1. |
Seething
04:06
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When I forget a poem,
I think, I must have lost its purpose
The kindling I’ve used to evoke this emotion
shall not be used for my ego’s circus.
I wish to gift the collection
Of images I have kept captive
Freely
like birds from cages
Or, kids from rezzes
They don’t belong here forever
I want to offer these constellations
In a way that encapsulates
a collective passion
For healing
That I see across all nations
Worldwide
And feel,
Mostly, when I’m barefoot and aligned
When I remember
I. AM. ALIVE.
I don’t read my poetry as often as I need
When I speak, my mouth burns blue with the memories
I still seethe at the sight of old white men with big chests
Loud voices
The unwanted caress
My words are not my weapons but my wings
They help me stay in the melody of my breath
Sing.
A remedy for all I have left.
There is no such thing as authority to me anymore
I have given up my control before
loathed the hope they took as war
Abhorred the torrent of tears
That I harboured
Tore through my scriptures
Like my thoughts take me farther
From the truth
now…
I. AM. HERE.
Like Humpty, Dumpty.
I sway silently
back and forth
Like a blue flame that knows how to finds a home on a torch
Promises I’ve made
tales I’ve sung
Have all come trailing back
Like rez kids,
All. At. Once.
Now, still, I lay awake
Strumming the cache of chords in my mind
Like triggers to the trauma
could have sworn I left behind
I like this song though
It’s the one I know most
I even dream too honestly
The backpack I fall asleep with
Still follows me
Reminding me of the times
I was taught to doubt myself
Then left to find a couch
the rush of finding sanction is still haunting me
I’ve convinced it to believe
I have what it takes
I carry the weight of this disdain silently.
Miming
What’s inside of me
We are here to drift between
The stories
Whispered quietly
Between the rez
The road allowance
The city streets
We are simply an anomaly
Observed as an oddity
Traded as commodity
How peculiar an Indian performance can be
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2. |
Battling the Maker
02:49
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Being is a balancing act
a melting pot of behaviours
Babbling on
In Babylon
like you’re battling the maker
Maybe, straddling hate inside of a mirror.
A manifestation of
The white saviour
Who demands you need a cure
from the three year old imagination
Inner child run rampant
With bountiful fascinations
Whose panache about creation
weaves her armour
excises the wrath of bellowing roars
behind bars
Like boisterous baristas
Belching orders
Breathe.
A truculent defiance
From giants sweltering with their bias
Muddling for an alliance
To the succulent core
You ever act like you enjoy risking your life?
Find an audience
an industry
One for day
One for night
You ever fall in love with the things you are afraid of?
You admire the skill
The will some keep from
Questioning their morality
It’s okay…
Amusement runs deep
Like lingering grief
...your parent’s beliefs.
Birth the need to be performative
To share
To exploit
Such a balancing act
You ever parade your pain freely down main street?
Face beat, masked in drunk
Walk on water
Strut
out of touch
with the made-up world
Have you ever questioned yourself?
Judge your own desire to play pretend
Wing your eyes wider
Make them think that you’re blind
Forget that your mind is plagued by the wise.
You ever dance with Wesakechak?
Tumble over your buoyant heels
After too many bad shots
You ever steal a sweater in the morning?
Lie to yourself
After the fourth day of yearning
Only to make plans with your girlfriends again...
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3. |
Her Anger, My Shrine
02:58
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She’s standing in the foyer
Hard pressed against the door
Small hands clenching
…ready for war
After a morning of screaming
He won’t confess
He's just leaving
Dust settles on his echoes
The pleading
Pitiful.
He’s weeping to make it visual.
I could be in the mirror it's so visceral
She’s 6. He’s 40.
Justifying his actions by believing he is six
How torturing
Grabbing onto my wrists
Now seething.
My silence is his last beating
The birth of rage
Is a child’s vengeance
crashing down
She’s thinking,
“It’s been a few years of this
Now, it's just confusing
Why I covered up so many tears
Training for this abusing”
Her six year old mind sounds like mine
Six feels unworthy
Bad
Dirty
body slumped down
As if she’s the one who's 40
Who will be charged for this crime, when,
Her anger becomes my shrine
An earlier time trailed
Vividly in through her mind
She went visiting,
Down her old timeline
her very own yellow brick road
She goes
To where there is hope
In a three-year old
Walking down that yellow road
Complete
Plastic baby in tow
sometimes, a six year old soul
Transcends out to the street
To find a three year old
Who she is dying to meet
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4. |
The Tree
03:37
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My love waits curiously in the shade beneath the big tree at the playground
yearning to feel the joy of the last monkey bar
Of the fast pursuit to the bottom of the slide
Of a new friend
To swing with
My heart waits in the tree’s shadow, fully-braced wondering what this is supposed to feel like
My love asks my heart,
“Why don’t we just go play?”
Quickly shot back
With a tongue snap
My heart reminds my love
That we are afraid - saying,
“If you want to go so bad
Then GO,
ESCAPE!
Just know you are breaking the last promise
I told you we made.”
My love goes back to hide in my heart.
My heart holds tight to my love
through this guise of keeping it safe
Every breath
it expects
Will erase a little bit of my shame
If I let myself down, at least I know I am to blame
My tears put the flame out again.
But this is my safe place
At least, these are the narratives that I’ve replayed.
