welcome to the haikutimes
The infernal nature of human history
is rising to the surface like lava-
bent with the twists and turns of the day,
beneath the sliding corruption of time,
beneath the gasseous dispersion of DNA,
wrung from the percolating action
of the Chinese, Japanese, Portugese,
filipino, Hispanic, Caucasian,
Korean and native bloodstreams;
trundled together in a heated game of Mahjong,
blessed by Ka Poe Kahiko
as they watched from the encrusted confines of the Kilauea firepit.
Pele,
entranced and consumed with the presence of this undying
and succesful manifestation of island archipelagos
invoked the presence of the high priests
and the directors of the Kohala Sugar Company to commune, at last,
in a moment of shared appreciation for this island outpost
built from a single, irrepressible vent
where no caution or taboo, sacrament or admonishment,
could keep the season of Makahiki
from spilling into the whole of the year.
Stanford Ballard Dole
opened a can of pineapple
and found crying inside
the juice of ten thousand laborers,
acidic,
packed with despair.
the label read:
na kanaka okuu
wale aku no I kau uhae:
provided to you
by those Kamaaina
who freely dismissed their souls and died,
they who emerged from the surf
clutching a rosary in one hand,
the mana of Jehovah
in the other,
inspired by Hiram Bingham
who stood sweating on the beach in his woolens.
Hyperbolic visions of statehood
might have entered the mind of Robert Gray,
piloting the never-before seen Columbia past Diamond Head,
but the promise of free trade
and an eight-lane freeway
sprawling forth from the edges of future Honolulu,
ringed by the primitive early offices of Ladd and Company,
protected by the Mu,
discouraged any visits
that could have broken the solidarity of those early explorers
who sailed out of Tahiti and the Marquesas.
When Kamehameha received the first longhorn
he stared long and hard at such an unlikely
archipelagan beast
and promptly hired a vaquero from Southern California
to train his own paniolos,
men whose spirit had not yet been broken by plantation colonialism
or Mai Okuu,
the choleric strains of which transfixed the oligarchy
into a frenzy of limb-breaking
and eye-gouging,
encouraging Syngmann Rhee
To later recollect such blasphemies
and fornications to underscore
his own bid on Korean politics.
Circling counterclockwise around the Iolani Palace
John Burns gathered breadfruit and found inscribed,
in pidgin, recollections of the first influx of indentured labor
on the headstones of those from fukien province
while red-baiters in long underwear
under the Polynesian sun
played monopoly with the land
they felt was theirs.
After the Kamchatka sailed to Oahu
bearing the signature of smallpox,
Portlock came to have a good look
to see what Cook had been talking about--
watching instead, through his telescope,
labor strikes taking root
in a high rise on Maui,
the mana of tobacco swirling about
Takashi Tsutsumi's head as he asked Hiram Fong
for a loan to cover the lost wages
And broken limbs of the former samurais
who came seeking peace and employment
amid stalks of sugar cane.
Had John Kapena caught the ill wind
of the Chinese exclusion laws,
he might not have been so eager to send a boat Japan.
but the air was stagnant,
so the Wobblies offered kokua to Pablo Manlapit
under a mesquite tree,
branches swaying with the memory of an errant catholic order
whose unprotestant predilections
brought even God's wrath
down upon them.
charles Montague Cook
withdrew from negotiations,
retreating to his office in the Hawaiian bank,
eagerly awaiting Annexation Day
when questions of his missionary past
would dissolve like the finest of cubes
in his legacy of charitable giving.
Don Francisco Paulo de Marin stood by Kamehameha's side
and handed him the first guava,
wrapped in an eight-striped flag with a Union Jack in the corner.
he chanted, 'Britain for brotherhood, The United States for trade,
and Kamehameha over all'
but Kamahameha was wrestling with the vision of the future
when Joseph Kanahawi would be tried and murdered at the hands
of civilians who believed he raped Thalia Massie,
and Chinese laborers from Amoy would pour into the country
bearing the white tapa banners of Lono,
challenging the Kuhina Nue
through their eventual business expertise.
The Chinese looked to Tan Heung Shan and discovered
that in those fragrant mountains where the sandalwood ripened
there ought to be more than one delicious scent,
and so they boiled the first sugar on Lanai,
discovering in the steam raising from the sweat of the Makaainana
that their invention would be quickly usurped
and channeled into the empire of the missionaries.
Elias Bond, preaching from Kohala,
dropped his abolitionist stance when the money disappeared
and hired as many plantation hands as he could,
eventually joining Admiral Legorant de Tromelin
in a circular pilgrimage around Ala Moana.
