To the futures we can't even dream

Will the time come
When I can just trust
Process
Flow
Creation
Use the paint
The little on decried
- Yes – the future needs just that tone
Turquoise/jewel/sky
Each stroke
A winding thread
To those we help become
To those who make/take up
Warriorifying
Our artists
Knowers
Makers
And whisperers of divine.
Gonna wait for savior?
Trust hard
Cause they made the cost high
Us
We lived on road sides
Unhuman
Outside
Aint got much
That they can see the value of
-mamisiwin-
I/we gotta learn the old words
Listen to our blood
Use what today gives us
Be ok
That there are futures
We can’t even dream
But we can quip
With paints and brushes and hope.

Pehiw – Wandering 2022

Wandering with Maskwa (future)

I see our future
Germinating
Teaching us
Gathering the good
We will get you home
Bring you back
To paint this town
In new stories
Of ceremonies
Teachings to hear our
“we walked uphill to cabinet both ways” stories
To write your own
Let us braid together
Our best
Let us
Shelter
Support
Sustain
To grow
To become
Our truth
Will move us 

Pehiw – Wandering 2022

Wandering with Maskwa (Consulting the River)

Who would imagine
A year ago
Observed by water
We dreamed
We weighted
Then we lived it
On meeting again
My heart knew you
By any name
You make me better
Remind me
That easy sentiment
Don’t always satisfy
That a six month smile
Can sustain
Even when those waters froze.

Pehiw – Wandering 2022

Wandering with Maskwa (Going Home)

Those photos
Still make me tear
You are so happy
So fully truly you
When you need
We will let you go
Your path
-we won’t cry-
You have seeds to nurture
Teachers to meet
I learn from you everyday
We/I will remember
When it is months
Maybe years
Maybe lifetimes.

Pehiw – Wandering 2022

To J 

Morning Meditation to Ginny my cat who misses her beagle brother

I see myself in you my four footed sister
You don’t let yourself be held back
Even when hard
You push your limits
Travel far
Defend us passionately
You learned from your brother
Did not see a stupid little annoyance
But another with gifts to share
New ways to learn
Different limits
And saw not that he was different
Scary
Wrong
But saw heart to heart
Saw family
Saw love

Pehiw – Wandering 2022

A half and half and half prophet

Again
A half and half and half prophet*
Delivers a message
Between sips of latte
Maybe
That’s why
My book is full of serious words
Underlined
Repeated page over page
“tourism”
“Nose”
“J-beaver”
These stories I don’t know yet
Sent sentries
To warn of knowledge to come.

Tatawa
We connect
An Uber ride
A cafe
A tv show that tells your truths
More right
Than any my tongue could carry.
A woman empowered
Life of exquisite fullness
Mind and/or body
To child or not
All paths valid
To destroy the worlds of man
or
Raise economies of care
To explore
Space and ocean
Now and tomorrow
To revel in body
Light of dark

That 43 minutes showed
Why you can’t ever love me
I transformed a 9 tail fox
That other me
Only you carry that
Never meant to be

I can’t stay grave
With possibility denied
I am a new thing
A half and half and half
Receiver of messages
Explorer of possibilities.

Pehiw – Wandering 2022

* The Virtual Museum of Métis History and Culture (metismuseum.ca)

For all the times...

“I wish I could make it so you could see yourself…I am full to the head of unsayable things I don’t want to forget” Lyric from Unison by Gang of Youths

You seduced us
Brought us to ceremony
Sent us off
To move as we must
To treat each other well
The front row
Forehead to forehead
You told
(y)our/all truths

Sometimes
The lies kept us safe
Encased in “passing bodies”
No stories!
Who am I?
Book sinner
Stoooooopid
-if you are always wrong – why not win on speed?

This poem wants…

“The call them the milleniuums”
Another generation bears scars on gentle skin
Literally my kids
Catholic school –
Well I got bruises
“parental contact discouraged”
So I made one last call
And my kid left school at 14
Just like their Mooshum
A Métis man “in care” from 3

All the times you unticked that box (Métis)
When you told us
Child services – they got some good #%@)#
FUCK YOU!
Head Dr
Where my suit
Name tag
Nice shoes
Meant my kid got help 

– that time

“Health care” that leaves us dead
Scared to call for help
When I screamed in pain
The nurse looked away
Until later
When she asked again
“How much do you drink?”

