You were unburied
10 years before I was born,
pulled from the Arie riverbed  
the day Nagasaki burned.
You died like a samurai
in your daughter’s arms,
bowels flowing,
head severed cleanly,
falling to the water
amidst the silence
of dead human trees
with their bark skin turned inside out,
among the screams of the living
realizing that not even water
can stop their burning away.

You were unburied
65 years before I was born,
killed by the big guns
with Conestoga wheels in the
ravine near Wounded Knee Creek.
You died running with your nursing infant
in your arms trying to touch the flag of truce,
your child still suckling long after
the Great Spirits call—  still suckling
as you were piled in the mounds
of mothers with no ghost shirts.
Others children’s children still
Ghost Dance and tell your lore.

You were buried
32 years before I was born,
shot in the back after
you had dug your own grave.
Shot in the back after
you had watched your house
burn in a kerosene blaze.
Shot in the back after
you knew the children
were safe in the swamp.
Shot in the back after
all of Rosewood burned
from the fury of white rage.
Shot in the back
until you were erased
from existence
except in the memory of tears.

What am I meant to do?
It’s summer and the
magnolias are blooming,
the cherry blossoms are ripe,
the black hills spruce
admits its forever mildew stink,
reminding harvesters not to
ever make it a Christmas tree.

I call out not knowing your names,
giving you invisible ones
that will reflect your death and life.

What am I meant to do?
Your unburied ash, spirit,
your buried charred bones
exists in wretched longing,
your names bleed into
the riverbed, the ravine, the clay.
I mourn as I freely travel the spaces
that others had trampled over you.

What am I meant to do?

Everything’s broken, diseased, sold and resold.
The pandemic’s breath blows on us.
Everything’s is devoured in a hunger never filled.
So why do I see a glistening in the distance?

In the day dream, a forest appears on the border.
The scent of lavender and lilies exhales out.
In the nightmare,  the zodiac is ****** into
the black hole of a distant dissolving galaxy.

You wonder the miracle, if it comes,
will arise from darkness or dawn.
Will it arise from the first
natal nightmare or dream?

Her name you may
or may not recall.
It was Chrissie,
the body in the sand dune.

You do remember the shark,
the blood on the water,
death spreading like
a virus in the town of Amity.

You do remember that
the beaches should have been closed
but Amity was a summer town
that lived on summer dollars.

You do remember the shark
doing what it was built to do—
killing Mrs. Kintner’s little boy
on that beautiful July 4th day.

You do remember Mrs. Kintner’s
cold blooded slap
on police chief Brody’s
warm blooded face.

“You knew there was a shark out there.
You knew it was dangerous
but you let people go swimming anyway.
You knew all those things

-BUT STILL MY BOY IS DEAD NOW!”

“She’s wrong,”
the mayor says.
“No, she’s not,”
Chief Brody acknowledges.

Suddenly you remember
reading a news piece
that Mrs. Kintner (Lee Fiero)
was a victim of the pandemic.

You realize there is no
police chief, scientist, grizzled old salt
banding together to do the right thing,
uniting to triumph over disease, death,

Only the orange hair President
standing deep in the drowning tide
smiling and waving and
telling everyone the water is fine.

“We are all Mrs. Kintner  now.”


Note:

The final line is a quote by Mary McNamara,
the obituary writer for the Los Angeles Times.

What is the land
but dust
but mountains
but forrest
but mud
but lost sorrow

What is sorrow
but torn soul
but wounded skin
but a trail of tears.

This day
the Chickasaw
Choctaw
Creek
Seminole
Cherokee

wipe the
white mans dirt
off their right foot
with their left foot

wipe the buffalo’s blood
off their right hand
with their left hand

walk ******
bare right foot
to wounded left foot  
on the dust
of their ancestors
their sacred hills

walk away from
The Great Spirit
to the not greater
white man’s God
slow sad right foot
to slower left foot.

Walk dragging their
dead still right foot
to still left foot
far away from the sun
of their monumental land

to this country
of bullets and blood
marching, running
blue right foot
towards gray left foot
in a frenzy to *****
bronze monuments
to all their dead

And when they cry it’s
the prayer of the white man
buried in Indian pain

May the wind
that is blowing
now and always
the dust of our memory
blow beyond your
fear of us
and all different
colored spirits

May the wind
turn from you
and only return
until you love not
the scars you
put on our backs

May you open your
eyes to unbuilt land
and see finally
The Great Spirit
calling every one
to share the
sacred hills
even the dust
with all that
have always walked
right foot to left foot

It’s a fizgig, a gadding
of damp powder
hinting to explode,
assuming your surname
without any legal ceremony.

It flip flops you with trust
burrowing into the one
perfect position,
sleeping ahead of you,
waking you when you fall behind.

Not at all heavy, yet the
heaviest thing you’ll ever have.
Every breath heavy with airy death
that stunts your budding
wings from taking flight.

You measure the weight of
every thought until it always
pulls you down and your soul
takes flight jut to live…

…and you don’t t bother to chase it.

Notes:
a fizgig is both a flirting woman and a
firework of damp powder that fizzes or hisses when it explodes.

gadding is to go around from one place to another, in the pursuit of pleasure or entertainment.

Up

A seed is a forest-to be.
A rock is a mountain-to-be.
A drop is a river-to-be.
A river is an ocean-to-be.
A cloud is a sky-to-be.
Clouds are an aspiring heaven.


An apple is a pie-to-be.
A brick is a house-to-be
A house is a city-to-be.
A city is a state-to-be.
A state is a country-to-be.

Down

A country is a war-to-be.
War is a bullet-to-be.
A bullet is a death-to-be.
Deaths are a city destroyed.
Death is a house fallen.
A house fallen is just bricks,
apples not grown, pies never eaten.

Death

Death is
the hell of  war,
the hell of the bullet,
Death is
a city, country fallen to hell,
hell is the fallen house,
bricks tumbled to dust,
rotten apples,
poison pies.

Death is the hell
of a heaven never found,
clouds never made,
rain never falling,
oceans never formed,
rivers never to be,
rivers dry from a dam of bricks,
forests never grown,
seeds never planted.

The moon was neither
voiced into creation
nor was it defined.

It was just parted
from the dark ink
of God’s voice.

Alphabets don’t
exist on dark vellum
just illuminated papyrus.

God doesn’t have the power
to banish those things
that have always existed.

He can’t create the perfect night
just pull crows out of it,
really, the simplest of magic tricks.

The small orifice below the cheekbones
exists to project the whiteboard
scribblings of the human mind.

Man is sad because he knows
that his words and thoughts
fall short of God’s magnificent language.

The moon witnesses what
is below and above its light
and keeps both their secrets.