the unfamiliar,
as divider lines become the only light
as the Plymouth probes deeper into night,
towards a cul-de-sac and out of sight.
What would happen next,
you friend was forced to witness,
disoriented, scared
and scarred forever,
like that deserted road,
a derelict memory you would hold
for so long in that jungle.
From a cracked seed blood will flower
from the island’s darkest hour,
in a desolate corner
of a road they always warned her
to stay away from.
You would never return home that night.
As the hours dragged on
your family would become sick with fear,
perhaps cursing themselves for not keeping you near
the tight knit warm light
set against the black of that March night
and all that lurked outside.
Your contorted position provoked anguished cries,
bloodshot and watery eyes,
countless nightmares for those you left behind,
as they make their way through
the horror of identification,
the surreal blur of those next days
give way to reality as it all sets in.
“Who would do such a thing?”
The endless cycle of questions
and they “Can’t get it out of their head,
their old world is gone for dead.”
From a cracked seed blood will flower,
in the backseat of a 68′ Valiant.
Breaking the seal, he soiled the white,
while all your friend could do was pray
“Please get me through this night.”
What in a man’s past
twists him to become a violent instrument?
Somehow inhuman,
unable to feel remorse
but only a course dictated by fear,
taking his machinery there,
past the border of no return,
from a forbidden corner in his heart,
a place grown over with a riot of vine,
turned over with training and trauma,
scarred with decay,
it is under there to this day
after decades,
under the mist and hush of barrack whispers
and when it manifests itself again,
no innocent is safe.
No longer stainless, the threat of his piece
broke the peace of that evening.
The threat in his voice
forced the paralysis of choice
and once inside your only recourse was prayer.
From a cracked seed blood will flower,
a shot in the dark that would allow her to escape,
one friend sacrificed for the other.
A seed of possibility,
barely beginning to sprout,
to grow into a life
that now can never be her own.
Given to dark thread sewn in men’s hearts,
forces we only vaguely will ever know.
Those who do will never forget you,
as they visit what is left
under the shadow of that jagged peak,
in your peaceful garden of ginger,
they seek the memory of your innocence.
From a cracked seed blood will flower
red through the mud.
It can still be read there,
even found face down under a canopy
you can never leave.
A seed that will never grow
but remains young and fragile,
a silver light in the dark, supernatural
and without a home, without closure,
you’re destined to forever roam
this lonely and fathomless road.
In Memory of Dawn Dede Bustamante
11/21/61 – 3/14/75
Rest in Peace.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pi92aKQEwXI&feature=player_detailpage
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