"inuit" poems
In my mind, I raced against time
I smoked peyote with the Apache
I chased Kangaroos
Through the bush with the Aborigine
All the while
...I searched for the power within me
In my mind, I outpaced time
I drew cave art with the Neanderthal
I climbed to the top of the mountain with the Sherpa
I hunted seal out on the frozen tundra with the Inuit
All the while
...I searched for the power within me
In my mind, I eclipsed time
I wrote poetry while under the tutelage of Langston Hughes
And I created visual greatness while apprentice to Gordon Parks
I even stood on the wall with Che' Guevara, like a Sentry standing watch
All the while
...I continued searching for the power within me
In my mind, I turned to face time
I wrote an addendum to the Emancipation Proclamation
And I saw the ugly truths
Of freedom's farcical Declaration
All the while
...I continued searching for the power within me
In my mind, I embraced time
I sought to free my nation from the pandemic perils of *******
And I prayed that we Americans would be free of
The snares of racial and economic divide that still has us chained
I did this while searching for truth, in this, our most tenuous hour
...then empyreally, God reached for me, touching me, and I finally found my power
* Reprinted from 'Exegesis a Decade of Poetry by Mekael'
© July 14, 2009 by Mekael Shane
Jan 12, 2014
Jan 12, 2014 at 2:28 PM UTC
Is it really this hard
to find people I can go back and forth in discussion with
about Buddhist and Hindu theology compared and contrasted against Christian and Yoruba
I want to scream and shout and dance with somebody over Janet Jackson's new album
and at the same time
feel the heat and talk with somebody about how extremely sad and depressing
but oh so good Giovanni's Room was
I want to be able to speak with somebody whom can quote Malcolm X and Kafka in the same breath
Somebody who could see the logic of Pac and Immortal Technique on the same piece
with the Budos Band or Mulatu on the back track
I want to know people whom know
just exactly who
Suki Lee and Bayard Rustin are
can we talk about Jacob Kinohoor's ***
at least for a moment
then get into some B.B. King or Johnny Cash
have you seen Dune
the one from the eighties
James McAvoy shirtless
as well as John Goodman’s acting
were only good things about the other
if you read it
even better
what about the ***** that sat by the door
Or
killer clowns from outer space
let's be shady and point out all the inaccuracies on the history and discovery and channels
praying for that day
that's not in February
They show Shaka Zulu in full
without commercial interruption
Or maybe a documentary about native American people
with actual native actors
that do not depict them all as either
plains people
Or Inuit
Cause you already know
not everybody is Eskimo
then let's put on our own private production of legally blonde
followed by encore presentations of the classic scene
Of Miss Celie and miss Ofelia going in over Harpo
can I discuss with you
how the Patriot act nullifies everything in constitution
And the bill of rights
even though they never were intended to be permanent any way
It would be nice to not have to explain a Corporatocracy
all my life Ive been into Egyptology
You do know that Imhotep was the actual founder of medicine
by a good 2000 years
not that Hippocrat
the thing is
I'm still learning
when attempt to delve that deeply into people
which I don't even consider that deep
They often misunderstand
They often concluded without thinking
maybe
just maybe
©Christopher F. Brown 2015
May 22, 2015
May 22, 2015 at 11:30 PM UTC
Where are those killing fields?
They are wherever we see
The Master Race ignoring
Peace, love and equality.
If you’re not white
And your state is red,
Don’t be surprised
If you end up dead.
As maybe some one
Will beat on your head
And demand to know
What goes on in your bed.
If you are any race
But Holy Caucasian
Like African or Inuit,
Mexican or Asian
That includes Islam
And all such nations
The bigots will hate
On every occasion.
Where are those killing fields?
They are wherever we see
The Master Race ignoring
Peace, love and equality.
In World War Two we
Fought against fascism
And now we entertain
An unholy American schism
In which Americans plan
With gleeful fanaticism
To make every effort
To maintain totalitarianism.
For over two centuries
We have sung of equality
And the inalienable rights
Of American humanity.
We continue to fight now
But it has become a calamity
Because now we are fighting
Within each of our families.
Where are those killing fields?
They are wherever we see
The Master Race ignoring
Peace, love and equality.
