On writing letters to the mothers of dead sons

In those days
It was all bad dreams
And unrequited clarinet
Imprudent concoctions
Suggesting a commitment to forgetting
More rabid than hope

“Had we but a garret
We could set to rights!”
Potemkin women
Dostoyevsky fellows
Part of me buried
With each son extinguished

That violinist
Owed Paris lights
Accolades and acolytes
Death – ever ecstasy-
Ever alone
Musician
Transforms mud to meadow
Cannon fodder to choir

Plan on forgetting
In the streets
And in the sheets.
What was that line?
“There was three of us this morning, I am the only one this evening”*

And B-A-N-A-L
I covet the dead men’s jam.

Do you know that I’d make you another moon,
If you’d promise me music?
“Play it again Sam”
My tears can salt my glass
The devil’s got the tab
Don’t need no mirror
To tally sins –
Paper tell truths
Too many names to remember
Too many to forget.

NanaBjörn Wandering 2022

*Leonard Cohen “The Partisan” Songs from a Room

Dirge for an Imaginary friend

Wanted
Imaginary friend
Must know self defense
Mine don’t last long
Serial murder
Never me
But I know who destroys
A breakfast titillation
Forgot by noon
But
I remember
How many years gone?
Constitution from new to gay marriage
To Daniels
To now?

Sent away for Free Trade Plan
Cause government a real
Not killable
To teach a lesson

Wanted
Imaginary friend
Ancestors
Kookums
Teachers
Comforts
Unkillable by monsters or politicians

Pehiw W2022

They say...

They say
You were a wicked strategist
Sometimes
I feel you close
When I listen
When it is time to navigate
You whisper
Answers
Nudge me to reach out
Remind me that together we have all we need.

Pehiw 2022

Beautiful bullshit

Beautiful bullshit
Ladies of economics
So proud
To tell your stories
Reap your harvests
Plant again
As you teach us
Tonight
Some beautiful bullshit
Shatter the line
Make a star map
To home
To growth and rest
Your write don’t make me a wrong
We each have a path
“ a possibility”

Pehiw – Wandering 2022
To CA

A Dostoyevsky of ideas

I wanna write
Something new
All the bests
Of all the worlds
A Dostoyevsky of ideas
Like family
All the teachers
Elders

Their names in no database
But we are their bibliographies of blood
They the roots that sustain
Who find deep waters
We don’t need new
Or best
Just well loved favorites
And comforts/challenges
To court us
Seduce us
To make us laugh
Too teach us truths
I wanna write
A remembrance
A voice
From a time
Before lines
or letters
or literatures

Pehiw – Wandering 2022

Policy 101: Syllabus for Abundance

I always knew
There was no page
Big enough
To sate me
When in full hunger

Shoes off
Bandolier on
(to carry 

pens,
music
stories)

The markers
Colors bound to floor
For when the ancestors visit
We need our best
-they aren’t picky –
But protocol needs

Not enough walls
I must remember
To share these times/frenzies
The very land a most skilled
Holder of knowing

There I abundance
Unfettered by pages
Too weak for their job
Markers
Too limited in hue
Walls
Too weak
Too soaked in blood

To hold new
Just born thing.

Pehiw 2022

Much depends On the math you prefer

Letters
Leave me be
What truths remain
To play
On pages?

I have filled every space
Margins

...
Poems
Stretch across
Once untouched domains

The ink runs low,
But there is so much to say

My voice wants to practice
Once a small
Shattered thing
When did you grow so large?

How did we travel
From rooftop*
To Elders
To bears
To all?

How do we become?
Half In-di-an
Half white
Half devil
Métis
An abomination?

Much depends
On the math you prefer
That of men
Or
That of soil.

Pehiw – Wandering 2022