Poetry Collection Fall 2014: II. Anufat

The night is quiet, the air warm from noonday.
It smells of sea and jungle, a hot salty musk;
It burns my nose, prickles my throat, and calms my nerves
as I lay in the banyan vines, my brazen act of defiance.
 I challenge you, ancient ones, for I am not scared.
The earth and sea play my lullaby, waves upon the rocks
Churning and crashing and rumbling, the same foamy refrain.
It is an eerie night, the air cooling as the witching hour approaches
The land crabs hiss and scuttle across the damp jungle floor
The snakes whisper and slither through the trees
“He is here, he is here”
Finally, he is here.  I challenge you, ancient one, for I am not scared.
He fills the sky, blotting the stars, muting the sea.
His face is many faces – decayed, muscles contorted in bloody, pulsating death,
A festering hole straight through the skull with muck, moss, and maggots
His body – a tangle of tissues and tendons, like bloody banyan vines…
I wake from the lucid terror of hot air, ocean, and damp earth;
Of land crabs, snakes, and the mighty taotaomo’na Anufat,
The icy sweat on my neck brings me back home, grounds me,
And trickles upon a purple mark, a new contusion
 Stretching across my chest – a long, smudged handprint:
An eerie reminder of my reverence, and why we do not challenge the ancient ones.

Poetry Collection Fall 2014: I. Alone

The umber lights, strung upon poles,
Once gleaming with lust,
Now singular and dull, are apathetic eyes;
O, such indifference.

A sepia village, shingles shoulder to shoulder,
Once boisterous with warmth,
Now blanketed with plethoric icy powder;
A coat of ash on me.

The rusting conifers, balding and shedding its needles,
Once olive and  emerald with life,
Now ochre and copper in death;
Acknowledge my insignificance.

Even in an ocean of faces, so clamorous and festive,
Once thrilling and vibrant,
Now alien – a desolate sea of bronze;
I am no one now.

And all those emotions, once blossoming and sweet,
 Now withered, leave the burnt taste of disdain;
Now, forever warning me:
All things beautiful can fade to dust. 

Sunsets

The library is a white mansion, filled with the sounds of keyboard clicking, singular coughs, and stratified conversation.  The largest walls are made of glass feigning freedom to the outside world, constrained by the cross-hatching grids in the hollow construction, like one giant cage.  Massive pillars, worn with student’s pencil abuse embroidering its lower corners, stand diligent like Atlas under the earth.  In this white mansion, I sit with a colleague, books in tow, minds at work.  We were studying for a sociology final scheduled a ways out from now, but as most study socials roll along, they become less about the study and more about the social.  We went from Durkheim, to interactionist theories, to interaction.  Gren was his name.  He wanted to be an electrical engineer and was taking Sociological Theory with me to fulfill a general education requirement. 
            “What about you, ah?”  The point in the conversation that I dislike the most. 
            “Oh, me?  Eh,” I shrug.  “Geriatric social work or human resources, I hope.”
            “Wow,” he blurts.  “So noble yet so resigned about it.”
            “Heh,” I give him a nod and half a smile.  “It’s what I do.”
            “Haw,” he trails off.  What to say next, he ponders.  “How come geriatrics?”
            “Long story, breh.”  I think of grandma and grandpa, and the football game, and mom.  My smile expands to my eyes.  “A long story indeed.”

 ~~~~

The word “no” was quite possibly the very first word I was taught growing up in a world of wants.  No, you cannot have that piece of candy; no, you cannot touch that toy in the store; and my favorite line of all, “No, you cannot always have what you want because life will not always say yes to you.”  To summarize the family religion into two words, “Just no.” 

My mother was a woman of No.  Growing up, half of all her responses to my sibling’s and my requests were faced with rejection before we could finish filing the request.  The other half was filled with ambiguous responses and rhetorical questions that ultimately led to a solid “no”.  She had been devout through the years, her faith strong in her iron will and leather belt.  Her strong Catholic practice has kept her a vigilant and unmovable rock when it came to denying the fun in life.  I had decided young that if my family practices the religion of No, I wanted to be the family atheist. 

Things started to change as soon as my grandparents arrived for at-home care.  They first came to live with us from Guam when I was eleven.  Grandma was blind, bedridden, and had Alzheimer’s; papa was just a frail old man.  They both had diabetes and high blood pressure.  What they needed was a gentle touch and a soft word; they needed patience when getting their Depends changed; above all, they needed someone to say yes to them.  This Yes person was to be my mom.

I was a beacon of excitement.  I could not wait to meet my grandma and papa who had adored me when I was much younger.  My papa was the more able-bodied of the two, so I was most excited to see him again.  Very unlike his daughter, my papa was without a doubt a man of Yes.  Every morning in Guam, I used to run to their house to see him and would always yell “Papa, hello!” like a song (and for him, it was a song).  He always gave me special candy whenever he came back from Japan even though mom doesn’t like me eating junk; he always let me go out and play when I felt like it, even if I had chores; he even used to make his family specialty, coconut bunelos, just for me.  This was my memory of him in his early seventies, my image of how he should have been.  I was sorely disappointed.~~~~ 

My papa was the biggest nuisance in my life in middle and high school.  He was the epitome of a dirty, rude, old geezer.  He was a human slug: moved, talked, and looked around slow (or perhaps that was how he justified his dirty side looks).  He also had this notion that everyone he talked to was a five-year-old.  I was only twelve and I thought his humor was completely immature.  He greeted everyone with “You wanna fight?”and “huu huu, ah-heeee!”, which was only funny the first twenty times.  Above all, though, he was a rude and obnoxious mock.  Oh, he was the Champ of Mockery.  For every time we told him not to do something, he would respond with “Ohhhhh,” quite woefully, “is that right?  Okay behbee, you’re RIGHT!  You win, I always loss.  You de boss.  I always loss.  Hu huuu, hu huuuu…”

            Mama made me her nurse aid without really asking me.  She used to say that this wasn’t just her responsibility, it was mine.  For a while, I thought I understood what that meant and why it was thrust upon me.  I quickly grew to loathe it.  All of the frustration that used to be from my mama was not only combined with the frustration from being an eleven-year-old caregiver, but the line distinguishing the two was blurred almost completely.  To me, it was all their  fault.  These goddamn old people have ruined my life.
            What was heard as “Papa, hello” has now become “Papa, fuck off.”
~~~~