Gotta reclaim
Cause I want to live in that moment of ceremony
Not the lies or pain
Alive in that moment of art life truth
Unafraid of those unsayable things

Pehiw – Wandering 2022

Past is not meant to be a forensic investigation

“I see now – I’ve had a break in my soul” Lyric from Ontario by Keaton Henson

Past is not meant to be a forensic investigation
But sometimes
Call for audit
Hostile witness
Circumstantial…
Your heart knows

Call sage and cedar
To council you well
Call circle
We witness
You bare

You are so much more than scars
We see that steel that kept you here
You are medicines

Pehiw – Wandering 2022

Feet of Clay

We expected the feet of clay
We saw the fragility
Your fear of us
Evil babies
Morning in America
Never imagining
The depths
Hate
Lies
Fear
You curated like treasures

We hoped it was us
That you could learn to love
Next baby worthy
How little the space
You want smaller still
Your rents ever higher
We tried
Bridges left half built
Abandoned
Made absurd
When the rot came clear

So crawl into drum
Start your own song
Let clay return to earth
Claim your space

Pehiw – Wandering 2022
For J

The very stones that oversaw harm

So I could sit that day
Another Minister
Forced to face the people
The government tried to forget
My appetite
To adorn
To show
White skin aside
We are still here.

So by accident
(not really – creator made is so)
My first born beside me
So strong
To stand on that stage
Hand in hand with Elder
You one – you carry all
You inherited the future
-for truth and reconciliation –

When it is time
Please tell their stories
The firsts
The harm
The hope
Tell them of those other days
That same hill
Adorned with ribbon skirts
Tell them to bear witness
To hear the Clan Grandmothers
To honour our lost

Above my head
In the very stones
Who oversaw those harms
“speak truth to power.”
Put down your suits
This work might get dirty
Might last deep into night –
Come in jeans and hoodies
Separate no more
Detoxing from the drugs
Of expertise and forgetting.

Pehiw Wandering 2022

The Ministry of Now

I didn’t see it
In that moment
Too distracted
By the surface
Beauty/joy/hope
That time needed you

Cause
None of this
Is about difference
It is about the fullness of who we are
The lands that sustain us
Inspire us
It is about
Those we carry
Blood
Mind
Faded scars

As we gather
Screen our electronic fire
We share stories
Songs and teachings
We become together
Or exist
Without limbs
Senses
Stories
Never whole.

So in between the LOUD and soft moments
We fuel something
Of dimensions
Measured in wholly new units
At the Ministry of Now.

Pehiw Wandering 2022

To L

Modern Men

You modern men
You used to scare me
Grown on John Wayne
Dirty Harry
Hand crack
Dirt oil men
I couldn’t see the beauty of spaces to explore
Men who care
Who teach babies
Who learn that love has no gender
Who have a word*
When they need them

Pehiw Wandering 2022
*Non-binary

Cameras out

I used to write
Upside
Backwards
Cyrillics
Till I graduated to skin.

I took my notes
Humiliations
Histories
Each mangled letter taught to
“Proper ladies do…”

But I lunch with gangsters
Burnt out wood men
Japanese businessmen
Cameras out.

I don’t understand
No Madonna
Too obsessed to touch sky to remember
Little girls can’t fly.

Pehiw Wandering 2022

You heard bout the economist lecture on pornhub?

You heard bout the economist lecture on pornhub?
What search brought you here?
Comments
“After 50 minutes of macroeconomics I begin to suspect this will NOT have a happy ending”
“I have never #@$%! So hard in my life. Hope there is a sequel.”
“Macroeconomics – I try not to judge others, but, not around the kids.”

I teach mine safe fiscal and monetary policy
“What if they don’t respect your limits?”
Full anti-Chicago precautions!
There can be no consent
If you don’t talk to kids about economics – they will learn
On the streets
In Kindergarten

A friend worried about playground Marxism.
Mine preferred Žižek
Butler
An uncomfortable tea
Dolly was Arrant
Bear Eichmann
Banal or not
They were unexpected friends

We could play paper dolls
Drag Smith to club with Marshall
(Smith already has his own wig)

Or better yet
Find the women
The others (our medicine peoples)
Empress Wu Zen and her council of women
Whose infrastructure funding
Meant her people did not starve
Grandmothers who made due
Who repaired when e-c-o-n-o-m-i-c-s
Meant we starved our people
To those youth
Making
Sharing
Asking hard questions
We work with you
As long as strength remains

Circle recognizes circle.

Pehiw Wandering 2022

Harvest Moon

A 1000 years ago
We journeyed
Thin glass
A temporal barrier to our love affair.

We watched
The landscape
Breathe seasons

Tacky try buildings
- Maybe they have settled now –

They tried
Roofs of green
Libraries of pine
Dewy Decimal sorrows
Overcome
By parking ass
And touching
Each bound world
To know their truths

If I had more skin
I would
Still be full up.

