weird, decrepit infrastructure inside the crater's edge
an old military installation
wrought iron gates bar access to dark concrete tunnels filled with dust
an old red sweatshirt puddles on the ground -
forgotten for a weekend,
forgotten for a decade.
the spiral staircase inside the blasted stone can take you down, but not up.
the upward path is blocked by rotten plywood and rust that lets you know this metal thinks even the slightest waif is too heavy.

at a branch point, one tunnel leads into the bright light of hell
but it too is blocked off, to prevent us from seeking the grey arms of demons who promise endless stories

from the peak, in a crowd of strangers, 
we see mansions with helipads and private beaches just down 
the hill from a blue tarp a homeless person has made into a home
the more we look the more tents we see
one for each of the mansions at least.
do all the homeless people know each other as neighbors?
do the mansion owners know each other as neighbors?
do the mansion owners know the homeless people? 

near the tents, 
an abandoned velodrome features graffiti so large and colorful 
it surely is visible on Google maps.

the ocean taunts painters with its thousand shades of blue
and beckons those who don't know how to sail, laughing, singing, saying - it's not too hard to learn this song 
even though trying to learn that song sent countless unnamed wanderers to endless sleep in the deepwater bed.

hazy other islands fade against the horizon
so soft, so far from the sharp houses creeping up the volcanic ridges.
developers blast that sharpness to make way for places for people to make lives and make love and make darkness from the sun with curtains,
curtains instead of blasted tunnels inside the volcanic stone
a washed red sweatshirt hanging in a laundry lounge
instead of a mudstained red sweatshirt on the ground.
(I want to pick it up, but I'm afraid
touching it could infect me,
could awaken ghosts,
could resurrect the dead.)

I sweat through my clothes 
and wish I could've seen this place in another time
flying overhead as a bird 
thousands of years before human conquest.

I wonder which gleaming skyscrapers of glass and steel 
that I've touched in my fancy clicking shoes, that I've brushed in my angular suit, 
which of those will become weird, decrepit infrastructure?
will it have to be from the apocalypse
or merely the passage of time?

someday I'll look in the mirror
and my eyecorners will be as wrinkled as the raw ridged mountainsides
then I must come back to Diamond Head
and climb the 99 stairs, counting each one
in an exhalation that is also a prayer
when the words spill out, I will think a god of surfing, pouring out more surfers onto the waves, each one drawing her own calligraphy.

I hide from the sun under fancy mud - sunscreen - and a hat
a creature of shade who thirsts for sun
surrounded by voices, but listening to the one inside
and the one in the wind
the one who speaks to all who come
the one who speaks through time
with rustles in the grass.