My best friend tells me that she was born in the wrong time.
That her viking ancestors would be ashamed of how much
she can't handle. How she's no warrior.
So I take her to a powwow that my sister's dancing at
and let her feel the vibrations of the drums
pound through her feet.
I tell her maybe our war drums are our heartbeats.
She's fighting herself and using razors as her soldiers.
I say, if you need sharp things let's use arrows to figure
out where east is so we can run towards the rising sun
like my ancestors did.
We can use words as our shield walls in battle
and I can be the dragon head on your ship
to scare off the enemy in dark and foggy times.
If you want to get a little pagan I'll burn all my sage for you
and we can pray to all the gods we've heard stories of.
I'll teach you all the tricks my shima’ sani taught me.
We are warriors. But is it selfish of me to hope that you
never go to Valhalla? I want you to live long after
the fighting ends.

The heat of the sun.
The beat of the drum.
Bells tinging,
Jingles jingling,
Cow Bells ringing,
Children laughing,
Men singing,
A powwow.
An intertribal.
What flies over head?
A mystical friend.
The eagle came to join.
We danced as it flew over us.
It circled watching us from afar.
When it left,
We felt blessed.

'Round the orange warm pit of fire
Phantom dancers enter in
Where the sparks were rising higher
Smudging face paint near our din

Beating loudly, harder, faster
They drift up inside the smoke
Smoke that's swirling in wind circles
Rhythmic funnels of split oak

In connected, spinning trance state
We could see them, could we not?
With their beaded braids a shaking
And the red glow fire hot

Through the cloud puffs
of our drum smoke
With the magic of our minds
We saw ghostly lupine beings
Come from feathered years behind

We were beating, harder, faster
With hypnotic drumstick hands
Frozen hands kept pa pa pumming
To invoke the spells of man

Healing sounds of pa pum drumbeats
Ice and fire wolf moon clan
They soft footed round our powwow
Took our spirits to their land

Written by Sara Fielder © Jan 2016

The spinning torrent has brought me here
She struggled to get my attention
Bent on disclosing her abashed query of if she exists or not
By asking for my point of view

I could not answer, there was salt water filling my lungs and my body was so thrashed from the choppy sea

Eyes widened and steady, a look of anticipation covered her face
Floundering to piece together and answer with a flower in her hair
I tenderly reply with a hesitant assurance that she did indeed exist

Knowing somehow that I have been in an awful typhoon and was tossed in the enormity of the spontaneous waves

She told me to dance in the unbridled ecstasy of my survival
She knew why I crossed the sea
My lover of yesterday’s past abandoned me on a sandy shore
And left a note stabbing at my manhood, prompting me to fight for her if my love was true

So I built a boat and vigorously shipped out  
Darkeyed, mad and my heart tinted so no one could see my pain, only my determination

Roaming the ocean in an attempt to preserve my notions of love and faith

The guilt in my tender flaming heart gushed out
I’d done wrong and now I had to come face to face with me unavoidable comeuppance
Embodied in the sea
Devouring my consciousness and pumping my mind with bleak unclarified riddles, insufferable seminal propositions  

Revisiting vignettes so vivid as if they were in high definition Technicolor right before my eyes

The attraction, the pursuit that followed
Then the incomprehensible weaving of the souls

Suddenly the details of it all flooded into my brain
The fights
The lies
The unmitigated greed and narcissism caused by a chemical imbalance and a troubled past

So many reasons pointing me in the direction of which I came but I refused to yield and trudged on
As I rode the waves I became delirious, on a spree of self-induced affliction
Relocating my focused mind to a realm of contradicting confusion, being strangled by spontaneous bursts of uncertainty and rejection  
Until my boat started to sink
And all my fears and demons escaped
I didn't care if I died
I had no reason to live anymore, I wasn't afraid to meet the angel of death for an untimely yet causal powwow
The waves, monstrous and substantial
Hurling me back and forth
My hopes
My determination
My wall crumbled
The mythology of love had no merit to me any longer
The water was taking a toll on my organs until I ultimately blacked out

I remember being scraped against the bedrock of a lagoon
Coughing up blood, but realizing I was alive
Yet I felt dead ion the inside

And a figure came to me overhead
It was the girl with a flower in her hair who asked me if she existed
Her black hair shined in the sun as she pushed it back behind her ears
Her brown eyes full of wonder and honesty
Red lips teaming with sweet sounds behind them
I felt calm
I felt anxious
Anxious for I wasn’t expecting to see or come in contact with anyone

I didn’t need to do anything
But admit she was real

She knew who I was, what I had done and what happened to me

She ****** the girl who strung me along to cross the world
She told me to forget and move on and to learn from it and cultivate myself

This oracle, so benevolent
So graceful, I could not believe she was real
She wasn't a mild hallucination
She was as tangible as I

She taught me that

To look inside myself
To live for myself
“Come let’s cut ourselves open to see what we look like on the inside”

searching through seas of drowning beings
to find the missing pieces of the world
caverns upon caverns to shade your hallow whole-ness
undulate in spiral waves of watermelon teardrops
lemon spotted ladybug in love upon the briar patch

**** the circus of powwow breakfast
curse the curse of *****'s temptress
burn the burning streets of empty sadness
freedom's song is a venomous warning

greet the knot-tyer in his bleeding arrow
catch him as he falls and fades to poppy
drown the siren of the silent burning
and burst asunder into flaming glory

harbor in your port a gentle gypsy
show her that you trust her always
move among the soulful waters
safety and sorrow are but shadows on the way

greet me in the house of midnight
under moonbow arrow and holy sinew
from my flesh a piece of bone you wrested
lover's eyes and ******* caress the dewdrop dancer

Fool, you broke the summer's heart
and must now pay the season its rotting apples
drinking spider vapor from the mists of falling cider
as cinnamon, nutmeg and clove are gathered far away

"what makes you feel empowered?" "i don't know"
green spirals filled the gap in our noises
i took another drink and made profound eye contact with the ****** mary
her frozen, flickering lips asked me questions i couldn't remember the answers to
are you feeling paranoid yet?
how many times have you been in love?
why does walmart sell religious memorabilia at such a reasonable price?
i ignored her, as i have since i was seventeen, so i'm sure she was used to it by now
i took another drink and smiled as she grabbed my hand and he laughed and she sang and they talked over one another about things that we would forget tomorrow
things that seemed crucial to say right now before the moment slipped away
i let them talk and tried to absorb everything about this small, dysfunctional powwow that filled my heart to its very brim
every part of the circle was so crucial, every word and laugh and sigh and sip so necessary for its completion that i was utterly overwhelmed by my very luck to be alive in a time and place where it existed
i've never felt that way before
when i walked home, the morning was early and damp and covered in the darkest dark i've ever experienced
i saw a candle flickering in a window three stories up like a (relatively speaking) modern day northern star
i turned off my flashlight and walked home in silence, basking in the green glow in the wake of fear and love and pain and joy and destruction

powwow it pop
bang it was to long in the bowl
chrunch chrunch
mmmmmmmmmmm its soo gooood
POPCORN

Salt-grain-taken greetings

from the land of curmudgeons,

powwow in these

craters of overblown canticles.

Dragon-puff proofed spirits

with the matchsticks of nigh-nights...

till we add eyes to the lambs of

Johnny from Patmos.

We can disturb the peace, till it

spews war from windows--gag

reflexes of great purges.

Catching venom samples in our

plastic cups, for posterity's telltale tipples.

Etching paralysis through deadlocked

saints and sinners.