Captain Cook climbed Mauna Loa and saw, from his distant perch,
Jack Hall struggling with scab labor in Hilo,
the docks painted with blood of the makaainana;
Nathan and Jonathan Winship buying up the very last of the Iliahi,
and David Douglass scouring the islands for rare species of plants.
dying in ecstasy over the diversity, David fell into the bull-pit
Ned Gurney had set for him, leaving his little dog
to run in frenzied circles, biting the heels of Hiram Bingham
who was returning from his first mission of mercy,
embarrassed by the obdurate Hula dancers
who held Havaki in the grip of moral decay.
The hard-shelled crab, the great Kohala chief
who lifted the Naha stone of Hilo
was observed in his home environment in great detail by Vasilly Golovnin,
who noticed that the mysterious and restrictive taboos of the island
kept the potential economic development of Hawaii at bay.
from the new England pulpit of Henry Obookaiah
doubts of venereal disease and the criticisms of Herman Melville were cast aside
while Captain Jack Percival came to collect on debts incurred
by those who squandered the kingdom's supply of sandalwood on furniture and guns.
P.T. Barnum shook the hand of David Kalakua
and signaled the orchestra to begin 'King of the Cannibal Isles'
while Colonel Thomas H. Green moved into the Iolani Palace
marshalling the law that fell upon the islands
like the bombs that were dropped on Pearl Harbor.
A dogtag with a 'C'
might imply Christianity
but a dogtag without a 'B'
meant the Nisei had to fight a war on two fronts.
even though the purple hearts blossomed from their chests,
the Dhammacakra was not allowed to grace their gravestones.
syphilis came, disguised, bound in woolen clothing
coughing from an Anglican pulpit
and multiplying in the Iolani school,
preparing students for the historical ramifications
of the Ginaca machine, able to peel and pack
thirty five pineapples a minute.
The Honolulu rifles entered the Mission Church of Kawaihao
and laid flower leis on Kaahumanu's reliquary shrine,
as well as starchy corms of Taro
with the calcium oxalate still intact.
every Kamaaina who misunderstood the message of the Rifles
was forced to cut a half-picul of Sandalwood
even though it had been gone for a century.
shipfitter Duncan argued for due process
and a declaration that Martial law was illegal.
while the courts churned in their machinations,
he thought of Kaahumanu
and how she had stood the system of Kapu on its head
forcing Liholiho to eat what she had prepared.
Garrett Judd thought it was smallpox
that dissolved his influence on Oahu, but it was really the Great Mahele
and the idea that land should be bought and sold;
the disappearance of Ohana
where the roots of taro and families had intermingled;
the dismissal of Ahupuaa
that cared for the land,
so profound was the dispossession that in later years Daniel Inouye
would wander through the forests of Kona with one arm
looking for the Mulberry plant
from which he could make a sling of tapa.
Chuck Mau shuffled through a stack of land titles
and discovered the original bill of sale for the Thaddeus
abandoned long after the missionaries had dispersed.
those who hoped to make a difference by preaching
found their energy funneled into the presence of Titus Coan,
a Millerite whose evangelical fervor
transformed a tidal wave into an act of God.
such an event was delayed-and-possibly even forgotten
by the vote for annexation and the hopes of Kauileaouli
who sought to democratize his people, proclaiming,
when foreign governments temporarily recognized Hawaii's independence,
'ua mau ke ea o ka aina I ka pono': the life of the land
is preserved in righteousness.
In the red-light district of Iwilei
Governor Stainback concealed a bible and a copy of Das Kapital
ostensibly looking for communists,
tearing at copies of the liberal Honolulu Record
which were posted on every doorway.
he thought he saw Koki Ariyoshi publishing extra editions in the alley,
and what might have been the ghost of Jules Detroit chasing Asee,
but it was only the kanaka
who had returned from sailing trips across the Pacific
salty with desire, sleepy with the perfume of the soil,
disappearing into the crimson hollows of the dwellings
east of Honolulu harbor.
A coconut split and Pearl Harbor exploded
and even Barkley could sense it, anchored off Maui
for a few hours one may afternoon in 1787.
lepers jumped from the cliffs at Kalaupapa,
and Armaur Hansen and Father Damien de Veuster
scoured the beach, looking for clues
each arriving at a different conclusion.
Chin Ho took his life savings and turned it into hotel bonds,
rejoicing when Coconuts finally really did fall
on the GOP in Honolulu.
