Author: Pete Aki'i

There’s nothing in the caterpillar to hint at what’s to come, that it will unfurl into a butterfly beneath the hush of summer sun. The humble, drifting butterfly, a small embodiment of joy, raises little more than a smile yet, can stir your pulse into the sky. . They say its silent wing beats can […]

Maybe now is the time to give yourself time to crouch behind the hillock until the wind forgets your name. Endure what you can as the scouring pad of despair scrapes the mind’s soft interior, paring your dreams to dust, to near-nothing. This is when and precisely why you must remain hopeful. Why your quiet […]

He falls again, and still his country waits for the thud but – there is no thud when a man has carved away the floor beneath him. There is only faster, deeper, falling. On a day meant for thanks and grace he opens the sewer of his heart and plunges in, hurling slurs built from […]

There are those who guard gates like coffins, others, plant seeds in the soil. Politicos do the former, polishing padlocks with fear, selling the chain as a gift to the loyal. He names ‘illegal’ as if holy scripture, tattoos deport on the nation’s tongue. His tweets march in formation detain, return, remove the vocabulary of […]

This I can tell you: a word is rarely harmless. It can strike like a match in dry grass, or, it can steady your shaking hand in the dark. It can build a bridge or load a gun. . Socrates said it plain, misuse a word and you bend your own soul. Twist language into […]

In the west, across the wracked Atlantic, a sickness rises like steam from a slaughterhouse, and I, an insignificant man from a small green country, watches as a giant stumbles, piss-drunk on its own lies. I know corruption, indeed, all nations have kissed that serpent. But what festers now in the White House isn’t scandal, […]

I once believed I’d poured my deepest love and faith, into the four lives I helped bring forth. But life replete with its trickster grace  has given me six reasons more. Each grandchild, a mirror, a wonder, a mystery, a new dawn breaking – on an old, old shore. . Not replacements. Not echoes. But […]

In Cardiff’s crown, beneath the dome,Where choirs once burst in our dragon home,Last night a different chant was stirredNot “Calon Lân”, but Gallagher.While rugby ghosts weep for Wales demise,Oasis’ crowd turn up in bucket-hats and Levi’s. The brothers arrived with snarl and two chords,And conquered with just cigarettes and alcoholWith denim worn like ancient mail,They […]

I heard those who speak like alarms, others who whisper to the skies. I prefer the latter to slice softly through delusion while the world applauds louder lies. . I raised no flag. I looked into a mirror that refused to flatter. They build. We bomb. They heal. We hoard. They lay tracks. We lay […]