Category: The Write Stuff

What would you like to see happen in your lifetime?

A poet elected president. I would like to see the return of the Citizen’s artistic voice to move the historical pendulum to librate near center in a fight with a southpaw’s ferocity and a righty’s tenacity in this great political experiment to continue to redefine itself as a “democracy.” The basis of this country’s path to social justice and human and economic rights is under attack from divisive inflammatory rhetoric and institutional authoritarianism that threatens to further erode the moral and principled gains of the previous 60 to 100 years. If ever we needed a metaphor to surge to the fore to unite us against the rising tyranny of fear and division, it would be now! And from the mouth of a poet.

What are some of your favorite smells?

Ocean, the pheromones of someone you are attracted to, the wet earth of upcountry Maui, weed. Rain on asphalt. Growing up, when rain was coming, my father would take a big deep breath and say “Mmm. You smell that? Ua.” Ua, pronounced ooh-uh, is the Hawaiian word for rain. Every time I smell the rain he comes to mind, his deep inhale pulling in the moist air, cloud darkening the sky above the field next to the house I grew up in.