Keep On... Any Means Neccesary

There Once was a little thug in me…..

I said there once was a little thug in me, but that man grew.

The dreams I used to hold unto were those they never knew.

Because the system in which we live could never feel true, to the feelings of a young Tongan rockin blue. Or red it didn’t matter the hue.
The same for a Latino, Asian, or Black dude.

I stood by, holdin my time fittin to get through. Thinkin success could never come unless I made my move.

Movin why they watched, teachers thinking I’m due , cops also makin moves to make another young one through. The preacher cast doubt.

And that is what I caught when I went out, but only one listenin were those same who never knew.

When they thought there was a little thug in me it may have been true. Cuz I stood ready to challenge any man who thought my heart was new.

Soft spoken, Rhythm broken, my words touched. Faster than fists flew.

Get in where I fit in is what I used to think I need to do.

But that little bit of thug in me was just another costume. The man in me was the same man in you or woman who felt the pains of doubt the whole day through. Success is just a matter of moments.. Tellin them what it do.

So it’s no teary eyed surprise when my mama found out I could do just as good as you.

High school is just the first gate, using your life experience to make them moves.

Common said Keep on… any means necessary. Believe in your struggle. Believe in your words, Speak Truth to power… My People... Ofa Lahi Atu.

Inspired by The Truth Cypher
-Asa

Painting

The other day I tried to paint a beautiful picture, but I painted it all alone.

I pictured a scene with you and me holding hands standing under a tree.

Yet, when my brush moved the only things to see were those dreams I held within me.

Frustrated and Bitter I tried to move it some more.

So much that the image of me began to look a little sore.

An idea came to me that perhaps if there was a door.

My love might be seen once more!

But, my sad face stood on the canvas next to an empty door.

Her dreams were hers and only she could let them unfold.

So, late that night while she was sleeping I listened to see if I could find those things I was missing.

A beautiful face lay beside me with smooth lips and grace but dreams of me were never told.

The next day I returned to finish my painting, but alone was all I could draw.

Descended from those who had the courage to sail...

A reflection of Hawaiian leadership

By Asaeli Matelau
Kau Moana

Despite the historic election of Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the United States, there is still an overwhelming lack of minority leaders in our communities at home.

Paying tribute to Hawaii is important for many reasons, but it is an appropriate time to reflect on these islands because they happen to be the birthplace of president-elect Barack Obama. Native Hawaiians once held sovereignty over their homeland, but due to the actions of missionaries and plantation owners, Hawaii is now in the occupation of the United States. The queen of Hawaii was overthrown from her position on January 17th, 1893, and since then Hawaiians have been in a struggle to emancipate themselves. The Native Hawaiians modern struggle has forged strategies for maintaining traditional cultural values and progressing in the modern world.

Hawaiians are oceanic people descended from those who had the courage to sail. Children of the beautiful, children of the strong; our fore bearers faced death and survived. They were the respected, the elegant, and the powerful. My story is one from the islands on the Pacific, but if you’re standing today, you have a story that matches in comparison.

Hawaiians are descended from those who had the courage to sail. They were the respected, the powerful. My story is one from the islands on the Pacific, but if you’re standing today, you have a story that matches in comparison.

Ancient Hawaiians and other traditional sea navigators are famous for knowing their position by looking to the stars. The stars are ancient beacons of position, just as knowing your ancestors and connection to your aina (land) is. To develop our position we will look at three concepts that compose critical, indigenous spiritual leaders like those of our past. These concepts include developing self-knowledge through land, developing self-knowledge through ancestors, as well as are reclaiming cultural values, which entails understanding the duality of values.

There are two types of self-knowledge that are important to acknowledge in your pursuit to identify who you are; there is knowledge of places and knowledge of ancestors. Your knowledge of places will give you a sense of permanence and proportion. Understanding this will connect you to where you come from. If you can identify places you associate with literally and spiritually you will reconnect yourself to your aina and to the issues that are most important to you. I challenge you to identify your mountain, that which is your foundation strong and prominent in your life, perhaps a backdrop for your daily pursuits. Identify your valley, the bed of your life, that which gives you heart. Perhaps, it will be a relationship that progresses your dreams. Identify your water, the mover of sustenance. What feeds your passions? Lastly, identify your wind, your voice and the way you are heard.