May 20, 2016
May 20, 2016 at 5:57 PM UTC
In the arctic wastes where the Inuit tribe hunts caribou and fights to survive,
I have been told since long ago that tribe has fifty words for “snow”
That seemed superfluous to me- Fifty words for one commodity!
If I was born an Eskimo, I’d have fifty words to learn and know
I do most of the shoveling here, my wife and children cheer me on.
The winter lingers long and drear, some days it seems the Sun is gone.
Despite the calendar I greatly fear that blessed spring is nowhere near
Tomorrow, the radio makes clear, we’re expecting six more inches here.
Some snow is like a sugary mist, granulated and sublime,
Quite useless for a snow ball fight, for that you need the packing kind.
The worst is the wet sodden snow, the kind that threatens a heart attack.
It’s difficult to lift and throw; it hurts the arms and strains the back.
I told my wife I now know why they need fifty words for snow.
I have a few choice words I’d add; words the children shouldn’t know.
Those Inuit folk who fight to survive in the land of snow and ice-
Now I too have fifty words for snow, not one of which is nice.
Mar 4, 2015
Mar 4, 2015 at 8:31 AM UTC
I would like to feel again
Burst abruptly from this cocoon of numbness I find myself in
Ice Queen.
Eskimo ***** is mighty cold or so I've been told
Lucky me no Inuit runs through these punch drunk crazy veins
The taste of blood, copper and meaty, is sharp on bitten lips
The facade of laughter, worry
The years that stand between us
Are held up for scrutiny
You are always lacking
I am always wanting
It is our way
Now I find us at a crossroads
Another path blossoms thick and heavy with unkempt erotica
Dripping silky sweet between the sheets
It is one I will walk alone, living sin
Our path is ripe and full
Surprises swinging around every corner
My every desire obtained
Going to sleep lonely but repeat
Such is the choice of a woman
Or is it?
Aug 2, 2012
Aug 2, 2012 at 6:38 PM UTC
*Flames Slowly Die In This World So Cold,
Yet I've Learned To Thrive In It,
Just As The Flourishing Inuit*
I'm
Ready
To
Change
My
Niche
I'm
Ready
To
Bloom
To
Full
Potential
I'm
Ready
To
Finally
Be
Me
*A Curl Of Smoke--My White Breath--
Whisps Through The Air
One Thousand Words I Never Said
Race Through My Mind
As I Stand In The Light Before Dusk
Soon To Be Concealed By The Billions Of Stars*
Dec 14, 2012
Dec 14, 2012 at 8:17 AM UTC
Old Gray: My Life With You, My Life Without You
Tigers Jaw: Teen Rocket
The World Is A Beautiful Place: Heartbeat In The Brain
The Story So Far: Navy Blue
Counterparts: Decay
Foxing: Inuit
Karen O: The Moon Song
Have Mercy: Living Dead
Modern Baseball: Pothole
Moose Blood: Gum
The Wonder Years: Madelyn
...and we'll kiss and laugh and talk about how we're just small specks of dust in the universe wondering what our purpose is.
Jan 14, 2015
Jan 14, 2015 at 10:10 AM UTC
He sat there, same table, most Sundays
If he came alone, he did not stay that way long
His corner table would fill, with nodders and smilers
People with pint glass recognition of all he'd done
His special tankard 'World's Strongest Man'; no year, for that would be cruel
I watched him as I grew, from colouring book infant to
The girl who stood a round for her father
Each year he shrunk a little, those
muscles softening to fat
And still they came and asked him to bend their metal pipes
And carry a man on each shoulder
One handed him a rope for his teeth, and
Asked if he would tow away his junker, they
Laughed and bought him another round, mate, another pint
For the World's Strongest Man
He told me once, when I was 10 and curious,
The stories of his ink marks, the places
He had been and all the strange and wonderful things
He had lifted and bent and pulled and
Training with the Sumo, ice hole bathing with Inuit,
wrestling hobbled Russian bears, the lion that left 'see, this mark here'
A yawn when he'd placed his big, shaggy head
In the beast's mouth because
He too was a king
I asked him once, when I had grew
If he should have been
More like bamboo
Thin and reedy, bending in the wind
No substance to speak off, yet
With a strength belieing it's slender form
He told me, as the acolytes trudged past
In heavy boots and rough winter coats
'All I ever wanted was for someone else to take the weight, even for a moment, but now it's too late'
I smiled sadly, because I understood
Tested strength and how it withstood
And yet I felt his heart-deep sorrow
At looking back, not to tomorrow
I did not buy him another pint, I walked with him instead
Through the door he'd left a thousand times
To his taxi, usual driver, 'home, mate?'
