The politics of politics makes a tricky beast. It destroys either side with equal hand. It has a hunger that never seems to end.
One side of me speaks the sacred language of fire
The other part understands in broken heart.
My mind can’t make up its crazy mind,
When it’s burdened by storm clouds of desire.
Falling, falling
Falling, falling
I didn’t want to make the same mistakes.
I had to find my own midnight star.
But when you touch my skin I want back in again.
Falling, falling
Falling, falling
Whiskey Spirit you’re not my friend.
Pain in my heart,
Though you call me by
My personal name,
Forget you know me.
Falling, falling
I looked everywhere for love.
I had no place else to go, but home.
Imagine if we natives went to the cemeteries in your cities and dug up your beloved relatives, pulled off rings, watches, and clothes and called them “artifacts,” then carried the bones over to the university for study so we could understand you. Consider that there are more bones of native people in universities and museums for study, than there are those of us living.
My path is a cross of burning trees,
Lit by crows carrying fire in their beaks.
I ask the guardians of these lands for permission to enter.
I am a visitor to this history.
No one remembers to ask anymore, they answer.
What do I expect in this New England seaport town, near the birthplace of democracy,
Where I am a ghost?
Even a casino can’t make an Indian real.
Or should I say “native,” or “savage,” or “demon”?
And with what trade language?
I am trading a backwards look for jeopardy.
I agree with the ancient European maps.
There are monsters beyond imagination that troll the waters.
The Puritan’s determined ships did fall off the edge of the world . . .
I am happy to smell the sea,
Walk the narrow winding streets of shops and restaurants, and delight in the company of friends, trees, and small winds.
I would rather not speak with history but history came to me.
It was dark before daybreak when the fire sparked.
The men left on a hunt from the Pequot village here where I stand.
The women and children left behind were set afire.
I do not want to know this, but my gut knows the language of bloodshed.
Over six hundred were killed, to establish a home for God’s people, crowed the Puritan leaders in their Sunday sermons.
And then history was gone in a betrayal of smoke.
There is still burning though we live in a democracy erected over the burial ground.
This was given to me to speak.
Every poem is an effort at ceremony.
I asked for a way in.
(FOR PAM USCHUK) OCTOBER 31, 2009
This is the kitchen table university. Everything you need to know is here. This corn we are serving embodies lessons in geography, economics, culture, and colonization. These utensils here tell a story of materiality and socialization. Salt is about migrations. Songs are born here to grow food and children. We sing stories to acknowledge and grow love. Take the blues, for instance . . .
Listening to Blues in a Fish Joint, Downtown Denver
I need this unreeling of heartache, and
the downtown turnaround.
—Over, and over and over.
When you gonna come back, baby?
—Over and over and over.
Why did you leave me?
The god of all things reached
Behind the counter, pulled up a sour dishrag and
Cleaned off the mess.
—We all went tumbling down.
I said, over and over and over.
—We all went tumbling down.
I would do anything for you, baby, anything—
I’ll take you in my brand-new “per cap” car,
I said, I’ll take you anywhere you want to go—
Because together we make a lucky brown bird, a rocking chair, or
An arrow to the sun.
You climbed in that broke-down truck with your old boyfriend and took off with him instead.
I would do anything for you, baby, anything
But that—
Indian School Night Song Blues
I call to order the meeting of the girls on restriction at Indian school.
Locked up in the dorm. We broke the rules.
Now it’s Saturday night. No booze, you lose.
Music courtesy of KOMA straight from Oklahoma City
Across the plain of tears and fears, and over the mountains to here
The City Different, Indian school, hippie crash—
Let’s dance. Where’s the dorm matron? Hide the stash.
We all admire Marlene; she’s one of the best.
She’s Jackson Pollock in a dress. She only leaves the painting studio
For sleep or work, and on Sunday she sneaks out to the Indian
Hospital on the other side of campus— She took me once.
The children clapped and laughed when she came in.
She brought them gifts: all her desserts saved up for a week: crayons, paper, and tiny fans. We hid when the staff came in.
They eventually threw her out.
The hospital carries no insurance to cover the harm she might do.
And Venus . . . now that’s a name, and a history.
One parent from the north on the back of a horse,
The other from the south over the back of a river.
Venus is a singer, a real singer. Each singer has a particular gift.
Some grow plants, some call helpers.
Some heal the sick, some make the dead rise up and dance.
When Venus sings we enter into a trance.
We no longer hurt from freak chance.
You’re going to make it to Broadway
Either New York or Albuquerque.
Mary, Mary quite contrary you’re as silent as a mouse in the corner
Of the dining hall, chewing on stale American bread.
We don’t know who you are or where you’ve been, maybe you’re dead
To this reality. None of us are coping well with the BIA.
