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Hmijoc EATENE
New Caledonia

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Hmijoc EATENE is a Kanak activist, she explores her identity with her poetry and celebrates it as an Oceanian identity.
New-Caledonia

Kanaky, they stole everything and now we are nothing
Kanaky, I'm not free in my own mind
New Caledonia, when will you end to prostitute your culture?
Go fuck yourself with your fat tourists
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm free.
Kanaky when will you be angry?
When will take off your clothes and paint your body?
When will you dance in the rhythms of the war?
New Caledonia, When will you be worthy of your natives?
When will you become sacred and taboo like the bodies of your daughters?
I'm sick of your pro-tourist projects, it's insane
When can I go see the Southern Humpback whales dance and make love in their sanctuaries?
Kanaky, after all you and I are already sold and ready to be devoured alive
New Caledonia, your advertising mechanics is too much for me
You made me a warrior.
There is another way, our Ancestors left their shadows for us to grow into
New Caledonia, you ignore your poets, they won't choose exile, but death in silence, it's sinister.
New Caledonia, you piss me off
Are you such a bitch to sell your own identity to foreigners?
You left them kill our prophets
I refuse to give up my obsession
Kanaky, your bark is falling, Tea Kanake abandons us,
Kanaky, I feel sentimental about the aéaé
Kanaky, you're our most powerful metaphor
Don't let anybody tell you not to be angry. We have every right to be angry. We have every reason to be angry, because this is our country.
New Caledonia, I used to be one of the Red Scarves when I was a kid I'm not sorry.
New Caledonia, I read pacific poetry every time
I sit in front of the ocean for nights and swim in the phosphorescent plankton fertilized by the full moon
When I go to Montravel, the native's ghetto, my cousins stay drunk for days
Kanaky, My mind is ready for an act of war
New Caledonia, It's not all in my mind and my brothers think I'm perfectly right
I won't pray the Lord's Prayer but laugh wildly under the stars with the spirits
I have visions from the past and I'm still haunting by the great warriors of my clan
New Caledonia I still haven't told you what you did to the idea of Independence

I'm addressing you
Are you going to let your prisons be full of your people?
I'm obsessed by the prisons
New Caledonia, don't you wonder why the prisons of the Pacific are full of natives?
New Caledonia, did you know that Guantanamo's prisoners write poetry in the grease of their dirty plates.
New Caledonia, poetry is everywhere and you still ignore it even if it gets up and kicks your ass

They made History and now write it in their ways
I try to consider my people
My people is fucked up by madness, alcohol, suicides and prisons
I say nothing about the education which is a plot by mechanical minds
They abolished the taboo of sacred territories for business
Kanaky how can I write a declaration of war in your coward mood?
I will continue like the SLN my strophes perverting the alchemical process inside the volcano in fake garish gold
New Caledonia, I won't sell you my proud genealogy
Kanaky, free yourself
New Caledonia, save your people from what you want
New Caledonia, I wasn't there for Melanesia 2000 but now I'm here to see our endless falling
New Caledonia, you don't really want to know what Independence means.
Kanaky it's them the tourists
Them tourists them fat foreigners
The fat tourists want us to perform the entertaining identity of the Gold Age and not the fucked up post-colonialist's identity. The fat tourists want flowering smiles in exotic faces, folkloric dances with their banquets

New Caledonia, I'm a terrorist
I'll screw up your plans



Note :
This poem is a reappropriation of "America" by Allen Ginsberg





Kitchen - Charles Olsen