It is not enough to be tamed when my heart is wild in its dynasty
My veins pump this blood
Violently
I mistake the dance between
A fear of being seen with the need to be free
For anxiety
-
I make friends with the tree
Gentle in the way that it speaks
A giant like me but so far from a beast
Doesn’t mind my need to breathe
lets me lean here to catch my breath
Gives me air
lets me rest
Gives me shade
shares its depth
Makes me know
It's trying its best
Calms me down
Makes me forget
Who
I am hiding from
Reminds me that it will be here
even if I want to go out and play
It will see me
Slide, and swing
I can look back
And, I’ll be okay
I can make a friend
That friend will have a name
I can tell the tree all about it when I come back again
My heart has a lifeline to learn from this tree
Innate ability to set me free
without judgement
Welcome me back with an invitation to hug
This is all my love is trying to be.
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5. |
Hiding in the Light
03:14
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She’s a glutton for punishment
At least, that’s what the neighbours say
They watch her stride across achievements in a daze
Cry with bereavements at the sight of no change
Nothing is good enough to her
It seems – but what is it then?
She calls herself a bottomless pit
How performative
The perfect candidate for an after-hours
Like a shark
In a school yard
She knows her power
A planted tree
With the promise to flower.
Still, she cowers
Saving her energy for the bigger villains
The ones who tower over her
Like monsters do
Calling her to use
Put the mask back onto the face
Thrust herself into the race
With those who have something to prove
She claimed my ecosystem is my safety net
I bet you wonder if I’ve made it out safely yet
Head down
Well behaved
Obedient
Enslaved
She use to say it’s cuz she likes to share
But I know
That’s fake
Nobody enjoys laying bare
For a stake
Vultures are well aware
What a snack she would make
Her fleeting ways
Are never questioned
The taste of guilt is all she’s known.
Eat without attention.
She hates the way she has to go
A glutton for punishment
She takes herself wherever she goes
No promises
No need
To be confident
The emptiness is heaven sent.
She roams
The road is home.
The wheel that steers
Becomes the pen
She removes the mask of sadness, then
Looks past the paths
That lead to pain
Embrace that life is madness
The black hole
is comforting
doesn’t judge her
For the songs she sings
For all the bags
She pretends are wings
This is not a girl filled with hate
Just a woman with a need
To keep herself safe.
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6. |
There Am I
05:32
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Okay, so, I grab her hand as soon as I see her look down the trail
A moment of curiosity is all the permission I need
We both know that I see what she sees
We don’t need to speak
A slow stepping medley
I pull her
She pulls me
Now we’re doing one of those forced runs
Down the hill
Surprisingly
She doesn’t break free
She can see that I am happy
I make it clear
I’m skipping cheerfully
I can be honest,
She hasn’t looked great lately
Doesn’t make eye contact
You know, one of those
Kinda looks down
Like she’s so interested in her toes
I know where she goes though
And the retreat isn’t much better
She said it’ll be okay
We just gotta keep it together
I’ve wanted to say out loud
What a trap her mind has been
But mostly I can’t tell where
She ends and I begin
We both go on - trawling along
pretending this all makes sense
In this world, we stay crazy
And she thinks it's unforgivable
When she’s angry,
I think she hates me
Like clockwork
So predictable
I’m happy I’m here today though
She was wrong
That’s forgivable.
We’re at a crossroads
And, I like it
Cuz its pivotal
We reach the bottom of the path
To find a river of sludge
Instantly promising to be an alluvial fan
As it once was
With disgust,
She stopped in her tracks.
pulling us way back
as before.
I stare past her
Into the deep green deciduous forest
room to grow
Draped in the divots of a tall sovereign maple
Inextricable
A golden woman
With long curled hair
A serpentine grin
An alluring glare
in illustrious charmeuse
The colour of spruce
In the middle of summer
She was beaming.
And before I knew it
In all my awe
So I was…
… so we were.
We watched her for eternity
So long that the river of sludge
Disappeared
How could this much freedom
Incite this much fear?
We are all here.
My feet made it clear
they had no more demands to move
Just as two soft hands joined with mine
I can tell these hands approve…
No one said a word
We were comforted like daughters
We cried until the river
Was given back her water.
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7. |
Listen to the Water
03:49
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Listening is transformative
A gift,
Surmised from lives that have truly been lived
The quieter you are, the more you can hear
the weaving of elation, destruction and poise
The summation of entire stories found beyond the storytellers’ voice
Listening helps us cut through the noise
Watch as we improvise in waves
With peculiar detail
The art of oration
alive, in curated tales
Creation rarely fails to be interesting
Our subconscious moves us all from myopia
Into the cosmos
Where I am a star
Like you
in flow
Life, bestowed.
Free the ego
It had its show.
The currents I’ve rushed through
Left me entangled
Paddling too hard
In my own triangle
I consigned myself to indigence
For I am indigenous
Holding onto the shackles
Left myself dangled
We each have a song
For our sundry angles
I’ve found new waterways at my feet
When I walked out freely from my cage
Withdrew from the luxury of rage for a change
Succumb to the softest waves
let the river have its way
Trust the flow knows its pace
Movement
A consequence of time
There is no race
Here I go
Into the abyss
I realize my old tools don’t work for this
Again, here I am, playing pretend.
Like a three year old who won’t come back in.
Inspired to live in a way that incites me
To be creative
Asking myself to be poetry
For a Creator who invites me
With all the worries I’ve worn
My masks
My thorns
All of me
As I am
my Zoetry.
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