McGarrett, Not Long to Live

I never liked those poems by Wo Fat:
the ones where he complains of his life
only to passively boast of his accomplishments.

“I wasn’t the most popular student at Harvard.”
“It took me awhile to stop being angry at how
Chairman Mao suggested my tennis needed work.”

“I was most unhappy with the picture they took
of me for the hardcover edition of Wo Fat:
Sing to Raise High the Banzai Pipeline.”

Not long after Wo Fat’s early release,
not long after his subsequent fame
as a loveable nothing pinched by cops,

the author of melancholic poetry
which allegedly made prison guards cry
and made my name known only on his terms,

I agreed to meet him at the Waldenbooks
in the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center--
where island birds dart about the indoors.

I agreed to have coffee with Wo Fat,
to put away the Navy-manners
which saw me through my youth and my job,

and I would, sans-booze, toast my old enemy
and we would drive out to the North Shore,
past the G.I. barracks and pineapple fields,

where we would hang out in hippie surf shops
and buy seashell leis and stand around outside--
the sticky sidewalks of Matsumoto’s.

I watched the mall birds dart about and waited;
no matter what Wo Fat took from me,
I knew God was soon to take a little more.

Wo Fat could still drive and I could not;
Wo Fat could still read regular type and I could not;
Wo Fat did not wait for phonecalls but I did;

We were the same age, I took care of myself,
eschewing cigars and willing tourists,
but Wo Fat was still younger than me.

After the drinks we drove to Hale’iwa.
He played CDs his daughter had burned
and I didn’t recognize a single song.

I may have fallen asleep in the car,
but think he talked about his new book tour,
the hardship of stating his case repeatedly.

We ended up at an impromptu luau,
hot dogs and saimin and girls in grass skirts.
They had put leis together to welcome us.

For Wo Fat, it was a yellow 'Ilima lei,
bright and waxy as a supermarket lemon,
while I was draped in green Limu kala.

Whatever it was I was meant to say,
whatever assassination was meant
to be carried through, ended in decaf.

An old lieutenant who shook Wo Fat’s hand,
agreed to take me back to Honolulu.
I stared out the window to the volcanic cliffs,

the jungled plummeria, the deep greens
of succulents and tropical produce.
I would give you all paniolo flowers,

for how the evening came onto me;
the hydrangea and forget-me-not collars
which will see me to make a good end.