            The last several years have been disgruntling.  Nothing had changed except for the old people’s level of decrepit-ness: I was still a slave.  Really, why couldn’t a fifteen-year-old Advanced Placement student do basic teenager things like have friends?  Sure, there were people I considered friends in classrooms and in the court yard during lunch period, but once people start planning beyond the school fences I was no longer a thought, probably because the answer is so often “no” anyway.

All the AP English kids who despise Chemistry as much as I do have a free period now, a class designed to be a study period for the studious children.  Of course, it’s never used this way – this is social time: Time to chat about pop culture and television and the latest internet trends and music.  This is one of my free times to just be a teen, away from the pressure of home, away from mama and those old people.

The air smelled faintly of old paper and cat litter.  The walls lazily held a dusty chalkboard, stained with years of ghostly residue, and boxes on every counter, waterlogged at the edge, sagging with old age.  Here, in this dank chemistry lab (built during the plantation era of the 50’s, still in its original glory), is where we few students sit around cracking tables to talk about everything and nothing.  There are only six of us who enjoy this free period: Vinny, the Asian fashionista; Ashlyn, the typical emo child who thought she had serious mental issues; Deanne, the girl that uses her petite size and adorable Japanese features get whatever she wanted; Destiny, the mother figure of the group; and lastly, Patty, the clueless Filipino boy who goes along with what any of us says or does; and me, the anti-socialite, only cool in school.  There, in that dank chemistry lab, we discussed homecoming of our sophomore year.

“Robotics will be at homecoming as a group,” Ashlyn muses.  “I’ma go with them.”
            “Thought you hated them this week,” Destiny says blankly. 
            “I do, but no one else is going tonight.”
            “So you’d rather go to a game you don’t watch with people you don’t like this week?”
            The conversation continues along this path for twenty minutes or so; I wasn’t exactly counting or paying attention.  I had already texted my mom to ask her if I could, for just one night in the entirety of the school year, go out with friends to this homecoming game.  She responded with her monosyllabic religion.  No.

At this point I have no words, only a tense jaw, an enflamed face, and eyes that felt they wanted liberty from their sockets.  I faintly heard a small voice calling my name before I regained composure.  It was Deanne’s small voice.
            “We’re all going tonight,” she said excitedly.
            “Even Patty is tagging along,” Vinny says silkily.  “You should too.”

