The old timers say it is not breaking the same.
Out there beyond the shipped in sand,
waves peel like a sticker
off a fake ocean
in a Waikiki gift shop postcard
framing sunsets between idyllic palm trees.
Beyond the manufactured images that sell vacations,
stalk the cranes
chipping away at what remains of undeveloped land.
Their insatiable beaks bent on destruction
then reconstruction,
they’re omnipresent ushers only to obstruction.
In the pretentious lobbies of plastic hotels
you hear the glass chatter of conversations going nowhere,
much like the valley roads
sought to drown out the city lights
running red through the clay
like swollen drains where flash floods bled,
where a Ko’olau shadow is lifting
from the trees like a fingerprint.
It has all the markings of a familiar hand
tracing the deepest recesses
where words go unspoken.
A chronicle of breath
as it trembles the glistening webs
between thickets of bamboo branches,
a wind instrument in motion,
in nearly choreographed dances
amongst the rain chaos that creases the fabric
of the forest’s malo folding in on itself.
Storms consume the once visible trails
where signs of struggle and uprooting
reveal partial conclusions to the dissolution,
the rest of the story is unspoken,
like the cold silence in a tragedy
slow to reveal that no one wishes to remember
but still can feel the tremors of violence
as clouds pause timeless
bound to Tantalus.
Coming from behind
the illuminated eyes of a dark profile,
morning brings a treason of light
to shatter the night like a verdict,
reverberating through the injustice,
through all the darkness enclosed in files,
filling up cabinets and dusty shelves,
unresolved in our selves
as we prop up the much larger abyss
with a loss of innocence.
yakskinpocketnotes 