City Indians~

~sometimes it's a hard knock life~

You carve from my moon skin a mellifluous composition

ink crow wings brush the arc of my spine

sienna lips color my pale face with kisses

shaping me with the warm earth of your mouth

 

Once, I tried to worship you, and you said

Ain’t gonna laugh in your face, cause you’re young and the only Indian you had to dream was Jay Silverheels, but get over all that feather headdress and teepee typecasting.  This ain’t a movie, this is our life. Now get over here, pale face woman, and kiss me like you would any man.”

and you drank the reverence out of my mouth

 

Once I whispered ‘Native American’ your way, and you frowned, and said

No, lil ninja chick, I’m a Indian, a reservation Indian, a city Indian,  them new labels don’t change a damn thing, excuse nothing, makes nothing alright.  But you’re a baby and still believe in ideologies, so I forgive you. Just drop all the politically correct trash with me, baby. Today I ain’t no more than your city Indian.

and you laughed, but it had a bite, an edge I would learn

to evade

 

You came calling on your woman

disheveled and high on liquid golds

fallen deep into the concrete and the alloy

beguiled

vulpine

I learned love isn’t always flowers

sometimes it’s delivered in a fist

 

Once I tried to save you, and you said

You’re as crazy and as lost as me, so just live it with me, baby, walk it with me, whatever this is we’re making. Don’t go tryin’ to hide the bottles and I won’t trash your razors. Made for each other, ain’t we?

and you smiled, but the eyes gave everything away

 

Black coffee moments

swirled through obdurate stretches of hazy existence

sometimes it was your big boy hands that broke everything

sometimes it was my indifference to it all

 

Once I tried to bend to your rage, and you said

Go! Leave! Why you stay when I break you?  You like the color of the bruises, girl? The blood and broken bones? This all you ever known?

and you shattered  a fine curve of rib, but weeping all the while

 

I was flowers in a vase of tricolored moods

drowned deep in the sedulous domicile of your skin delights

gilded in your mountains shape

my eclipse

lost in the raven blues of your waterfall hair

 

Once I tried to love you, and you said

You love me like you’d love a broken toy. You love like a girl with nothing to lose.  You lost something a long time ago and you ain’t gonna find it in me. What I lost, I ain’t gonna find it in you. The things we lost, well, they are gone, wichinchala.

and your mood was whimsical, tender

but your fingers like steel around my own

 

Your beauty rolls me like poppy tea

honey mouth full of the sweetest stings

my arch curves with such vapid need

to fit the grooves of all the contours of your bite

and sometimes I will whisper

Bite me not to hard my Eagle, for you’ve filled me with a voracious appetite, no longer so easily appeased.

 

A thousand times I left you in my dreams

slipped your capture

saying

Wastewalake, but I can no longer watch you die.

but only in those dreams

for I knew my fate was buried deep inside your big boy hands

the day I witnessed  what you could have been

standing

on a mesa

at Window Rock

with the sun in your hair

and life in your eyes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

{written in the Summer of 1988}

first publication copyright:2005vssmd/pa inc.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

 

 

excerpt from

 

 

 

 

Author's Note

~life is a series of choices~neither good nor bad~they are what they are~lessons to be learned and hopefully learned well on this crazy little journey called life~

Reviews

[FireWoman]

What amazes me more than anything is that he knew he was broken and damned in this life, and chose to stay the path. Stubborn City Indian... You knew what you knew, and were doubly stubborn.
It was never you he fought, but his past & I think you realized that. Glad you got a glimpse of him on his higher plane. Amazing and sad, hugs.

[MuSe Ampoule]

Absolutely freaking beautiful! Reading this felt like voyeurism, additively so. Fates entwined, broken pieces trying to patch each other but realizing the futility in it. An exquisite piece! Great vocab, great structure, great flow, can't say enough. Thanks so much for sharing!

[ice]

I like this, its raw honesty...the feeling of helplessness, clinging to it, even when someone is trying to help you.....You don't have to be "Indian" to feel and relate to this poem. I like the grit in it....When I speak about the group called "Indians" I say "first nation people"
Namaste
ice

[Geralyn Miller]

Oh, Selene, now I understand.
Yes, life is a journey, not a destination and sometimes the path we take is hard and cruel; if we listen to our higher self we can find our way through. I am glad you listened to your higher self; maybe he will get it right the next life around.

[Pax Analog]

Powerful and beautiful. An earlier measured lucidity of style. Voracious osmosis w/too few cognitive options as to fire flow. Nonetheless root bass mojo hunger -- unsettling, but also an inoculation against tepid banalities. Better to build on a strong bass line than to attempt to rescue crystal castles on a fault line. I mean later, after the wreckages of partiality, whereby one perceives the Buddhic aggregates, the glittering fragments of possibility in the Terran realm of the perpetually half-formed.

By passion we are bound, by passion we are released. When the fire rages in the loins, heart, mind and spirit w/equal intensity and directional application, Crazy Horse lives anew on a higher plateau.

[Crowley]

F**k.......

[Matthew Kult]

Hello Selene,

I tend to find myself giving in to the character that I am
When I come across potent and personal poems. I would
usually say something along the lines of...Ah the sweet
Suffering...How I could be your blah blah blah....

But right now I am not that character, I am nothing more
than a fellow author who has respect for another for shariung
something real. I do applaud you my friend.

Regards,

A.E. (Matthew)

[C]

Oh my kitty....these dark fire-edged glimpses of you open parts of my head never travelled before....

[JelliFyshKissUs]

the most touching work I have ever set my eyes upon. a revealing of painful experiences that have made you undoubtedly you. to read into your soul is a pleasure and pain I gladly experience with you. Thank you for sharing this Seleney.

[Moonflower]

This is by far my favorite piece of yours. This reads slowly, smoothly, the phrases and metaphors capturing those fleeting moments. This was full of tender happiness and bleak, overcoming sorrows. I enjoyed it, beginning to end. Thanks for sharing this.