Daily Archives: December 13, 2012

Cultural Anthropology

If you laid out
upon a table
all the things
you think I need
as an Indian

(bow, arrows, whiskey,
direct psychic hotline to the trees,
etc.
etc.)

I’d be at a loss

as to what I should do
except

I could handle the knife pretty well
because my dad taught me all about that

He learned how
from a drill sergeant
in the US Army
(who I’m pretty sure
wasn’t Indian)

once again
I find that I conform
to a stereotype
someone else created

that sick feeling’s knocking
at me again

every time I touch the knife
it starts singing

shave and a haircut

waiting on me to come back with  

two bits


Sitting Around

Mostly, people are sitting around waiting for it…It’s not going to be like a tsunami you know.  Or a war.

 No one wants to admit that we peaked at Lascaux.  No one wants to admit that we were pretty much at our apex right before the first grain was planted, the first lamb was tamed…that it started to fail with the first surveyor who confidently said “this plot’s yours, this plot’s not.”  

 No one wants to admit that we were OK about the God thing right up to the moment we shook God loose from a particular geography, the one outside the hut door.  Get up every morning, yawn, stretch…hello, God.  Turn another direction, there’s another God.  Say hi to that one, too.  It kept them small.

 No one wants to admit we knew something back then we don’t know now, and we don’t even know what it is that we knew.   

 I have some friends — oh, I cannot call them that as it’s untrue now and will be even more so after this — there are people I know  who are activists.  

 They think they’re doing something.  They think…I like them because they move now that everyone’s mostly sitting.   But do they do what’s needed?  No one can do what’s needed now.  Not on anything but a small scale, no matter how grandly they practice.  

 Because when it comes, it won’t be much different than it is now — a slew of abandoned houses, a lot of rootless people.  They’ll leave because their wallets betrayed them; they’ll leave looking for work; they’ll leave looking for food.  And the lawns will recall their heritage and swallow houses, making jungly noises…

 We don’t know what we’ve lost;

 we peaked at Lascaux;

 all those hunter-gatherers knew it;

 we sit waiting for what’s coming;

 we ought to be moving though it won’t come as tsunami or war, not at first…

No. It will be as it is now. 


Travel

I am walking to a far country
with stones in both shoes.

People say I’m an emigrant or an immigrant, 
depending on where they are standing.
There are those among them who wish to know
why I don’t stop and remove the stones,
and others who don’t care if I ever do.

As everything I’ve described is imaginary
but real as well, I’m told I should turn my attention
to the answers.

The country I am leaving? What name should it be called?
The destination?  Should it be revealed at all?
The stones? Does it matter if they are large or small? 
Should I stop and take them out or learn to suffer well?

See?
The journey’s now thoroughly interrupted
with this over-fastidious attention.

If you expect every traveler
to know these things,
how will travel ever again
be worthy of our time?