The other self-knowledge is your knowledge of your ancestors. The knowledge of your ancestors will build upon your identity by giving you a sense of relationships and continuance. Go back eight generations of your genealogy on both sides and acknowledge every person in this line. Identify what aina they connected to and what culture your ancestors identified with. After you understand yourself you will understand your invocation and your pursuit of something greater than personal interests.

We lead, live, love and learn by our value system, but our value systems have been tainted and are influenced by the outside leaving a half-truth story to our identities. Native Hawaiians are taught they value aloha or love and welcoming, respect, pono (being proper), humility, and a full list of sweet things, which is true, but rarely do you hear about the other side of human values? Values such as vigilance, pride, and power have been robbed from the repertoire of the Hawaiians. These valuses are villainized by the portrayals we are shown of courageous minority leaders. Take a look at the civil rights movement under Martin Luther King Jr., mainstream America listened to King because he was passive, caring, and persuasive where as Malcom X was feared because he was vigilant, powerful, and directly challenged the systems that are in place.

In Hawaii, values were categorized under masculine or feminine, Ku and Hina. The kinder list would fall under Hina and then there is Ku, the male representation of values. The criminalized Ku list contains Vigilance, Power, Courage, and industriousness. Yet, we as individuals are not allotted the right to wholeness in our pursuits. We must reclaim these universal values and apply them so others may follow proudly. Men and women should not feel as though they must act out to hold true to their cultural values or become passive to be successful. We must now harmonize our dualness and utilize our Ku to lead into tomorrow. Leadership is the destiny of those who want a new tomorrow.

Words Move

Words Move.
I Touch.
Together We Feel.
But do we feel just for us?
Or Feel for that touch?
To touch to feel.
We crave more.
To feel the grace of a warm embrace.
I smile you smirk,
We think once again of that touch.

Hunger spreads and now we wait.
Blood Moving, Hearts booming.
Are we swooning?
You and me trapped within this beautiful bloom.
Hidin in fly ways.
Not knowin how to move or what to do?

Is this Love?
Loves touch?
Does love touch?
I touch.
My fingers reach erect upon the breast of emotions temptress.
Moving thoughts from on high to between her thighs.
But why?....

Do I rely on that touch?
To get by?
Has my heart forgot the pleads of satisfying my other needs?
Why don't I touch my own mind and seek my own heart.
To touch my own reason for being.

"Tongue-N-Ear/ Who am I?" - Asaeli Matelau

I’m soft-spoken and lighthearted. Yet get me into a corner and things can only go one way. I’m a complex contrast that’s both here and there. A two sided dreamer who throws down with a grim smile, and then writes to lift us higher.

I am in an emancipated bodied estate, thinking of those who choose to simply follow the state. Ignorance is born when emotion is gone so I purge myself from reason and fall into sacrosanct treason. My mind relies on the highs of sensual cries and so I testify against the dirty lies who cry foul on Love.

Because throughout it all. I’m a wannabe mack full of emotion. Guided by sincere thoughts of her smile and a new definition of love. I follow on the definition of love as an action. So I find Love with my initial thrust and Follow it with a smooth caress and trust. Hate and despair get shed with tears. Cuz while the rest preach injustice I Whisper tongue in ear lullabies of justice, fortitude, and respect.

I write for the true feelings of a failed heart. I hear the tears and feel the moans of all those who have been dethroned. I dream in equities and wake in misgivings bringing reasoning to another way. The way away from what’s taught and onto the path in which you live, and feel. In the hopes to give birth to a new organ of emotion..