We’ve read the reports:
“Doesn’t play well with others,” “won’t speak or look us in the eyes,” “talks to ghosts”—
We hear what they are saying: “we have the guns and money, and we have your children”—
Mary’s spirit is mostly underground, with clay.
When she’s with us, she roams the halls in precise eyeglasses, bell-bottoms laced tight, and a stack of poetry in her arms.
T. S. Eliot, she says, needed to put his hands in clay.
She reads him every day, perched with her books outside the powwow circle.
Where’s Kip? We can’t find her anywhere.
She’s not in the laundry room, practicing powwow in her underwear.
She’s not on the roof where she sneaks her smokes.
She’s not in the tent she made of government-issued bedspreads
Where she sketches high fashion of Indians in Paris.
Here comes Kip with a knife.
And there she goes. No top or bottom.
Only fury whirling in a spiritual nudity.
She’s headed out into the snow.
She’s what happens when somebody hurts the baby.
We can corner our sheets so a quarter spins, and know the drill
For shots, debugging, and towels.
We have a chance.
Some are wandering thought forms, looking for a place
to set up house.
Some are sent to you deliberately. They come from arrows of gossip, jealousy or envy—and inadvertently from thoughtlessness.
They feed on your attention, and feast on your fear.
1.
I was on a train stopped sporadically at checkpoints.
What tribe are you, what nation, what race, what sex, what unworthy soul?
2.
I could not sleep, because I could not wake up.
No mirror could give me back what I wanted.
3.
I was given a drug to help me sleep.
Then another drug to wake up.
Then a drug was given to me to make me happy.
They all made me sadder.
4.
Death will gamble with anyone.
There are many fools down here who believe they will win.
You know, said my teacher, you can continue to wallow, or
You can stand up here with me in the sunlight and watch the battle.
6.
I sat across from a girl whose illness wanted to jump over to me.
No! I said, but not aloud.
I would have been taken for crazy.
7.
We will always become those we have ever judged or condemned.
8.
This is not mine. It belongs to the soldiers who raped the young women on the Trail of Tears. It belongs to Andrew Jackson. It belongs to the missionaries. It belongs to the thieves of our language. It belongs to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. It no longer belongs to me.
I became fascinated by the dance of dragonflies over the river.
I found myself first there.
We all have helpers in seen and unseen realms.
Give them something to do.
Otherwise, they will grow inattentive with boredom.
They can clean junk from your mind,
Find the opening note for the chorus of a song,
Or give a grandchild a safe path through the dark.
They will not give you winning numbers at the casino,
Wash your dishes, or take out an enemy.
Thank them.
Feed them once in a while.
This Morning I Pray for My Enemies
And whom do I call my enemy?
An enemy must be worthy of engagement.
I turn in the direction of the sun and keep walking.
It’s the heart that asks the question, not my furious mind.
The heart is the smaller cousin of the sun.
It sees and knows everything.
It hears the gnashing even as it hears the blessing.
The door to the mind should only open from the heart.
An enemy who gets in, risks the danger of becoming a friend.
“Ah, but what about being on the earth and how we move about the earth?” Gato sang with his horn. And he broke my heart with his longing.
Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings
I am the holy being of my mother’s prayer and my father’s song.
—NORMAN PATRICK BROWN,
DINEH POET AND SPEAKER
1. SET CONFLICT RESOLUTION GROUND RULES:
Recognize whose lands these are on which we stand.
Ask the deer, turtle, and the crane.
Make sure the spirits of these lands are respected and treated with goodwill.
The land is a being who remembers everything.
You will have to answer to your children, and their children, and theirs—
The red shimmer of remembering will compel you up the night to walk the perimeter of truth for understanding.
As I brushed my hair over the hotel sink to get ready I heard:
By listening we will understand who we are in this holy realm of words.
Do not parade, pleased with yourself.
You must speak in the language of justice.
2. USE EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION SKILLS THAT DISPLAY AND ENHANCE MUTUAL TRUST AND RESPECT:
If you sign this paper we will become brothers. We will no longer fight. We will give you this land and these waters “as long as the grass shall grow and the rivers run.”
The lands and waters they gave us did not belong to them to give. Under false pretenses we signed. After drugging by drink, we signed. With a mass of gunpower pointed at us, we signed. With a flotilla of war ships at our shores, we signed. We are still signing. We have found no peace in this act of signing.
A casino was raised up over the gravesite of our ancestors. Our own distant cousins pulled up the bones of grandparents, parents, and grandchildren from their last sleeping place. They had forgotten how to be human beings. Restless winds emerged from the earth when the graves were open and the winds went looking for justice.
If you raise this white flag of peace, we will honor it.
At Sand Creek several hundred women, children, and men were slaughtered in an unspeakable massacre, after a white flag was raised. The American soldiers trampled the white flag in the blood of the peacemakers.