Chales Bishop floated a loan
and the plantation luna rose over the stubble of cane,
dreading the day when the perquisites
would be forced by labor unions to be converted into cash,
and workers could shop where they liked.
before the price of sugar responded to the reciprocity treaty of 1877
Claus Spreckels came dashing back to Honolulu from the west coast
buying half the crop before the price could readjust,
a shrewd move that caused his German industrialist genes to dance
and quiver in the hot sun of Oahu.
George Paulet, dodging Dr. Judd's pot-shots from Kaahumanu's coffin
sweated it out with a native chieftess for as long as he could
before his superiors from Britain
told him to just pack it up and go home.
The Keck telescope, perched above the infinite depth
of Mauna Kea's tholeiitaic basalt,
was only just powerful enough for Takie Okumura to discern
the desperate intentions of Hiram Bingham's exiled citizens,
those adulterers and murderers
who temporarily occupied the islands of Kahoolawe and Lanai
before escaping back into civilization.
Okumura covered the eyepiece with a cross
and turned to Lilouilalani, who sat singing Aloha Oe in her bedroom.
'My dear', he ventured, 'they have disgraced you,
the bayonets, they have pierced you,
Your brother has fallen, your crown lands dissolved,
where can you go when you have nothing to lose?'
Dreams of a multinational corporation
swirled around Northrup Castle's head
as he factored supplies on break from his missionary beat.
just as the labor strikes abated,
Myles Fukunaga abandoned his serenity, murdering his employer's son,
a detail overlooked on the pages of Castle and Cook dot com.
Yokohama laborers, following the wake of Commodore Perry,
sweated in cages of canestalk, their lamentation replaced by iron tools.
Admiral Laplace punished protestants for smashing bottles
of the island's finest French liquor,
while Paulet spoke for England
and the chronically litigious claims of Richard Charlton.
Oahu felt the impact of Dillingham's folly,
when he fell from his horse on the Nuuanu Pali.
Mark Twain sailed to Molokai
and entered the lair of the Poisonwood gods,
engaging Lanikaula in a game of fan-tan,
taking prodigious notes
for his lecture circuit back home.
keeping too close an eye on the big five,
Laka, goddess of the Hula, contacted gonorrhea
in a moment of cultural instability
and retreated to the Rurick,
where she caught up with Otto Von Kotzebue
who was about to denounce Scheffer's imperialist fantasy.
Prepared to offer the kingdom of Hawaii to the highest bidder,
Dr. Judd walked the streets of Europe, a Sandwich island daydream
lost in the gray iron gridlock of early industrial imperialism.
back in Honolulu he traveled in a gilded coach
openly disapproving of the marriage
between Bernice Pauahi and Charles Bishop,
checking first with the local Chinese authorities for the proper name-poem
that would be given to their ersatz union,
on the beaches blood flowed around Henry Opukahaia's family
so he retreated to Connecticut, bible in hand.
when the makaainana asked him when, if ever, the haole
would find peace on the Sandwich Islands,
his only answer was, 'When Boki comes back.'
William Brown sailed into fair haven with a cargo of furs
and was quickly enlisted by Kalanikupule to defeat his brother
in a deadly game of sibling rivalry.
kamehameha tossed Kalanikupule over the cliffs
in the battle of Nuuanu, without remorse,
and then peacefully turned to his citizens
and proclaimed Aloha aina for all.
in the Tong society headquarters
George Kaumualii quietly ceded his rights to Kauai
realizing that, when the internment camps sent the Nisei back,
the ardor of these citizens for their place of natural birth
would overcome any possible genetic predispositions,
giving the sons of the samurais
and the descendants of the Manchu emperors
full democratic rights.
Kaahumanu was nursed back to health by Sybil Mosley,
and her moment of conversion triumphed on a Sunday in 1825.
free eating was declared; the Luakini heiaus opened to women,
and awa was served amongst all.
Kalakua's monopoly on opium
and the later suspension of habeas corpus
were both linked to the lack of oil
at the end of the whaling industry.
The Trial of Seven
that encapsulated the frenzy and fear of the FBI
was too much even for Charmian London
who, adorned with Lianas,
walked through the blessed fields of Saccharum Officinarum
holding a Bible translated by Thomas Hopu,
delivering to those restless natives
a fiery assessment of Haole influence,
using as her witness every Wahine
who had been misunderstood,
every student in the Japanese language schools
who had been spurned,
and every sailor
who crossed the line of dignity.
copyright 2004 Haikutimes.com
drawing/writing/photography
jonathan machen