Take Stock
a poem for Siutu
Savour all the unique flavours that colour the palette of your memories,
the aroma of history that fills space and time with your existence.
Take stock of who you are
If you have a pair of functioning legs,
then run like a war vet amputee does in her dreams,
The ability to move and dance
then carry yourself like an elderly person remembers,
when a beat wasn't annoying, but always accompanied with emotional, rhythmic, movement,
the way they remember,
before
walking cane
mobility scooter,
when they were still in their teens and love was as necessary as being allowed to borrow mum and dad's car for the weekend
and as natural as pimples sweeping over a nervous boys face just before his first kiss.
Remember the importance of deep breaths.
So If you have two functioning lungs,
then enjoy every gulp of air you have, 
there will be days it won't be so easy to do so,
life can have you gasping, grasping for deep breaths,
sometimes when worlds fall apart,
they land on our chests and shoulders,
so measure your life by how many times something is breath taking
take it
all in
if you have a heart that still beats to its own rhythm,
then let it dream larger than your head can logically conceive,
bigger than your body can contain
more wild than your fits of laughter,
It will have you slapping knees, covering face, trying to chase air like catch and kiss,
if you have a smile in your gut,
Stretch it wide,
Let it burst out,
more often than you do,
lord knows there's enough tears and pain here,
we all need a little hope,
or relief from life,
so please
smile
when you do,
the wrinkles in the corners of your eyes will crack open the darkest skies,
soften heavy soul,
to rays of sunlight and warmth, because you,
you are an aging women's dream,
an amputees impossible,
vessel for lush love, life, living, breathing, seizing moments,
to spread a little hope that will find its self,
blanketing the cold and vulnerable.
If you have a fist or two then take the strongest one,
Raise it to fight injustice, indifference,
And then make fist to open hand,
Lift, strengthen, embrace,
Be open,
Let your eyes see everything,
Even the blind can see that there is brokenness here,
Even the deaf can hear,
the smashing of dreams
Pain is no respecter of persons,
So let tears flow with those that mourn,
rejoice with the new born,
Because change grows
Let your mind wonder, dream,
remember an idea is only as dangerous as ones imagination
So if your heart is working,
Then let these words disturb your rhythm of normality,
all sense of ho-hum moribund apathy
Cry with strangers
Smile, dance, write, paint, create, stand,
Take stock of what you have,
Live in all you are
"For we are but a vapour, a morning mist, here in the morning, but gone by the evening”
Savour all the unique flavours that colour the palette of your memories,
the aroma of history that fills space and time with your existence.
Take stock
of
who
you
are
Untitled
Its rainy season,
drunken songs echo through the night of my great grandfathers burial ground,
where he rests with the company of his brothers and sister,
His mothers and fathers.
We huddle under his Fale Samoa,
we MANLY hunters hope that our game over hears our cockiness
My mountain of an uncle in law talks of big game hunting
while my dad listens with a yeah right in one eye and a bloody Samoans in the other
My father slurs under his drunk breath: Tuku ho Fia poto: Is a Tongan phrase used to correct someone which means
'stop thinking you know it all'
or is used to rebuke someone who thinks their knowledge is more superior than yours
In the Darkness photographs cant hold memories without a flash,
I guess that's why this islands thunder lights up the whole sky
The sky blinks again and illuminates my great grandfather sitting in the corner
cross legged, in his usual praying position,
like he was praying for his learned tradition of addiction to stop with us;
I look away in shame,
we take another shot in their memory
Guilt is a photo that I have tried to lose but seem to always find when looking for light
While my mother land feels cold toward me as she dreams,
she often cries in her sleep around this time of the year
Acceptance from my mother’s land is a bottle of Chinese rice vodka that is never to be savoured,
but to be shot down
quickly
And just as quickly,
lighting falls from the sky and everyone can hear it hitting the ground.
Silence is a tin cup that is never meant to stay full
The sky blinks again and illuminates my great grandfather sitting in the corner cross legged
in his usual praying position,
like he was praying for his tradition of alcoholic addiction to stop with us;
I look away in shame
we take another shot
in their memory.
Te-Moana-nui-a-Kiwa
We are all ships on a journey,
Some parts of us creek with shifting times
though we may nervously ache and bend
some parts of us will never break,
Blank
empty
wanting
sheets of imagination;
In the right seasons
become Sails Full of Hope
propelling us forward
Faith guiding us through tough Pacific seas and dark nights
We are chasing the Son
Endeavoring into arms
wide as the horizon
We are all ships on a journey,
I will wade in these wallowing weeping white washed waters
Because I want you
I will wait in you.
My eyes adjust to the brightness of
You light.
Remembering moments more ancient like In the cool of the day
We would talk and walk
Today, we sail.
Doubts raging roars wages war and beats against us
into unbeaten paths
not yet broken in
With Clouds heavy with loneliness
Darken vision and block clarity
Happenstance mixes with destiny
And
Despite the spray of the sea
Stinging eyes peering through squinting vision
In the thick waves over whelming with a sinking feeling
I Hold fast to your guiding
Keeping
true north,
keeping course
These are the moments we grip most tight to our lives,
these are the moments we feel most alive.
This is the beginning of passing through the waters
