Taught ma kid bout the interest rates

Taught ma kid
Bout the interest rates
Of men in suits
Playing games of chance
Trying on futures
- Yours and mine -
For bigger house
Thinner wives
Who play the curve*
Like a slip and slide
Who juggles balance books
An intricate
Ballet
Even as fire
Consumes the stage
Audience chokes
No applause-
Too audacious
Performance art
it leaves us gasping.
Taught my kid
Correlation
Is not causation
Bout folks playing
R2
Con-fi-dence
Peer review
A trip tease
Shame
With no ending
Fake or real
All is artifice
Keep the lights low
Don’t want black and white
Ready for a rainbow
Truths
Encrusted in place
In communities of care
And the land beneath your feet.

NanaBjörn Preparing 2022
*Phillips curve

Strange geometries

Cat lets me
Writing desk
In return for soft touches

She don’t give a damn
Picket fence bourgeois values
Clever a/i(lussions)
Ivory tower cred

She bears witness
To the afternoon jewels
Dads with babies
Suspiciously unworshipful canines
Forgetful fellows
Ever happy for the daily updates

I got no “community” to return to
But I got the tools to make new ones
Tattooed with plans
By old ones
Like a puzzle

We gotta get together
Before we can see the image
Forget raising barns
Its time to raise people

Alone-(a)lie

Cause all those strange geometries
That make you
Have a counterpart
And a wholeness

Pehiw 2022

The sunrises of we

This reclaiming
Becoming

Is not

About what

I put on my body

Except the medicines
Feathers in hands

We work circle
Don’t be fooled

Our warriors
Walk many paths
Don many vestments

So let’s be kind

My becoming
Part bureaucrat
Service of the civil

Part gangster

Cause
Anger
Shame
Reclaim
Comes in many hues
Yours
Another
Color
To add to the sunrises of we.

Pehiw 2022

NanaBjörn

Tattoo a lie
Skin marked
Permanent.
Stories live
Dance
Transform

New story
Layers
Becoming

I gave paskomosis* wings
Story needs hope

I gave paskmosis pupil
Story needs soul

I give paskomosis shadow
Hope to leads a line of betrayal

A still motion story
Stitched in raw wounded skin

Pehiw 2022
*Buffalo in Cree

Existential excoriation

Existential excoriation
Aint got plans like Icarus
Hubris keeps me low
Antidote?
Shadows in our blood.

“Used to want to be important”*
But I want better more
Lots of this scared me
Roots were dry
Not dead
Just dormant
Everything is awkward
Learning
Aint got the knack just yet
Just keep saying yes
Fill my ears

Fire
Etches destruction deep
Impulse
Hide
Distract
Downplay

But healed scar
Says hope
Speaks
Nokimos** was here

Pehiw 2022

*Gang of Youths - Unison
**Grandmother/Elder in Anishnabek

New names

What can I call you
Hard men
With soft centers?
Your command
Over anger
Fascinates me
You truths
Part mine

10,000 hours
I thought
I wrote
I prepared

“Make the money-don’t let the money make you – change the game-don’t let the game change you.”*
“All my people stay true.”

All those grey spaces
You filled me
Each Briefing Note
A rhythm, rap
Fueled by an anger
Too new to name

This morning
Your name appears

NanaBjörn

A little bit Nanabush
A little bit bear
A little bit Nana
Who taught me letters
A little bit Métis
Who taught me angry
Braided with wisdom
Strategy
And knowledge
Can be embraced and not destroy

Pehiw W2022
*From “Make the Money” Mackelmore/Ryan Lewis Album “Heist” 2012

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