What in the past can possibly hint at this chaos?
What has disturbed the clear pools, raising patterns of dissonance
as prominent as anything placid?
The wind shifts and storm clouds arrive in an instant,
although often appearing further away.
From a balcony you’ll see this blackened mass of grey
mushrooming from beneath Diamond Head.
Something was ablaze and the last of the birds were chased away.
When most of us lay oblivious
in the serenity of a Sunday morning,
we’d soon wake to the realization
that something was out of the ordinary.
There was smoke obscuring our landmarks, distorting our familiarity,
this is often true of tragedy.
Where death lay in waiting, just down the road,
looking to pounce from its place of hiding
like a leap of shrapnel.
There was an explosion of smoke and cinder
that turned a cracked mirror on our distorted theater.
Through the lens of a killer
we’re led through the mayhem and disorder
that breaks the mundane all would be content to maintain.
Passing through the rubble and stories of the fallen victims,
we’ll put faces to the names
etched into the collective memory
like a fabric in flames.
The headlines spread and the media focused its microscopic gaze
on this tiny enclave that in the distant past
was the place of an old heiau, Papa Ena’ Ena
and the smoke that issued from its sacrificial pyres
could be seen for miles.
We look there again in this modern age,
in sadness and outrage
but it won’t hit “home” until you see the damage,
and it is forever changed.
Senseless is the loss with no answers,
when tranquility turns to violence
and paranoia is a blind outlet from a dim-lit corner.
In the most obscure reaches of the mind,
the images are indistinguishable in time.
What else can be said of our darkest of crimes?
The things we’re capable of seem barbarous,
as the madness inherent in our condition
now positions itself like a shadow
over the breakfast silence.
The wind picks up and unsettles us again.
The once floral breeze now choked by ash and debris,
uncovering the decay beneath trees
that witness our terrible deeds.
The permanent marks this episode leaves
for the sensitive to find in the quiet hours
will always speak of what happened not long ago.
Back a few decades it rained heavy on another January 20,
pounding bleating rain with no visibility
as she crosses the mountains of the Pali,
running red down ravines,
from Tantalus to the valley streams,
through the quiet neighborly streets
that are shook to the core,
as they were before
they are at present in an aftermath
that resembles an air raid
and you cannot look anymore.
Tiny flames flicker in vain
upon the dusty altar of the innocent slain.
Wringing the sky of the last of its water
will not wash away the trauma
nor the loss of someone’s son and daughter,
the film reel keeps playing over and over.
So you’ll seek refuge in the mountains
but it offers no escape for an older tragedy awaits.
The physical landscape seems to reflect the mental,
so you’ll switchback another hill for a different view.
From higher ground, even moral ground,
do we receive anymore perspective?
You can see all the scars from up above.
From Tantalus where one story is bled,
down along Hibiscus
where the smoldering evidence is read.
From above, our lives appear interwoven
and this fair city seems so exposed.
What else can be said of our tenuous position?
Where everything can fall apart in an instant
and each sad tragedy seems like a revision
of someone or something we’ve lost in the past.
yakskinpocketnotes 