Haole - Without Breath, the conquerors of a little island full of pneuma, breath, Greek for spirit, soul. And what have we in the space between K-Mart and minimum wage jobs cleaning haole filth at resorts and learning whitespeak, dressing and curtseying in the too tight shoes of the haoles, they who plants kiave trees to drop iron inchlong thorns across footpaths and bloody the locals feet until they wear shoes to protect themselves and inadvertently lose their savage ways, praise be to Pele, Madam? Turf.
Surf and turf, surf as turf, where the curls of waves curl back centuries of degradation, humiliation, spits and savagery from the mosquito brings with 'the best intentions for their souls' in mind. Don't go there, it's reeeal local. And hot damn, follow the eyeshot and the pecking order to the line up. Where eyes and buds and questions of 'So this is Dyoublong?' Fear inspired to manifest the latent seeds, budding growth up through burning constricted chest of an ancient and bloody guilt. No, I don't belong. But I could, if I played the game according to the rules in which I can't win, but I can settle aneath an umbrella of some structure that more and more seems terribly natural. Before there is kin and precedent, the patterns that eyes and skeletons emphatically demonstrate. This is our land, our Aina, and you must pay obeisance to big boss Strutsistuff, who truly is beneath the scalpel of big boss Billionaire, the cards in the pockets behind iron fences.
Look at me, look at me, I kick your board as one of yours and here I was born, of the Aina, I know the word for muscles too, you see. Blond and brunt but within the linguistic logic, I was born here, I was born here. I am not your enemy, I am not a tourist, a haole, I know about it all, the things you know and hold and dream and drink in heady draughts, I'm there, can't you see. Be gone before I break you and your board in hearthalf. But they bring the money. Without that inflow, we dry up like our rivers diverted to water the haole ranches up the mountainside. And Education. To train the boys for work on resorts or to escape the cycle that holds its head only above water on a surf board with ripped body, style, and a slap on a back referencing that life that we, together have been living, all these years, by leaving the Aina in tatters, a trash heap, rubbish, smoldering invasive species, pollution, and corporate suburban decay with brokeneyed lost souls, slowly expiring in a puddle of malt liquor vomit afront to the Walmart, employing uncle and cousin to sweep the corpus away with the cardboard, palettes, and plastic wrappers, destined to float soundly 30 miles SE the island on the that Other island, that one the size of Texas…
The language of the Man who asks for another martini. The language of the man who teaches you the incompatibility of his business strategies and his Christianity, both of which you have adopted in the space between any other choices in this pagan world, praises be to Pele, Master. Traditions you don't believe in alongside the flagrant smoke of spots of icy dope. Now strum your ukulele for an instrumental solo.
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But in the surf, there something remains, a gesture towards an entire world, all that remains of kinship and an anti-thesis to alienation, or is it bred in higher circles? Most beautiful baby for the most beautiful body, and the skills to match, stick, the aunties and the uncles, a policy of general acceptance and living in paradise, in swiftly shrinking spheres. Or those with haole lovers and boys, video games and ganja, poker, beers and liquor: ostracized. The gas station or not the gas station, that is the question. The lifespace where work and politics end, race, economics, and pure being, that space that the haolis have no claims to, no fingers in, only envious, afraid eyes, wondering how to release, how to inhale and laugh out in coughing spurts, letting time and space dissolve back and just being like we've always been: muscles and breasts, bathing suits and water. Winner take all, a network of interrelations publicized to all in a snapshot of body positioning. look at me. look at me. But here, in this lifespace, we laugh, we slap, and here, there is only the feeling of being that remains. Life reduced to the remainder, but the remainder holds the seed of all other instances of life. Plant it in rich soil and it will grow to a great reclamation of life before the Flood. Life and love and their intersplicing that cuts magnificently through the ego and all its awarenesses.
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