A lot of truths
Grew
As we built our maps to “Savage degeneracies”
AKA – we don’t kill our kids for market!
That’s a moniker worn with pride.

To all my boys
To chicken dinners*
Even you spy
To you – body make crime
To you - who did not know the boat sinks
To you - who were big when I was small

To you - last name backwards
Wherever Friday morning holds you
Ni-nanaskomowin

Pehiw Wandering 2022

* Economist potlocks when everyone brings what was on sale that week.

I extrapolate the harm

Patterns
I extrapolate the harm
My data
Refined
Longitudinal
The model
A beauty
Rivaling Helen of Troy?
Is a demi-Helen
The new math we need?*

What is the measure of harm?
You know your units
Shame
Paths untried
Eyes not met

When do I become complicit?
When I did math with hope?

You wondered why more Indigenous folk
Don’t do higher level academy MATH

Cause they know maths/numbers/sacred geometries
You don’t know exist.
Who needs who?

And cause
We got babies to feed
Dying to care for
Ceremony to do –
Sacred math
Circle
Rocks in small hands
In those generations
Sunk deep in bones.

Pehiw Wandering 2022

* 1986 McCloskey, D.N. The Rhetoric of Economics, University of Wisconsin Press; 2nd ed. (1998) ISBN 0-299-15814-4 (First ed. written as Donald McCloskey) 2nd ed. preview.

Warriors of Soil

You share
Tired
So many battles
So many more to come
But you were planting seeds
Food our kids will consume
Nurturing vines that map the struggle
Your art
Messages to ponder
To inspire

Maybe we are Moses
To never enter the promised land
But they carry your line
Your stories
Your truths

For all the labels
Given in fear
Consider this one
You are enough
You are possibility
You are becoming
You are a warrior of soil.

Pehiw Wandering 2022 for L and P

“Change the game – don’t let the game change you”

“Change the game – don’t let the game change you”
Mackelmore “Make the Money” from the album “The Heist”

Louie told us
We would rise again
Cradled by our artists
Warriors
Of paper
brush
Vibration.

So go tell our stories
“It is time”
Becoming.

Welcome
All who know their places
All who struggle
All ready to learn
All with tongues
Ready to birth new/old truths
Ready to change this game.

Pehiw Wandering 2022

Art as she lives

Do you remember,
The first time
You found
That piece
The color
The line of stone
That wonder who survived
So much to be there
Moments away from you?

Did you see the babies grow still 

Awed by Ron Mueck*
The very face if their god?

Did you ever take a corner
To on-the-fly edit the exploits of Freida and Diego?

I still remember you Miro
This human got NO BIRDS!

A lullaby of bitter sweet palimpsests
Under church words
An ancient text
Until then unknown.

At bed we agreed – Tut – best king ever.
As we read every book
Child to adult
“Don’t put the death mask of King Tut on your sister –
You know it makes her cry.”

Barbie
Wife to Osiris
Who made worshipers
Wait
Until he finished the laundry.

They put my beauty
Into storage
That face of anguish
Haunts me still
Arms stubs
Chipped marble.

Bring in the Aunties!
To feed him
To love him
Seeds planted
“That’s Diego but not the real one”

Pehiw Wandering 2022

* Awed by Ron Mueck

Not undone

Not undone
The truth has deep roots
Weave any frayed threads
Into your becoming
Into your circles
Into your
                Sore
                            Battered

                                            Tired places

Reinforce with
                Leaves
                            Rivers
                                            Mountains

There is space
For every part of you
Your/my gifts
Will let us water deeply
Harvest the bounty
Planted in hope
For us
By those voices absent
When “value” assigned
Given NULL/NA/--/ERROR

Let’s dream
Let the youth come
Let’s feast
FOR WE ARE NOT UNDONE
We are a new thing

Pehiw Wandering 2022

To you who feed us

Thank you
To all of you who feed me
Coffees in hand
As we dream (im)possible things
I hope one day
Each of you see
You were fueling
So many firsts
So many hard conversations.
Your food a benediction
As we grow
And re-re-remember
As we prepare to go home.

I see you
Woven deep
Into our sashes
Our blankets
Our minds.

You have fueled budgets
And innovations
And trusts
You feed our Elders
You feed our futures
Those people
We prepare
A journey to far for one generation.
So many firsts
So many moments
I never thought to see
So many treasures
I never could imagined
So many paths opening,

So know
You are in every circle
In every doughnut eaten for a past one
In everything we right/write
Ninanaskomowin (A thank you in ceremony)

I am honoured to share this journey with you.

Pehiw Wandering 2022