There is a suicide epidemic among native children. It is triple the rate of the rest of America. “It feels like wartime,” said a child welfare worker in South Dakota.
If you send your children to our schools we will train them to get along in this changing world. We will educate them.
We had no choice. They took our children. Some ran away and froze to death. If they were found they were dragged back to the school and punished. They cut their hair, took away their language, until they became as strangers to themselves even as they became strangers to us.
If you sign this paper we will become brothers. We will no longer fight. We will give you this land and these waters in exchange “as long as the grass shall grow and the rivers run.”
Put your hand on this bible, this blade, this pen, this oil derrick, this gun and you will gain trust and respect with us. Now we can speak together as one.
We say, put down your papers, your tools of coercion, your false promises, your posture of superiority and sit with us before the fire. We will share food, songs, and stories. We will gather beneath starlight and dance, and rise together at sunrise.
The sun rose over the Potomac this morning, over the city surrounding the white house.
It blazed scarlet, a fire opening truth.
White House, or Chogo Hvtke, means the house of the peacekeeper, the keepers of justice.
We have crossed this river to speak to the white leader for peace many times
Since these settlers first arrived in our territory and made this their place of governance.
These streets are our old trails, curved to fit around trees.
3. GIVE CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK:
We speak together with this trade language of English. This trade language enables us to speak across many language boundaries. These languages have given us the poets:
Ortiz, Silko, Momaday, Alexie, Diaz, Bird, Woody, Kane, Bitsui, Long Soldier, White, Erdrich, Tapahonso, Howe, Louis, Brings Plenty, okpik, Hill, Wood, Maracle, Cisneros, Trask, Hogan, Dunn, Welch, Gould . . .
The 1957 Chevy is unbeatable in style. My broken-down one-eyed Ford will have to do. It holds everyone: Grandma and grandpa, aunties and uncles, the children and the babies, and all my boyfriends. That’s what she said, anyway, as she drove off for the Forty-Nine with all of us in that shimmying wreck.
This would be no place to be without blues, jazz—Thank you/mvto to the Africans, the Europeans sitting in, especially Adolphe Sax with his saxophones . . . Don’t forget that at the center is the Mvskoke ceremonial circles. We know how to swing. We keep the heartbeat of the earth in our stomp dance feet.
You might try dancing theory with a bustle, or a jingle dress, or with turtles strapped around your legs. You might try wearing colonization like a heavy gold chain around a pimp’s neck.
4. REDUCE DEFENSIVENESS AND BREAK THE DEFENSIVENESS CHAIN:
I could hear the light beings as they entered every cell. Every cell is a house of the god of light, they said. I could hear the spirits who love us stomp dancing. They were dancing as if they were here, and then another level of here, and then another, until the whole earth and sky was dancing.
We are here dancing, they said. There was no there.
There was no “I” or “you.”
There was us; there was “we.”
There we were as if we were the music.
You cannot legislate music to lockstep nor can you legislate the spirit of the music to stop at political boundaries—
—Or poetry, or art, or anything that is of value or matters in this world, and the next worlds.
This is about getting to know each other.
We will wind up back at the blues standing on the edge of the flatted fifth about to jump into a fierce understanding together.
5. ELIMINATE NEGATIVE ATTITUDES DURING CONFLICT:
A panther poised in the cypress tree about to jump is a panther poised in a cypress tree about to jump.
The panther is a poem of fire green eyes and a heart charged by four winds of four directions.
The panther hears everything in the dark: the unspoken tears of a few hundred human years, storms that will break what has broken his world, a bluebird swaying on a branch a few miles away.
He hears the death song of his approaching prey:
I will always love you, sunrise.
I belong to the black cat with fire green eyes.
There, in the cypress tree near the morning star.
6. AND, USE WHAT YOU LEARN TO RESOLVE YOUR OWN CONFLICTS AND TO MEDIATE OTHERS’ CONFLICTS:
When we made it back home, back over those curved roads that wind through the city of peace, we stopped at the doorway of dusk as it opened to our homelands.
We gave thanks for the story, for all parts of the story because it was by the light of those challenges we knew ourselves—
We asked for forgiveness.
We laid down our burdens next to each other.
The first horn I played was a King Super tenor saxophone. My then-lover, a horn player, wrote out the G blues scale for me and I began there, in the heartache of the Americas. In that scale are ships from Africa and Europe. In it are my people dancing in a widening spiral beneath circles of star nebula, giving birth to the swing. I walked up and down the scale, past babies crying in the night for milk, lovers waking in the dawn for more.
In the night of memory
There is a mist
In the mist is a house.
It’s the heart where we lived.
In that living was a radio.
Guitars played our song.
You’d catch me in your arms
We’d go round and round.
Where does it go, this forever?
Once I was broken by time.
