Everyday you ask why I love you
You say
"Why do you you love me when I put you through Hell.
When I push you into your shell,
And I never give you a straight answer.
You say " Why do you love me when I can't love you back,
And when I have all these mood swings."
Well this is what I say.
I love you because you are like my Asthma.
I didn't chose to have you here with me all the time, but you are.
You are here to make my life harder,
But you also make me stronger.
When the voggy winds blow
And it gets hard to breathe
It is you falling.
Yet I pick that Inhaler of mine up
And I take two deep breaths,
and I lift you back up.
As my breaths become clearer.
I know that I will never be able to breathe as well as others.
Just as I know I will never fall out of love for you.
You are the chronic lung disease that forces me to try harder.
The person that makes me try my hardest when I'm singing up on that stage.
You motivate me.
It is you that is always on my mind
When I have to try hard to take breathes instead of just breathing.
When I am running and my lungs start to choke me, it is the pain I feel every time I see you with him instead of me.
Because Love
You are my lung disease.
You are the funny noise my breath makes when I dance,
Because the Oxygen doesn't want to go in.
And when you touch me I feel the buzzing sensation that I get when taking my albuterol.
The warmth of my Nebulizer as it vaporizes the medicine for me to breathe.
Every kiss you plant on my head, fills me with the dizziness that I get from my medication
When I try to stand up, I end up falling just as hard as I have for you.
You are the relief I feel when I take my
Meds on a bad day, you make me feel normal again.
That's why I love you.
That is why I don't care if you're with him instead of me.
Because you will always be with me.
Just like my lung disease.

I’ve got fifteen years tied in knots
of green and brown and I have
decided that it is time for a change
of scenery. So I climb onto the roof
and pretend I am a chimney, spewing
smoke of blue and grey and lung cancer and
voggy Hilo mornings. A helicopter
circles overhead at an altitude of 805 feet, its
searchlight catching the neighborhood
lying spread-eagled on the living room
floor, brutally desecrated and left
bare-bones to die. I am a catalyst,
an instigator, a cynic with a palm tree.
Today I read an atlas and find
naught but “A Hui Hou” scrawled across
the pages in black pen. I burn the
book, the bridge, and the old tires in
the backyard.

On Saturday it rained and the floodwaters
took my bicycle.

Sometimes I sit by the roadside reading
Bukowski with hibiscus in my hair and
Indiana in my eyes. Hunting dogs
clash with rescue dogs at the house
with the stop sign. The moon falls
from the sky and engulfs the mynah
birds and the plague. The floodwaters
recede and leave a jigsaw puzzle
on the slopes of Mauna Kea. “I am not
afraid,” I say, “for I am only gravel.”
I play the eight-bar blues on Fortieth
and sing songs of drugs and missed
connections. I am hit by a truck and
a little gold car, but I proclaim myself
immortal as I am flattened to the pavement.
I am the Ki’i Pohaku beatnik, and
I write of nature and nurture and
the never-ending rain.

Someone has painted my walls blue
and my hands grey. So I pack my suitcase
and run down the highway for
seven thousand miles and all I see
are mistakenly-numbered houses and
blank maps and dead neighbors
from families I used to know.

There are torrents of rain now,
forming puddles in the forest.
I know the reason. It is twelve
in the morning.

The neighborhood grows obscure.
We are demolished.