A department of “feeding our babies”

Tell me triumphs
I wait for crescendo
The next lobstick
The next teaching
Profound.

A youth
An aged one
No matter the wings
Or lack
4 feet?
More?
Less?

WE SEE YOUR DEAD!
Writers
Men
Philosophers
Men
Economists
Politicians
You know the story

We’ve come for your dead
Let them pass over
Let’s stop this endless funereal
We will feast them when the time is right
They teach us
From their zombie fingers
Economy
Education
Leadership.

We need Directors General
Of caring, curiosity, circles of wonder.
A department of “feeding our babies”
Hand to hand
Heart to heart
We learn
We teach
We create
We be
We ebb
We let go

Pehiw Awakening 2022

Brown Bandages

I bought my kids the brown bandages
A memory?
You changed me
You showed me my default
White
Man
Defiantly into ladies
Con-fi-dent

No curls
No circles
No differences
I didn’t know
I didn’t know.
I made you a war
I let them invade my cities
Lost my treasures
Destroyed my sacred.

I bought myself the brown bandages
To never forget that knowing
Cause the defaults don’t work
I am a custom job
Artisanal
“upcycled”
A good clean,
A few parts
A little bit of older knowledge.
I’m as good as new
Maybe better
I have made you a peace.

Pehiw Awakening 2022

Meditation on "Apex Hides the Hurt" by Colson Whitehead

The Cree fed my family

Not old
Not young
Still gotta learn
Become
Flourish

I know more
The contours of my scars
The stories of the places
Where some treasures have been hidden
Old enough to take up the stories
To at least ask different questions

I looked spirit in the eye today
A Haida mask
A drum
Of savage degeneracy -
A drum to promise no more dances, songs or spirits.

WE DID THAT!

We tried to kill with paper
By stealing names
And stapling tongues
Those are the ancestors that worry me.
Where were you when…
They came for the letters
The names
The men

Who fed my family?
Indians
Cree
Savages
Who fed babies
Who grew into men
Who then fed them

Pehiw Awakening 2022

About the government

Indians write a lot of poems,
Songs
And well-reasoned missives
About the government.

Our DNA
Altered by papers
Written by men
Who could not see us as human.
Our old ones have the cure.

Wittigo a government guy?
“Trust is hard.”
That’s your legacy.

Heart to heart
We know ours.

Let go of salvation
Disband the trinity
No solo careers
Boy bands so passé
Cut off you frosted tips
Get a real job
Dance with the stars
Not the real ones
-they can’t abide a diva –
And your drama?
Well we’re done!

It’s you
That why we left
It is not me/we
It’s you

We need time to heal
We need time to write new poems
New songs
New governments
And our old ones have the cure.

Pehiw – Awakening 2022

Ninanaskomowin

Ninanaskomowin
You honor me
You said the words
But more sweet than a gentle embrace
You took that load.

My gift
To hold
To grow
To release.

I have some starts to visit now.
Some galaxies to taste.

I’ll send you postcards,
A bit of stone
A melody
And the shiny things
We’ll use to unstitch,
Roads
And tongues
And forgetting.

Pehiw – Awakening 2022

Poetry about Evaluation

Never wrote a poem
About evaluation.
Maybe McCloskey
Who reminds us our words are paint brushes
Our constructs
Greek tragedies/comedies.

I never imagined
The truth in community.
We each take our paths
We each/all hope
To see
Blacks and whites
Turn to rainbows .
Where failure
Is not fear
But a celebration of learning.

As we turn
As we travel our circles
Each gift
Each teachings
Adding to our kaleidoscopes
Each turn
A new wonder
A new view,
A new we.

Pehiw – Awakening 2022

“For launch of evaluation”

Future

I was asked my vision
My hope
Future.

I dream of rainbow economies
Where there are spaces
For all to be
To be in safety
To be in themselves
I see midwives of potential
Helping us birth our deepest gifts.

I dream of rainbow servants
- Civil or otherwise –
Who give and take
Where “caring” is not a flaw.

I dream of calls,
30 years
100
To future generations
To say “look what grew.”

Bring me,
Bring all from the circle together again
As you light medicines
As you care for our bundle
As you tell our stories.

I dream of rainbow communities
Where connection is richness
Where giving is an honor
Where receiving is sacred

Where listening is ceremony

I want to dance with every one of you
Our visions
Hopes
And futures
Are staggering works of art
Woven
Danced
Sung
Across time and space and stars.

Pehiw – Awakening 2022

Economies of shame

Economies of shame
Where the trap you set
A religion of one god
A religion of binary
A religion of the mind.

Body bad.
No nuance.
No choices.
Alone.
Shop.
Alone.
Eat
Alone
Distract
Alone
Create
Alone.

Let’s dream the instructions to unlock that trap
Let’s send the answers
Through the soils
So others can find release.

Let’s remember,
Recreate,
Reburn our sacred fires
And link arms
With brothers and sisters
Who held the old ways close.