There was no house in the mist.
I lost sunrise. I lost your fire against mine.
A country was falling and falling.
I turned my ears to catch music.
Nothing came back.
No angels of laughter, no you.
I stood alone in the emptiness of memory
Forever and ever—
Where does it go, this forever?
And what about sorrow? I asked time.
Time had nothing to say.
It walked away.
Where does it go, this forever?
I crossed time to the house in the mist.
It’s not any house; it’s the heart where we live.
In that living is a radio.
There are guitars, a bass, some drums and a horn.
They play our song.
You catch me in your arms and we go round and round.
We are laughter and flying.
We are fire and wet.
In this time we live forever.
And ever and ever.
And then I argued with myself. —You can’t say everything, what will he think of you? Besides, to speak everything is to exhaust mystery.
My death peers at the world through a plumeria tree
The tree looks out over the neighbor’s house to the Pacific
A blue water spirit commands this part of the earth mind
Without question, it rules from the kingdom of secrets
And tremendous fishes.
I was once given to the water.
My ashes will return there,
But I am not ready to die yet—
This morning I carry the desire to live, inside my thigh
It pulses there: a banyan, a mynah bird, or a young impatient wind
Until I am ready to fly again, over the pungent flowers
Over the sawing and drilling workmen making a mess
In the yard of the house next door—
It is endless, this map of eternity.
Beware the water monster that lives at the borders of doubt—
He can swallow everything whole: all the delectable mangoes, dreams, and even the most faithful of planets—
I was once given to the water.
My ashes will return there,
But I am not ready to die yet—
And when it happens, as it certainly will, the lights
Will go on in the city and the city will go on shining
At the edge of the water—it is endless—this earthy mind—
There will be flowers. There are always flowers,
And a fine blessing rain will fall through the net of the clouds
Bearing offerings to the stones, and to all who linger.
It will be a day like any other.
Someone will be hammering; someone will be frying fish.
And at noon the workmen will go home
to eat poi, pork, and rice.
Whenever a saxophone begins to sing in a story we know that for a time, we will no longer move about so lonely here, far away from the house of the sun, moon, and stars.
Report from the Edge of a Terrible Regime
The sky aches with primordial dark
As it prepares to give birth to light—
—A chuk-chuk of gecko song—
And a young trade wind follows another
Through the screened house over
The green mountain ridge who wears a cape of clouds.
Down the hill in Chinatown
A sailor sodden with drink and fight
Zips up from a piss.
He curses everything he stumbles against
In the flower ruins.
One god breaks against another.
And so it is.
In one house lives the sun, moon, and stars. Within that house is another house of sun, moon, and stars. —And then another, and another— There is no end to the imagination.
The final drift of pikake blesses the departure
Then I’m gone
Over the islands of fire and green, I fly east
Over the houses on the ridge of the heavens, I fly east
Over the mango tree, banana trees, and years of sunrises and sunsets, I fly east
Over the canoes racing to shore in a great commotion,
I fly east
This poem is a blessing for those I have left behind
And for that which I can never leave behind—
What kept me going was that perfect song I kept hearing, just beyond the field of perceptible sound. I palpitated it, as my breath attempted to make the horn into a living being.
The Last World of Fire and Trash (song)
I don’t know anything anymore
or if that cricket is still singing
in a country where crickets are banned.
I’m Indian in a strange pastiche of hurt and rain
smells like curry and sweat
from a sunset rock-and-roll restaurant.
A familiar demon groaning with fear has stalked me here,
ruins poetry, then his swollen pride commandeers.
Beneath the moon rocking above Los Angeles
or outside the stomp dance fire of memory,
I told him, you can choose to hate me
for going too far, or for being a nothing
next to a pretty nothing like you.
So long, goodbye, oh fearful one.
My desires had turned into a small mountain.
Of dirty clothes, sax gig bag, guitar
books, shoes, and grief
that I packed and carried
from one raw wound to another.
I can’t get betrayal out of my heart,
out of my mind
in this hotel room where I’m packing for home.
I’ve seen that same face whirring
in the blur of a glass of wine
after the crashed dance,
the goodbye song
in the last world of fire and trash.
The most dangerous demons spring from fire
and a broken heart, smell of bittersweet aftershave
and the musk of a thousand angels.
And then I let that thought go running away
because I refuse to stay in bondage
to an enemy, who thinks he wants what I have.
I turned my cheek as my head parted through a curtain of truth
and erupted from the spirit world to this gambling place—
So I send prayers skyward on smoke.
Hvsaketvmese, Hvsaketvmese.
Release this suffering.
May the pretty beast and all the world know peace.
I refuse to sum it up anymore; it’s not possible.
I give it up
to the battering of songs against the light,
to the singing of the earnest cricket
in the last world of fire and trash.