Everybody wants
the Indians to leave

When you go, the sporting set says,
leave us your names
so we can go back to naming
our teams after you (such an honor)

When you go, the hippies say,
leave us the feathers sweat lodges and symbolism
so we can go back to using them
without your nagging

When you go, the liberals say,
leave us the wisdom of how to clean
a dirty environment — oh,
and thanks for the proper dose of guilt 

When you go, the conservatives say,
just go go on
go on and get gone
Leave the casinos and minerals and go

When you go, says the ghost of John Wayne,
take me with you
Everyone’s forgotten both of us 
I’ll be good this time

When you go, says the ghost of Jim Morrison,
don’t fucking leave me here on the highway
just because I made the story up
Do you know what I did for you people?

When you go, say the ghosts of the Pilgrims,
please take all the cardboard crepe paper turkeys
and cutouts of those ridiculous hats and feathers
I think now that we understand mythmaking

that you should have let us starve 

Everybody wants 
the Indians to leave

but not before they learn 
to call themselves “Native-Americans”
so everybody can believe again
in the healing dismissive power
of the hyphen 

An owl at rest.

Among its feathers,
the silence of pre-Conquest
America.

In its flight,
strategic retreat;
in its call,
a charge — 

remember,
the coyotes
in the Worcester hills
once were only found across
the Mississippi,

and now
they are
everywhere.

Red man
sits on fire
in a yellow room.
He burns
from ground up.
Burns up.  Sits
in a fierce flower, a hothouse
flower.  Turns brown then blackens
after red, room browning
all over.  Yellow walls
and windows
pierced with sunlight
turn brown.
Red man cracks in half
and falls over.

Was I there when it happened?

He was watching the news,
I remember that.  Something
about evil plans
and lucky disruptions.

He sat there on fire.

Red man — is this
past or present?
Has this happened and we are
the ashes?

Am I red or is that some trick
of firelight off yellow walls?
Why do I feel
split in two?

But my room had blue walls,
so why do I feel they
were red, yellow, brown,
blackened, rimed
ash-gray?

I was Red Man
until the fire that painted me
swept through.  Was watching the news —

people were burning elsewhere
and he, she I, someone
felt it. Painted by it then;

still painted by fire.

My father gave me
my first knife
when I was six.

A Mescalero man’s
only half a man
without a knife,
he told me then.

I keep a box
with sixty knives in it
under my bed.
That means
I’m thirty Mescalero men,
I guess,
which seems like
it ought to be enough,

but forty-some odd years later
I still don’t feel
like he would believe
I’m any
of them.

I’m the son
of grape wine
and corn beer.
Drunk on heritage,
can’t get sober.

The desert before me
is long, the mountains
hem it in so tightly,
and somewhere beyond,
the sea.  No hope of seeing that
blue in sunlight,
or its steely gray
shining needles under moonlight.
The murderous angel
of my history,
heavy in ink on my back,
wears wings too weak
to carry me there.

Always, the distance
to be traveled
remains the distance
I have traveled,
staggering, sotted
with the weight,

but I do so
knowing
to travel is the only way
to get clean.