Before another word was said, I hear them in my head: Why did we ask her in the first place; she is just going to say no; she’s probably boring anyway; So sad how she lets her mom control her.  So often is the answer “no” in my life, so often I am denied what it means to be a teen.  Today, I exercise a different religion. 
            “Totally,” I gloss over the words for the first time ever.   “Let’s go.”~~~~ 

            The atmosphere was stoic.  The clouds were silver and amber with rosy cheeks of the sunset; the colors of symbolic pride through the crowds are mesmerizing.  The air is filled with a confusing assault of dirt, sweat, and pepperoni.  The air is hot with excitement and remnants of the day’s sun, a temperate reminder that, even though all of Kailua High’s fan club is here, we are in Ewa.  I see my friends, but they are a blur – I am drowning in a sea of heightened senses, overwhelmed by the culture of Homecoming.  I love it.

            “Hoy!”  Destiny grabs me by the wrist.  “Don’t get lost, lady.”
            “Oh, keh,” I stammer.  In this moment, I have no words.  This is all too much, I thought: all too exciting, all too soon.  The football game had already begun before I realized that I somehow navigated my way to the top of one of the dirt-stained bleachers, already loaded with fans.  Worry washed over me as I began to think about the consequences my disobedience would warrant.  For once, I dreaded the thought of the leather belt more than I did the thought of absolutely no connection to the outside world.  I have gotten lickings pretty harsh before, but never have I done something as outwardly defiant as this.  I felt my left eye involuntarily twitch. 

            Then, my ears were enveloped by the unanimous cheering that screaming from my side of the bleachers that told me our team was doing something good.  I looked up: A football player, sporting black and orange, running.  He had made it from one end of the field to the other, untouched, a stallion unrestrained.  A sense of pride I had never felt before was swelling inside of me.  My team point seven, everyone else’s team zero.  I found myself on my feet with my classmates, hooting along with the crowd; screaming with the crowd; singing with the crowd.  This is a social life, I thought.  The lights were blinding against the night sky as I let all negative thoughts fade into the recesses of my mind and lived in my dream world for the night.   

~~~~ 

It was midnight when I walked home from my dream land.  I was buzzing with energy, a product of pure adrenaline and too many Red Bulls in one night.   I was a different girl, one who had finally made the decision to no longer give in to the unreasonable whims of her overly-religious family.  As I was mentally preparing for a fight, the sight of red flashing lights at my doorstep caught my eye.  An ambulance was already departing, sirens at full alert: “Attention”, I heard it wailing, “Dying human coming through.”

I held my breath.  In the moments from the doorstep into the house, time did not exist.  My dad was home from work early, his midshift cut off because of all that was going on.  He ordered me to stay home with grandma.  Papa was gone.  I asked what had happened, but he wouldn’t respond, perhaps because he felt that I didn’t deserve to know yet.  Find out the hard way.  He said nothing to me as he left the house other than  “Sa ingratu hagat’mu.”  You ungrateful daughter of mine.

I got the call that papa’s sun had set at about 2:26am from my mom, only she wasn’t my mom on the phone.  She was this quiet, resigned woman with a small voice and a broken heart.  I hung up the phone and decided that the best place to be was lying in the middle of the road on my street.  Despite the years of hating the word, I found myself, accompanied only by the brisk air, trees and moonlight, uttering that one word over and over again to a God I do not believe in: No, Jesus.  No, God, please no.  I have not made my peace, I am not ready.    I am not ready.

I quickly became appalled with myself.  Who was I to deserve peace?  I had, for so long, blamed this man who gave me the chance to exist in the world and I showed it to him – through my insensitivity, through my harsh words, through my lack of affection.  How could I possibly deserve any inner peace?  I deserved to die, I thought to myself.  I should have died.

I went inside the empty house to check on grandma after what felt like half an hour.  She was laying in her bed, talking to someone.  I asked, “Hafa, grandma?”  What’s wrong?
            “Hayi?  Matai lu hayi?”  Who?  Who died?  “Hafa nai, just tell me?” What, just tell me.
            I hesitate.  “Grandma, hayi un quentotusi?”Who are you talking to?
            “Ha’a nai.” Yeah, she says, waiting for an answer.  She cannot hear me.  She begins listing people who have long been dead: her mom, her dad, her siblings, her aunts and uncles.  I grow scared.  Who is she talking to?  For ten minutes, she talked to someone playing “Guess who died” with her before her tone changed.  Her blind face became very forlorn, almost as if she were about to cry.  Then she finally spoke.
            “Go ahead,” she said in clear English.  “Move on, neni, it’s your time.  I’ll be okay.”

