A song of becoming : A dance with Transit of Empire 2

Never gonna
SAY
more better
mind
or-gas-ims
page 195*
Those words
mathmusic.
Then
a bag
of petals.
Paid in beauty?
(We are making medicines)
Training vines
to grow together
Shelter
Tables
for feasts
yet to come.

You are precision.
Rooted.
Me -
Petal Dancer.
[But nevermind]

What songs accompany your days?*

We shall find a harmony

a song of circle

a song of harvest

a song of becoming,

shared in the lessons of leaves,

petals

and roots.

Pehiw Wandering 2024

 *Jodi A. Byrd "The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism

 pg 225"

You ded yet? : A dance with Transit of Empire 1

Sunday morning

Wandering,

Worrying.

You ded yet?

hate the game

hate the players

hate the board/bored.

Sharpened my strategy,

took advice,

Wind counselled,

follow the fractures,

gently push

hands

overlain

Ancestors deep,

gotta listen

(...............)

They built the camps

right on our bodies!

Economies of poison,

rivers of deceit,

Well....

Dams fracture

Zombie Imperialism*

got me feeling

homer sacer

"Play it again Sam."

Can't bare to remember

Can't ever forget

Complicity.

- Thought it was normal - 

Black and white

Ballets with shame

Locked up.

In between

Can't do more days

Gotta stop forgetting

Tattered tongued

I spoke my truth

Bags of petals

porch visits

community

stitches

in wounds

long left gaping

medicines

teachings

care

soothe

butterfly gentle

Willow seed

Snow in June

soft

Spring gangster

digging toes

deep

living a broken

birthed a shadow sibling

transmute

soil sisters

transmit

drum beat truths

- it don't matter - 

dead or alive

shroud

be thy bedclothes

you will it so/sew.

I have grieved long

your grave

will have no tears

for I am too far

to return

to lands

long ago flooded

with silent tears.

Pehiw Wandering 2024

 *Jodi A. Byrd "The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism

 pg 225"

From gates to keepers

Métis stuff?
Is my blood red?
We got to self harm
to check that truth?
We all mixed up.
It was always so.
Old Ones
Taught better,
Helped us learn,
Build us up, 
Brought together.

What culture?
Is my blood red?
We got to hold heart
to check that truth?
We all scar(r)ed,
Infected dollars,
Rounds for everyone,
Shots
- whether you want -
Many hands raise your glass.
Brought together.

Bear Story?
Is my blood red?
We got to monitor monthly
to check that truth?
We all living,
what else to do,
Till visions,
Traded
garden to garden,
soil to worm,
from gates to keepers.

Pehiw Preparing 24

Economies of Butterflies

Mother Bear
from first principals
reborn from ink
floated to safety
tears raised me up
marked ∞
an always thing

wove
little and BIGS
one week.
Traded butterflies
for stories.
Rose petals
a bit of hope.
Saw truths spoke
honoured
danced.

"We were giving,
that's how
we kept
what we gave away."*

Pehiw Preparing 24

To D my little neighbor and A a bigger neighbor.
*Neil Young "Comes at a Time"

Dear Joe

Dear Joe*
been learning
old wars
new harms.
genocide again?
I been / to some.
Gulags
"Well now / you know"
old wisdoms
new ears
old mirrors
new stories
snakes
given ladders
- shrug -
locked up?
Lived it. 
Another Joe,
was first
Perhaps fortold
these days?
sky orator
practicing
until voices
found?
spread thighs
over roofs
ashed skin
YOU BROKE!

Far.
Closer to home.
Inside.
Plague came
other horsemen
(don't waltz)
- gasp _
"we forgot"
seashells whisper
"lies!"
Eyes fail
cave delights
consumed us.
(Got
gangsta granny
goals)**
That corner?
gotta 
fill pockets
so(w) seeds
be ready.

Pehiw Preparing 24
*To all the Joes I have known
** To Rita of Guigues Street who showed us how to hold our spaces.

Can't go home no more

Went home.
Weren't ma mountains 
anymore.
The ocean
welcomed visitor,
gifted treasures
I fly to kin.

 
Here/hear teacher.
A shell
that whispered 
time for your hand.

Sand that cried,
"Thank fuck"
for loves 
that can be
more than
"They never hit me."

I tried to hug you.
Learned how.
But your body
only sees threat.
Made a Žižek joke.

-Akward-

So much sad
stones
and bones
groaned. 

Saw 10 crows
on dead tree
30 feet high
kin around
felt Matriarchy

patchworks

stitched

in misty waterways

paddles while children slumbered

All your hope!

All your love!

Fabric

of hues

only little ones see.

Backed

to Grandfather's cloth

once stretched 

cross backs

carrying the burdens

they invented the blues for.

Music

rhythm

algorithm

creates

separation

desperate in-hale

afore....

wave returns.

Can't go home no more

But been building new gardens

sharing seeds

celebrating better loves.

Pehiw Preparing 24

Desk Killers

 How do you write about books that dance in your mind? Books that make your stomach turn? Truths you could have known – except we are trained not to see it – not to ask THOSE questions. I confess. I am a Desk Killer! I hoped to warrior with honor, weapons of logic, data, systems – I learned them all. Learned the rules. Learned they are lies. Learned the lies (oh the hubris!) Learned words I stamped in skin – STRUGGLE or else what? Let the chaos take us? Dying fast or slow? Either way gets the job done. The numbers don’t Lie! Which kills show on my tally sheet? No scalps in honor. I count no coup. Witigo – a shrapnel – from Shakespeare to wounds that don’t heal…. Can’t even use a lighter….CLICK – trench reflex. Must hide flame.

I was born to this war. I stamped words in skin. “The cake is a lie.”

Didn’t mean what I thought it did. Wasn’t said by the “person” I thought. But that’s my life story. And the words aren’t false.

We fight over a bigger pieces of the pie* and forget to ask if we want pie or if we could make something that could feed everyone around the table. So…I also got hope etched, words of Matriarchs and stories from times before/to come. Colors applied to disguise, to signal what we already knew – unblooded – so I need the needles and sacred black from fires merged with my skin. We are their stories. We cannot forget.

Data Bear (Mama Bear Energies) Preparing 24

*This is a teaching from Winnona LaDuke (Dakota) who is also an economist.

Dancing with "The Transit of Empire"

Reading a book*.
"Cacophony"
like fine jazz
you win me over
who is grievable?**
who is overwritten?
Who is timeless - 
held binary?
Who is sacrificed -
to lines and shames?
Who wears
what scars?
What songs
silenced?
Reading a book
feels like coming home.
"homer sacer"***
sings so sweet
deep tones
clarinet
tells how
THEORY FAILS
rigid bodies
unable to flex
not like melodies
relived by many
sung in memory
of each circle
that was
and shall be.
Aho,

Pehiw Preparing 24

* "The transit of Empire" by Jodi A Byrd (Chickasaw)

** Judith Butler "Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence"

***Giorgio Agamben  "Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life"

What you gonna do?

What you gonna do
when they come for your liver?
Sure better hope
you got arrows in your quiver.
What you gonna do
when they come for your pen?
Did it once
might do it again.
What you gonna do
when they come for your soul?
Give a little bit
or keep it whole?
What you gonna do
when they come for your time?
Take that money
see how far allowed to climb?
What you gonna go
when they come for your sleep?
gonna say quiet
or stand and speak?

Akihcikewin Maskwa (Data Bear) Preparing 2024

Dedicated to cousins and Aunties who speak their truths