I have firsts to write

I have firsts to write
I see them
Resonances to light
We have galaxies
To build
To learn with
Forgive
Change
Become
I had you from the start
Then you art
Hope, abundance, learn
When we make impossible places
We dream mobiles of different
While our teachers,
Ancestors

Those not yet begun,
Begin to sing together.

Pehiw – Wandering 2022

Mornings on Bear Channel

Ninanaskomowin for you
A morning story
Photos
Family
Becoming
Your company
On this journey
Learning to navigate
By rivers
Skies
Lobsticks*
A new “hello”
Each land we enter
A new gratitude
Each ancestor
We welcome
NOT mental health
NOT wellness
Relationships formed
As we worry problems
Listen to the wisdom of those to come
Gotta plan the seeds for their harvest!
The computer
Deletes
30 days
But your truths
Your stories
A rich soil for becoming.

Pehiw 2022
*Here is a link about lobsticks

Don’t meat eyes

Don’t meat eyes
Feature/flaw?
Culture?
Dis-ability?
Used to be slow
Now “equity seeking”
I ok
Cause Master Degree
Transforms
Stupid
Into paper
Aint nothing real
Same
Same
Same
I like culture better
Space for other
Time for story
Gifts to find flow

Pehiw 2022

You got a favorite hope?

You got a favorite hope?
Hold it
You are here
Cause
Ancestors
Held theirs
Even
As they prepared
For dark days.

You were born not human

I get the angry
But the fear…
You were their hope
Tell that story!
Never again.
Each child
A blessing.

They left a path.
You gonna cry
cause past
hurts?
-somedays-

You gonna
Disappear
Cause they find
More convenient?

Gotta hold that space
Silence
A teaching
A beauty
A truth
You hold
Not a weapon
Or forgetting

Cause we welcome
All freaks
We all broken
Born “Wrong”
Too much
Too little
But hope
Got a way

We take turns holding on.

That’s my favorite hope

Pehiw 2022

Overcome by impermanent impertinence

“I had one of those dreams – you were a three headed woman” Boy and Bear

I had one of those dreams
Each stain
Crack
Concrete
Tear
Bodies
Held out of time
A gallery of personal delights
Who needs no museums
Crow curates
Voices truth
Sage cradles
Mind
Spirit
Body
Overcome by impermanent impertinence
Wonder
We will cradle
Each of those heads
Make the braids tight
Adorn each ear
A beaded Sistine chapel
You
Are art
You are a dream
You are healing

Pehiw W 2022

Market delights

If the market is so great
An invisible
Perfect
Mathematical hand
Shoulda given
A solution
To those
Black
Brown
Othered bodies
Where is our “miracle cure”?
Our lotions
Potions
And other market delights?
You offered us
Wellness
Resilience
Health of the mental
Why no interest in a world
Where our bodies
Aren’t war zones?
Where we have energy
To care
For family
For communities
For all our relations?

Pehiw 2022

Languages of hope

In your words*
Flanked by Ministers
Prime
Or otherwise
A news conference
Hardly ripples
I saw the future
I saw truth
I saw leader
They read speeches
Made by others
You spoke
Truths
Met our eyes
Ancestors
Fed your words
More now I am hungry
More
Not to gorge
Amazon
Youtube
Netflix
But possibility
Real change
To raise up
Leaders
Who meet our eyes
And feed our languages of hope

Pehiw 2022
*Nathan Obid

Voice sharpened by mountains

Why do I hunger to write a phrase that’s new
To unlock the secrets of ancients
To trail my tongue across the landscape
My voice sharpened by mountains
My mind alive with oceans
My heart powered by celestial wonders?
Let us go together!
Let us follow the guidance of the mothers
Of clans
And lands
And skies
Let’s birth a new generation of wonder and wisdom
Let us hunger no more
And feast on abundance

Pehiw – Wandering 2022

Wet brown Sugar

Shame
Softens me
Like wet brown sugar
Wicked West Witch
I dissolve
Ants rush
Divide
Conquer
Spread thin
This shame
Is magnificent
Stained glass glory
Adorn some old cathedral
Warm light
On sinner’s heads
A pyramid scheme
Can never get out of
SIN
A bookie knows you well
A good upsell
Come now brother
Thunder
Clap your wings
Shatter
Every window
Return me to sand
To shards
Use your wings
To send a piece
To every corner
Beyond the starts
Down to the deep ones
Let me learn the old ways
Spend a life with spider
Travel every root
Learn every petal
To come anew

Pehiw Wandering 2022

Grey Man

Grey man
Taught me to write
With the tight focus
Of someone
Familiar with poor
Who never forgets
Saves – reuses.
We share remembrance
Of meat/flesh
Stretched far with stale bread
The times
There were no seconds
Never hungry
We still chase full
My wealth
A bag of lentils
A just in case
I played food bank
Helped each dolly
Teddy
Precarious lot
Poor labor market outcomes
Pack a bag of food
The greatest SHAME
This year
We received
Christmas hamper
Cause
We thought we hid poor better
The foods
All foreign
Each one tasted like pity
That recession touched us in bad ways
That basket made us poor
More than any hungry bellies
It turned us into other
Erasing
All the knowledge
Of all the Kookums making do

 

Pehiw Wandering 2022

Softhard

Seer say
Softhard
More alike warriors
Enrobed
In Grandfather sun,
Learn more
As strength
Learns in strength
There is no honor
To battle broken.

Pehiw – Wandering 2022

Board the Train

Let’s make degenerate art
Make love across time/space
You afraid to leave your house
Me
I don’t want to leave either
This moment
A tragically hip/elbow ache
Quebec like referendum like passion

Didn’t know
The best stories
Prophesies
Pale skin across brown
Lips to work in new ways
You became a first.
Gotta work my tongue
Teach it new ways

4am truths
Couldn’t work smarter…

Degenerate art
You bade us
Board the train*
You brought us to Temple
Sacred space
Entreating us
Remember
Feel
Smell

Hear how easy the lies lie
[degenerates – a decay of something better
savage – we never “progressed”]

We use those same hues
Keys
Empty places
To make new worlds
Where
Death camps/schools/picnics
Stories told over new wampum
Past
Pre/post to be
Our nakedness
No longer a shame.

Pehiw – Wandering 2022

*To escape, to death, to knowledge
To Otto Lowie

Not a dimensional rogue

You take me up
Lead me on a winding road
My ears tremble to climb
Then release
Mundanity
I am (m)(f)other
Not a dimensional rogue
Off to sup
On the emotional detritus
Of times and peoples long gone
Yet to come
Too rich a dish for everyday

Pehiw – Wandering 2022

Kistâpawatâw (S/he washes clothing)

Our wrangler arrived
A controversial purchase
To ever hunger
For white curved perfection
Made broken
To feed corporate gluttons?
Or a tool
We can understand and repair?

I like the laundry now
Each clothe a world
Not a “load”
I see the water grey
Still good for green
A lunchtime moment
A ceremony
A concert
A learning

I listen
To all those ladies
On all those rivers
Over melted snow
Washing letters*
Saving lives
Teaching young ones
Who turned tools
Into music**
Your work into community
Your labour into gift
Our GDP
“too advanced” to measure.

Pehiw – Wandering 2022

*There is a story of my Great –great grandmother Eleanor Garneau washing the letter from Riel as the police came to look for evidence to arrest the men of the community.

** My grandmother Mary Dale played the washboard in her jug band.