 ~~~~

            “That was perhaps the most profound thing I ever heard her say.”  My voice was low.  “I had spent so much of my youth being angry at what I thought I should’ve had.  And I couldn’t move past it.”  I choked back a break in my voice.  Be strong, I thought, be like mama.  “It only took one hour to learn that living like that wasn’t worth it anymore.”

The library transformed into a sunkissed mansion, echoing the dwindled clicks of a few students’ keyboards and footsteps exiting the building.  The glass walls allow the orange sun to spill through as Gren stares blankly at his bag.  He is deep in thought, as if in a trance.  As the orange slowly fades to periwinkle to dark, we slowly gather our studies to pack up for the night.  We are the last students in the dark mansion.  We juggle some sociologist names and terms back and forth for a short period of time before we fell silent once more. 

            “Do you ever find yourself regretting?” Gren asks suddenly.  I looked at him, perplexed.
            “Any bit of it.  The game, y’know, anything?”
            I paused.  I let my mind wander off to my mother, whose face is now a mirror of the old woman who taught me one of life’s most powerful lessons. “Remorseful, yes.  Regretful, no.”
Gren gave a final nod, one pondering humph, and we departed to our cars.

Welcome to ENG 313: Introduction to Creative Writing

Hello small audience of mine, I have returned.  Much has changed since the last post on this particular blog, and soon the function of it shall change as well.

Since my last post, I have gone on to university and have taken up a Narrative Creative Writing course, and one of the things the professor would like us to do is journal and document our thoughts detailing assignments.  As I do not have MS Word quite yet on my new laptop, this will be used as my temporary journaling.  I intend to post my final product on this blog promptly after the due date for public documentation purposes.

The world I would like to create....
~Emphasizes silence - the eerie absence of meaningful sound

~The world from the eyes of a child thrown into adult responsibility; "a child, taking care of this massive child"

~frustration with life situation; a loss of "friends" (POSITIVE OUTLOOK: the weeding out of "friends of convenience" and the reveal of genuine friends)

I would like to carry this theme onto the final assignment, LONG STORY #2.

The Majique Ball, Pt. II

Kinrea nearly fell down the stairs rushing out of the ball room like that. Maybe she deserved to, she thought, running out simply because a man asked if she was alright. Her face was hot with embarrassment, but was soothed by the cool air outside.

The lawn of the Majique Palace was just as enticing as the architecture itself. The grass was flawlessly green patterned with perfectly tall and well-trimmed trees, the lawn bordered, to its left, with a satisfyingly large and cliché pond that shimmered and danced with the moon.

Kinrea stopped at a nearby tree to collect herself when she caught sight of a white figure floating on the lake. She paced over to the pond to find a large swan dancing and swaying so peacefully, almost in sync with the concerto playing inside the ball room.

She sat at the edge of the lake for a long while. The sky had darkened and the moon had risen, high and bright. The whole romance of the scene would have typically been cheesy and displeasing to her at first, but it didn't seem to bother her tonight. She took off her heels and placed them beside her as she lifted her dress and slipped her pale feet into the water. It was night and no one was with her, so she untied her hair, which fell delicately beside and in front of a portion of her face. After moments of running her legs through the water, she began humming one of her favorite ballads. The swan had stopped it's dancing abruptly, and turned its head to Kinrea. She stopped her humming, and stared back at the swan. Its eyes looked at her, without threat - curiously, beckoning, pleading. "Sing for me."

Kinrea did so.

"Agony melts away," she sang softly, "With the sound of the rain. Silence scatters numerously..." And the swan began dancing again.

"In between the trembling worlds... it's so painful.

I'm outside the cage with my broken wings, looking up at the pale sky.

In the overflowing guilt;
Hope, drowning in the lies pours down,
The thorny rain."

"That's a beautiful song," a man's voice said behind Kinrea. She turned and gasped, startled out of her trance. It was the same man inside the ball room. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you."

"It's alright," she said quietly. She turned back to the swan, whom ceased her dancing with the interruption.

"Hm," he said thoughtfully, "Your swan doesn't look so happy." Kinrea thought he was making fun of her, and when she was going to argue back to him, he spoke:

"It sinks into the night;
Becoming aware that I'm all alone;
Just being scared, sad, and lonely...

The feeling of sadness rises..."