Lean on me for now, I said. I'm stronger than I look.
Dec 8, 2014
Dec 8, 2014 at 12:57 PM UTC
No more the picturebook Eskimo,
the modern Inuit have central heating,
snowmobiles, welfare; they do not need
to fashion harpoons from bone, wait all day
for seal to come to ice hole, drag the body
to a home they have built from snow.
Once they lived with cold
and the creatures of the cold,
fish, seal, and white bear, familiar
if not friends, the snow itself
almost alive in its moods and movements,
falling as flakes, powder, clumps,
floating, flying, dazzling, stinging,
covering, drifting, compacting to ice.
Snow informed their lives;
one word was not enough.
Our life from infancy to grave
is shaped by love, comforting, calming,
thrilling, unsettling, dazzling, stinging,
covering, drifting, compacting to ....
Seventeen words for snow,
How many ways to say I love you?
May 4, 2016
May 4, 2016 at 8:48 AM UTC
using the ink of experience means
leaning on what is known
building on what has been done before-
but what of those things
that move in the realms of the unknown?
The Inuit’s tongue speaks
A hundred words for snow
as in the midst of it
they live and grow
if that is true
for the words we speak
wouldn’t it also flow
that for the passions we most feel
our inner vocabulary is more?
for sure I’ve known
loss and pain
with morbidity had
a mild flirtation
sadness has been a bedfellow
I’ve played with jealousy
and envied greed
with vanity I often meet
I’ve been intimate with fear
fought with guilt
and broken up with anger
with love I’m best friends
happiness smiles at me
in solitude i am at my best
with mirth and joy
i search for peace
abundance and acceptance
are welcome guests
and enthusiasm brings me
the gift of zest
and so on and so forth
i’ve known them all
for better or for worse
but what of those
i know not yet
far away on some distant shore
i do not even know their names
so clueless as to their identity
can’t put a face to any of them
unaware of their personalities
strangers they are
and so will they be
until someday they find me
the only question that is left to be answered -
will I know them when we meet?
- Vijayalakshmi Harish
01.01.2013
Copyright © Vijayalakshmi Harish
Jan 1, 2013
Jan 1, 2013 at 11:14 AM UTC
Choked up wonderment
still tastes like regurgitation
but numbness comes with it
It is fear
encompassing unfinished things
lump in throat
blood dropping degrees
in temperature
Chronicling this cool
deliberate **** of senses
incessant soul questioning
Worth
feasible future
nevertheless struggle
after eternal struggle
Eyeballing transports of delight
amongst wrestled trauma
morality’s cusp of change
Sacrifice or sacrifices
self-destruction
abandonment to death
Senicide
walk into icy tundra
Inuit elder casting himself away
to frozen abyss
and crystalline corpse
for good of tribe
One less to feed
left on floating iceberg
Dark day’s sunrise
Apr 18, 2016
Apr 18, 2016 at 8:33 PM UTC
down the stairs, where the creak-feet of descent
will silence a cricket in the room; there with couch
and the bookstand, oak and glass....
sedate features; the odd bust of an Inuit matriarch-
staring at your blouse like it were forged
in blasphemies and trade winds.
down there, where we keep the cat riveted to the headlights
of our armored car.
in the seam
the coffee table is strewn, right down the middle
with old magazines and straw placemats.
a stain that never fades,
stands in the garden of cigarette butts and dog-eared -
post-it notes
to a glass scarecrow.
a mound of bric-a-brac
and fingerprints.
it's sticky
where two people
made the love
that made the mess...
but it's hollow where they never met.
and you can see the carpet through the permafrost.
our lens
immune to domain.
free to see the whimsy
in a spot of bother
about a broken
heart.
down where the television skin is the thickest. our ironic muse.
just a spritz of cultured sabotage,
and the good sense to go mad
without disturbing the peace....
the same peace that almost -
cost us the war.
at the very least.
Jan 16, 2017
Jan 16, 2017 at 11:08 PM UTC
CLOUDWATCHER
( for David Olaf Carney )
A cloud
gets the ****
Becomes a camel.
