TIME MACHINE NATIVE

    Being a Chamorro can be difficult sometimes, because typical ideas of culture and purity don't seem to apply to us. Not being good enough on either scale of Manichean (black and white) opposing values, namely Civility or Primitiveness, leave us languishing in the middle of our adopted Western discourse. We are not "civilized" enough when compared to our American colonial masters, yet we are not good enough either to be "primitive" enough like other Micronesian Islanders, or National Geographic favorites. Being lost between these opposing categories, neither one taking ownership over us, leads many Chamorros to either forsake their heritage and fully embrace modernity in mind, body and soul. And leads others to only embrace our long past heritage from pre and immediate contact eras of centuries past, with role models such as Mata'pang or Hurao.

   The main character of the poem searches in the jungle to answer his own questions of culture, and comes upon an unfinished time machine created by his ancestors.

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