(The other day,
My mentor in poetry gave me a shirt
that reads,
“We bleed black and red”
I told her
that I would not wear it until
I have educated myself on this campaign
on the issues that are occuring
in Papua New Guinea
That way
I can wear it
with awareness and solidarity
on both sleeves.
This is my attempt to stand along side
the people of Papua New Guinea.)
I am not from Papua New Guinea
But I am a daughter of Oceania,
A daughter of Hawaii
A daughter of that knows what silence can do when men decide to take what was never theirs.
A daughter that knows what pain under oppression feels like.
I know what greed can do to money
I know what money can do to men
I know what men can do to the land and sea
I know the land and sea can do back to us
watch a domino effect,
karma crumbling ten folds in reverse
dismantle mortality
The way Indonesia strips
West Papua of its forests.
Cut down
trees until
land is a barren spine
The way their armies have stripped
West Papua of their children
Gun down
the indigenous until
mothers are forced to bury their babies in lines
The way soldiers have stripped
West Papua women of their breasts
Rape them
and tell the media that it is all a lie
Do not tell me
that this
is not genocide
I’ve heard of this done before
some in history long ago
some happening today
just in different shades of black and red
watch as the colors bleed through time
In Hawaii,
in the Philippines
In Guam
I can see it splattered across the Pacific
If our ocean is our mother
shes got a ricochet of wounds
and vultures picking at her sores
The big name companies, the mouthful of men with money
with wingspans that over shadow countries
are coming for her
think they can take
and take
and take
until she just a carcass floating off shorelines
Smallness is state a mind
Western ideas called us
islands in the sea
but really
we are a sea of islands
Conquerors come and
Conquerors go
but the ocean remains
mother only to her children.
Her children will stand for her
When they want to mine her seabeds for iron
until the iron in her blood is no more
when they want to drill the copper from her eyes
until the only the stars can cry for her
Her children will stand for her
When they want use her stomach lining
to harbor their weapons and naval ships
When their soldiers want to force themselves on her hips
They do not ask for permission.
Her children will stand for her
When they want to close to door to the outside world
to hide the blood on their hands
Her children will break that door down
To the people of Papua New Guinea
I will bleed with you.
colonialism is a shade of red
we in the pacific know too well
And to you listening now
What will you do
when you see your brothers and sisters with bleeding with open wounds?
When you are staring at mortality not blinking blinking twice
Will stand there in silence
or
Will speak for the silenced?