Chest Pressure? Find The Treasure.

This Piece is meant to offer a solution, in a creative way, too the super-natural chest pressure phenomenon, or "sunken place-ism". It's common, but an old lore in Black and Brown communities that one may feel they're sinking into themselves while they're laying down. It may feel like your chest is caving in and your heart starts to race but wait I have a solution! The general thesis is that if you're feeling a bit of supernatural encroachment at night, take a hike! Go on a walk, drink some water, have a smoke, and you'll make it out when the morning comes. This worked for me as long as I stayed up and made it thought the night to E Ala E (greet the sun) in the morning. I would like to note that even though the "sunken place" was made popular by the hit Jordan Peele movie "Get Out", this concept of the "sunken place" existed long before the movie. Prayer is an automatic, but the good book says that "faith without works is dead" (James 2;26). This "sunken place-ism" hasn't happened to me in years, I'm living proof that whatever that is troubling you that too shall pass. Please enjoy this literature as I take you on a journey through my experiences battling the powers that be, creatively.

(This is a piece meant to be read as spoken word)

The lines across the sky are daunting. Haunting to say the least.

I haven’t had a March like this before, almost if I was walking away from February. Up hills and through traffic I smoked my palm mall cigarettes and chanced the night life of Makiki, coming across the peculiar and the particular typicals you’d see marching through town like how a poet plays with his vernacular. I’ve marched around town before. My dearest friend Zachary and I would walk all around places like Diamond Head, Waipahu, and Makiki in hopes we run into the divine blowing through-out the streets like the wind whispers in a language not known to any of us, but it is in the direction that we know what makes us up. Direction.

My Birkenstocks are not equipped for these marches, but I must keep going, the Uhane (ghost) watch feverishly like the language in my prayer wasn’t sufficient and free and they required work, blood sweat and tears from a man who once had little to give. Your soul for the promise to ride clouds for an eternity. A small price to pay for Gods favor, and I’d give it up effortlessly and permanently with flavor. My soul is yours too command father God, the almighty Dark figure to reside in the darkness of spaces that connects the once reflected version of life before condensation took over to be one compressed starlight molecule in a sea of Adams atomic atoms.

The light is running out,

On my cigarette that is, and I always smoke it down to the core. I guess it’s a trauma response because there was a time where I didn’t know when I’d get another stogie, so I’d savor the movement in this divine allowance to inhale and breathe in nature's prowess.

It is still very dark outside

I am still marching. Wondering why frogs and goats share the same eyes. The street lights glare into mine creating streaks of light all up in my vision. At this point I needed to make a decision on if I should stick to the streets and face collision, or trod on back home with precision. The precession of the march is nothing short of February but short of April, and I had just woken up from my sleep in existential peril. Merrily down the street to the beat of my feet clicking and clacking as the stars are matching and the peoples are reacting to the bodies in passing but I hear laughing in passing as my hair and the wind are clashing and thrashing but wait an Iwa bird flies over head nicely precisely enticing that the book I read told me there’s a pricing on everybody’s HEAD to get her FED accordingly I ain’t talking the government I’ll make it rain with my words I’ll keep your pockets wet netted up with some sabow like I’m Filipino with the sauce put up your stars like figuratively, I’m the boss.

Just walking, in hopes I see the day break, passing houses, apartments, buildings; a soda would make this night great. I spark another one. Long drag, like a sentence from any politician. Didn’t mean to get political but you know how it be.

I’m coming down on the University of Hawai'i College as I crest the scenarios in my head on how to plate my rise to fortune and fame with my writing game then I remembered,

I don’t know if I want to be famous. Thousands of people perceiving me but then I remembered they believe in me. I remembered that my ancestors, all infinity of them are watching down on me, and I’m already a storyteller in their eyes. The reprisal of my arrival would tell you that I’ve came into the thoughts and minds of the stories of old, that this grand story that I have written about the future has already been told inna past, I am just the tweaked upon vessel that would relate as I elate.

It’s funny, I’ve spent my whole life denying the main character existence of my being I’ve always thought of myself as Han Solo or Legolas to be the cool secondary character that pops in when you need a cigarette or some comfort inna midnight hour but now at the rip old age of 25 I am the main character in my story I am the man with the plan that would stand up with the soup and oven mitts to deliver fresh onions with a French kiss fresh lips on her French tips I put the stocking in the soup and I lick it to a crisp my legitimacy is legitimate how I ploy with myself to get off onto the right bus stop this bust stops now I hop onto the soup and I punch it with my tongue like cats bow for sabow now is the time where the cow says Baal and makes a three pointer touchdown as the rain falls on my head in this reality of mine the creatures close in to only tell me that they’re next of kin how would it be to stare into yourself with out a mirror, water reflects the space fill me up with its interior.

This is like a climax I keep reaching and I reach a point where my feet are curling and I think to myself hmmm yes right words. Let’s get back to the story. The suns about to rise on me and the stitious to me might be super to you and Mario is my man to stitch these prints together of mushrooms and peaches on a lane full of kryptonite I hear the traffic ascend over my speeches. Maybe great poetry is only meant for the night, in the comfort of darkness with the absence of the supernatural encroachment on my beauty sleep. The spirits must love my work. Have you heard I’m writing a book? Some of y’all are in it! You want to sign paperwork right? K whateva u like.

My sun rises, I do a quick E Ala E, I unlock my door just in time for me to get the perfect sleep void of spirits trying to press my chest. All in good fun they say.