i hear a song in me. i hear angels in me.
weren’t they first angels?
it became like humans, many divisions
and titles. the trapeze is fraught, we sense overload, the trapeze has broken.
welkin dying, always more dying, we
celebrate the dead. oh Wounded Wing, nibbling kernels, or taking Wounded Knee.
the vacancy is the cutting, the
emptiness is the loneliness, each adjective is seeking approval—in art, in
mind, in literature.
feuds between tribes. welts in flesh.
never as seen in that soul.
the corn in the fields, aside cabbages,
next to carrots; so soft a countenance, assigned humility, so indecent to
assume a death made honorable for warriors—nevertheless, we must begin to make
assessments, notations, giving creed to the lone soldier.
i hear a song in me. i hear demons in me.
weren’t they first angels? something familiar is repeating its nature.
we seek each other’s differences, one
made eternal, one made emotional, another is intellectual—a problem solver,
driven, laughing in good humor—the waves as washers, into weaving, aside a jutting
cliff.
water crashing against rock, rock succumbing
to insistence, no one quite knows this as does the Native American. inside of
firewater, inside of missionaries, inside of good faith; as colonized souls of
color, gathering nobility, trying to adjust—near into a habitation.
the past follows, catching into itself—we
met our minds aside a drumbeat; major feelings, to have learned to love others,
to have come to accept alienation;
exonerating others, while they still pursue,
the pain can’t out-measure the injustice;
as prejudice souls, siding with
goodness, afield, boxing an inner desertion.
i have adored dying, majored in living,
each day taking up the Cross.
maybe a hypocrite. maybe a decent soul.
maybe more a confused person
—hoping the world is as perceived—
needing lofty cushion. the blows of
interior sunshine. the slime in forgiveness.