Another **** sees it
transform into a dromedary.
Now a kidney!
Then as on a whim
becomes a Picasso
or some such
thing.
Sometime there's
shape and sense.
Sometimes none.
We make up names
for the one's with none.
Here for instance
stolen
from an old religious tract
THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING.
And here, from the same
"...the cloud of forgetting."
This one
we dub in Ancient Egyptian
"HPRR!"
"rising from....coming into being
itself.:
And this one" "HPR!"
"...to become...to change."
And while our minds run on
the Egyptian thing
why here is Nepthys
Goddess of the Death
that is not
Eternal.
Here Horus
Lord of things to come.
This here cloud
we give the moniker
THE AGENBITE OF INWIT
before it becomes
an Inuit.
Now an anvil and a hammer
in a Black Country summer
"Gie-in’ sum ‘ommer!"
we command it
commanding the skies.
Now here again
a nothing.
Clouds bring forth
not the gentle rain
that falleth from Heaven
but...thought
whatever the mind
imagine.
And here
why here
is a cloud
that is just
a cloud.
Sep 18, 2017
Sep 18, 2017 at 7:12 PM UTC
I set my sight far on China
abacus counting; without confusion
But they're mostly short sighted
and that's no delusion
Heard about the Hong Kong march
but didn't recall till I'd seen what I saw
So I did what I did, now I understood
what I could, with Confucius
Never take a pen to a pig
nor your litter to the swine
for one, H one N one
Can I get myself the Canadian kind?
Import... extort, not for the canola
nor the coals down under
If I'm selling what I stole from selling Inuit
like the forty thieves and Ali's plunder
How many men can stand as tall
without writing Graffiti on the Great Wall
that they built, that's psychopathic
for the people, by the people, the Great Republic
Nov 30, 2019
Nov 30, 2019 at 2:20 AM UTC
Equality was
with a
delay in
time made
this inuit
but trade
"dreep" in
creep was
morning came
with a
price as
scrupulous but
time ahead
is autistic
in their
thunder game
o'er mercury
Oct 11, 2019
Oct 11, 2019 at 8:27 AM UTC
Inuit art
framed in medical waiting rooms
famined behind glass
wronged chime
*
the grazing eye passes through the greed of it
little need
with such clement weather
*
Stretch out those eagar linkers
and read those signals
you were nursed to read
*
being tactile
induce swelling
and poke at holes
*
There is no dignity
and we look ridiculous
within its service
*
share a meal of teeth
family of whitened grins, laughs and interdependent stares
a formula
for props and catalogue
*
Cash in my reflection
at retail it'll fetch its metal
*
t h e e n d
Mar 10, 2022
Mar 10, 2022 at 2:02 PM UTC
I weep for trees and forests,
We laid them all to waste.
Will children have no air to breath,
No atmosphere to taste?
I weep for mighty oceans
We trashed them to the brim.
Will children of the life therein
Protract no place to swim?
I weep for northern icelands,
A thawing polar crown.
Will children of the Inuit
Become condemned to drown?
I weep for fields and meadows,
Poisoned long ago.
Will children of the landscape
Reap no seeds to sow?
I weep for man's futurity
Ere I take my sleep.
Will children of the morrow
Beget no tears to weep?
ASJ
Jun 1, 2020
Jun 1, 2020 at 4:13 AM UTC
Feminism fights for the rights of women AND men
For all who fall in between that,
and those who lie outside the spectrum
It fights for African People,
for Asian People,
for Native American and Inuit People,
for African-American People,
and Hispanic People
To educate the European and privileged populations
And to promote empathy,
and compassion
Feminism fights for the rights of all,
Young and old
For those who are underpaid,
and those who are paid far too much
And that,
is feminism to me
Sep 29, 2019
Sep 29, 2019 at 2:00 PM UTC
The wind demands to be let in
full force on the kitchen window
all the way from the cold Artic
where Polar Bears roam, and
Inuit people make a living.
You would perish outside
be overcome with the cold
a frozen corpse for neighbours
to find in the steeped up snow.
It has happened here before
a poor man found on his
doorstep, waxed face, deathly
blue grey, unseeing eyes, a
silent mouth, stiff limbed
snow speckled hair, stone dead.
Dec 8, 2017
Dec 8, 2017 at 12:09 PM UTC