The swan continued her dancing, and Kinrea joined him in his singing.

"...And it feels more than yesterday.
Deep inside, it burdens me still.

Now, the crushed philosophy;
Blood and rain merge, gets twisted;
We now knot the truth, along with the fiction."

"You know the song," Kinrea says happily. "No one else I've met has heard of it."

He smiled. "That's because you didn't know me." He sat by her and looked right into her face. "I'm Ryuuko, but for a lovely lady such as yourself... you can simply call me Ryu."

She returned his smile with her own. "And I am Kinrea."

"Well, Miss Kinrea," Ri said sweetly, "It's my pleasure to have met you on such a lovely night."

She gazed at his beautiful face, illuminated by the moon, and smiled gently at him. "Mine as well."

They both turned to the swan, still dancing despite the halting of the chorus, and they sang.

"It pours down, the thorny rain."

Girl Honey

A girl is murdered,
and thrown into the woods.
Her body rots,
and flowers grow from her body.
Bees come,
and suck the nectar from the flowers.
The bees make it into honey,
and the honey is collected.
The honey is bottled and put in a store,
and the family of the missing girl buys the honey.
The family eats the honey;
The family eats the girl.

The Majique Ball, Part I

Kinrea tapped her lap nervously when she sat in a chair towards the back corner of the room. She'd never done this kind of thing before, let alone wear such frilly clothing. This was the first time she had worn a dress in a very long while.

Kinrea was indeed in a large room, much larger than her own home. Her home was petite, made to suit one or two inhabitants. This grand room seemed fit to hold well over hundreds of people, making Kinrea feel much, much smaller. The floor was made of a creme-colored marble, matching the creme-colored walls and golden-splashed curtains and trimming. The two enormous crystal and glass chandeliers above her seemed both delicate and threatening, dangling high with no more than a mere cable and metal supporting it. Looking up at it made Kinrea dizzy and even more nervous.

She looked around the room skeptically, quickly realizing that no one she knew was currently present on the dance floor nor in the dining area. The whole reason she came eluded her still. What in God's name would posess her to suddenly, after so long of being solitary in her own little world, break out in this manner? Perhaps it was the boring daily routine that was her life, or Jinjin's mannerisms. Jinjin loved parties, but had a particular fondness for the Annual Majique Ball. She had always made it sound so profound, so unique! - well, Jinjin had a talent to make anything sound grand.

Kinrea sighed softly and walked impatiently to the ladies' restroom. The restroom itself was the size of two living rooms, just as brilliant as the main ball room itself. She turned to face a large mirror on the wall and found a stunningly beautiful young woman wearing a glistening and glittering creme-dress gazing right back at her. Her face seemed almost painted with a slight glow, her almost-black brown hair pulled back in a tight ponytail with her curls falling behind her head. At first Kinrea was baffled at the sight, then grew disturbed that she was looking into her own face and had not realized it for several minutes. After playing with her hair for a while, a woman who looked no older than twenty-four walked in and smiled at her.

"There you are," the woman said with relief in her voice. "I've been looking for you!" She grabbed Kinrea's arm and tugged her through the door and back into the ball room.

"Jinjin, I-I don't know, " Kinrea stammered nervously. Jinjin was headed for the dance floor, and she didn't like that idea much at all. "I-I'm not up for this quite yet."

"Oh come on, Kin," Jinjin pleaded, "You haven't been out like this in forever!"

"And that's precisely why I DON'T want to dance yet!" Kinrea halted and tugged herself in the direction away from the dance floor. Jinjin let go of her arm and twirled singing, "Fine, suit yourself!" She vanished into the army of dancers.

Kinrea stood looking into the sea of people, wondering if Jinjin could dance just as gracefully as everyone else. She had never really seen Jinjin dance before. She only heard stories that her sister would bring home from long days of dancing and partying. She could play any party role: beautiful and elegant, premiscuous and wild... she could do it. Nothing like Kinrea. She couldn't even believe that her reflection was her own. That's what she gets for letting her sister play dress up with her.

"Excuse me miss," a man's voice said respectfully. "You look lost. Are you alright?"

Kinrea's eyes averted from the dancing sea to a young Asian man's face looking right at hers. "Um," Kinrea fumbled, "Y-Yeah. Quite alright. Thanks," she trailed off looking away as quickly as possible. She looked down at her dress for a second and spoke softly, "Excuse me..." The man only looked at her as she raced out the ball room's main entrance.