"Breathe" - Asaeli Matelau

How long until I am no longer heard from?
Or No longer heard from in the same way?
My voice given to me at birth is mighty and strong
Born with the tones of a new tomorrow
A tomorrow risen above the hardships and equalities of today

But, my success is taught in the house of my condemner.
They say. Hush your voice, learn...
support the system that holds you down
Learn to be the man! Fight your fight with Politics
Drown in money and smile while we degrade you
We will set you free from your struggles

politics, academia and the university knows nothing of my Struggles
Your education system does not understand that I do not stand alone,
But, am tied to my Family, my Community. I will not let them go.
I will not stand while the establishment beats my People down
I do not wish to prosper, the way you prosper
I wish for Progress to sprout in the midst of my People

So I shall remain in the haze of the systems of oppression
While, I breathe in the mouth of the institutions.
I will breathe my breath, my knowledge by mouth like my ancestors
I will not allow you to taint my voice... my breath.
It has been passed down thousands of years
and although you conspire against me... against us
I will continue to breath and teach those who are like me to breath.
To be heard...

The "Others" - Asaeli Matelau

When I was young I remember my father filling my head full of ideas about what being Tongan meant. He would tell me things like "being Tongan means being the toughest, being the most furious, being able to win a fight." Then he would show us his rebellious side by daring others to try his strength, it didn't matter who, he would call on police men, body builders, anyone he thought worthy. I also remember the lavish stories he would tell us about living on the islands coming from the small village of Foui and how he and my uncles would stand up against hordes of "raiders" coming to their village. How one time my dad and two of his friends, from Foui, fought twenty men and came out the victors. He would tell me for all these reasons I should be proud of being Polynesian, I should be proud of being Tongan, I should be proud of being a Matelau! I took all this information at a very young age and applied it to myself, and I promised myself that I was going to be strong like my dad, strong like Tonga.

Being strong was my earliest understanding of what being a Pacific Islander was and as I would grow I would learn that I, like the Pacific Islanders, stand for much more then strength, then coconuts, then hula dancers, more then a nice smile a bellowing voice and faith in the church. Fore all the rhetoric I ever heard from non-Polynesians and even internalized messages from Polynesians was that there was very few ways for a Polynesian to make it in this world. You either made it playing football, being faithful, or marrying a white person (my half blood status is proof of this not being true.) As most observations outside in will recognize "good" or noteworthy Pacific Islanders leading such lives. There is always the "others" the Polynesians like myself that didn't or wasn't able to fit that mold. This is the understanding of Pacific Islanders I understand best because this is the direction my life has sent me.

What does the "others" mean? The "others" always held a dualism to me, being defined one way by myself and another by the outside. To me the "others" was me, a self actualizing individual, like my mother, like my brother, like my sisters and cousins. I considered us the average Joes of our culture. But the first time one of my cousins was shot and killed, I was forced into a reality that didn't recognize us as being human or human of the same level as all the other average Joes. I still remember the call, the human voice dying on the line, the cries of loved ones, and the loss of ones self when confronted with such numbing information. I also remember beyond just the emotional hurt I felt of having my cousin killed I now had the evening news, the morning paper, the community we both lived in calling my cousin a gangster, a low-life, a nuisance to society. It was like they said he deserved to die! My cousin, who the weekend before you may have caught at church, at work, or playing with his daughters, was now reduced to derogatory terms, that spit upon his very existence. Because it couldn't possibly be society's fault that it happened, it couldn't possibly be that he was just like them! I hated the way he was painted but it helped me understand the "others" more then any other situation possibly could.

My cousins death wasn't the last time I would see the rhetoric of a Pacific islander being slain then for the media to construct the death around gang violence. But it did indeed help me foster the notion that to the outside community I could never represent an equal. I began thinking critically of what my community represented underneath the lies. I questioned why we are construed as gangsters, thugs, low-lives and I began to think the reason we was marginalized was that we stood against something. They (palangi's) have something to fear about what we represent and where we come from.

The others set off a beckon of hope that maybe without knowing they are the resistance to imperialistic society. We was forced into the shadows and marginalized in our daily lives, But somehow maybe we know we represent something more than our current situation. I know Pacific Islanders who are brought into "western" society have to choose from a young age what exactly Pacific Islanders are. I feel like we are immediately limited in selection and therefore pushed into choices before we even had the notion that we were making a choice. I understand that all Pacific Islanders aren't considered equals and they tend to either emphasize those characteristics that are sought in them or rebel against the notion of being accepted. I know we believe we are strong, but I'm not sure if we have the strength to rally together and oppose that which has been sent our way.