Grandfather stones
- P that’s you too –
Tell us stories
Economies of wonder
Monopolies of care
Markets of possibilities

Pehiw – Awakening 2022

Economy

I’ll ruin marriages
I’ll bring down dynasties, legacies and faculties,
I’ll crater markets
I’ll open up old wounds.

I’ll make the first department of the “all”
And trade in my singular pronouns
For something much more fitting.

I will recycle all my shame
Into something useful.
I will weave my doubts and fears
Into teachings I can share
Into hugs I can accepts.

I’ll take away the letters
That keep us far apart
“economy”
A tale told to children
To remind them
Of a time
When “I” forgot to we.

Pehiw – Awakening 2022

These same tracks?

Sew-way-guy
Kookum
Did your journey
Take you down
These same tracks?
Passed or traded?
Were you happy to learn?
Did your tongue
Take to the new
Even as your heart
Remembered different skylines?
What did you dream
For our futures?
Whisper everyone into me
I will carry
I will live
We will
Together
With the shimmering threads of us and all
We will
Reclaim our lands
Our feet
And our fires

Pehiw – Awakening 2022

My First Elder

My first Elder was a drag queen

Who tells us “If you can't love yourself – how in the hell you gonna love anyone else?”

She was a Kookum to my children,

Reminding us that most of what we do is drag.

Does my brain know

It accepted all the shame?

Now I write my story on my skin.

I will become,

Whatever….

Slave to biology or free?

Who hurts in the morning?

Today – I accept becoming,

Sometimes an exquisite sound

Somedays a triceratops,

And more often now –

A gardener of futures.

Pehiw – Awakening 2022

Nana

As soon as we turn

I feel your presence

I remember all the anticipation

For the bus to pull up

Spit out its cargo

And breath

Now, it is our turn

We climb the great steps

And wind across a landscape

Dotted with the dreams

Stubborn folk

Visitors

Ancestors

Can you remember those days?

Do you remember that dance?

What secrets lie

Yet to be uncovered?

Who are you now?

Free from the chains

Of a mind

Riddled with an intensity

Women are denied?

Come with me,

Let’s journey again

Mind to mind

We will love

Our littles

And our bigs

We remember all

We forgot too

But our bones

Own us

Our blood

Is poetry

Time for us

Here among the bodied was short

But our journey

Infinite art

Letters, numbers, love unfettered.

Ever test passed.

 

Pehiw – Awakening 2022

Put the Grandmas in the Central Bank

You hear me holler early

“the interests rates are moving”

Inflation in a mood

I told you not to gamble

In rats and lies from them

Why we need a penis

To tell the lies about the line?

Talking about care

Or feeding all the babies

-not real enough to run it – no pussies –

In our economies of shame.

Let’s count out

Our stories of hate and greed and envy.

Let’s make it real

Each rape a drain on GDP

Let’s tax abusers at a higher rate

The thieves who steal our futures

Let’s take away their privilege

Let’s bring the grandma’s back.

I’ll write that briefing note!

Stitched on a quilt of all our knowledge.

Then we will take it to the Elders

To lands and stars and peoples

“We never dies”

Not just for the model, math or theory,

But because our stories carry us

Where our measures

Are the laughter of a family

The ratio of love to respect

Long etched into our eyes

Let the numbers dance before us

Like light medicines from the old and deep

Put the grandmas in the central bank,

So I won’t holler early

Except to see and old friend

As a surprise, sunny day gift.

Pehiw – Awakening 2022

Dear Future Friend

 Dear Future Friend

The rush,

Intensity,

The everything.

My mind is not broken

I am not broken

I am made of different things

Full of portals to other worlds.

Of course we are “too much”

Our bundles packed so full

Our cases and bodies and hearts burst.

It was you who taught us shame

You who alienated us

Body from mind,

From emotions

From spirit

From our birthrights of  hope and care and abundance

You want roads

Where we want mazes and a grain of sand

And infinite expanses.

We gather sunsets that haunt us forever.

That color blue that means more to me than money.

We are not broken.

Lies!

We are not to be feared.

Lies!

We will not destroy if we are freed.

Lies!

We will not destroy

Those who lack justice

Those who need care

Those who we recognize as family.

This last part is for you dear future friend.

We don’t know each other yet,

But the shadows of those days to come

Cast back

I see our direction,

They don’t know the beauty of all the in-betweens

And patterns that set your mind alight.

We see you

We know some mountains

Where you can store your gifts

-Ready when needed-

Deep water who can hold all and does not judge

Green things to grow around you like armor

Then you need to root your feet

Walk across our lands

A giant

The great rivers your shower,

Prairie grasses your bed

Feast with Nanabush

Play dice with the west wind.

LET GO

YOU ARE NOT A MONSTER

You are a remembrance

You are not broken

But so vast

We can’t make sense with our human bodies.

Pehiw – Awakening 2022