RABBIT'S FOOT

Was it your luck
that always brought my mother back to you?
---A wishful thinking?
Or did you use a horseshoe?
I have always tried to make sense of it.
---The habitual offensiveness.
With my black eyes
And an eight ball that always says,
"Sorry, try again."
And the bucktooth
You almost knocked loose.
Because I wouldn't eat the greens
You'd put out for me.
Yellow squash, purple eggplants.
They all made me puke.
But I swallowed it down.
---All the way down for you.
Descendent of a German.
You were my Herr---Furtrapper!
Always caging me
With your white power.
But I was the black cat
That always crossed your path.
The 13 to your 7.
A reminder that I was still
Just an Indian.
You feared me.
Perhaps that is why
You tried to kill me.
You superstitious fool!
For what white angry god will get ahold of me?
What red devil will get ahold of you?
With my gypsy looks
And skin that warns,
If you come near me
You are doomed to misfortune.
So you taught me how to be
A good little christian.
I let the old pagan ways
Get burned at the stake in me.
And like salt
I learned to throw those convictions
Over my shoulder.
Seven years with you
I learned to never break another mirror.
But in this world of symbols
I was an omen.
---The upside down,
The black raven.
A mere foot!
---Of a higher superstition

SUGAR WATER

Sugar water,
The stuff they always put in my bottle
Whenever there wasn’t anymore milk.
I remember shaking my bottle
Like a rattle
To see how empty it was.
And then looking up to full moon faces,
But the smiles were the half moons
That I always searched for.
Nevermind the other drunks.
They are see-thru.
Just their anger appears to us.
A black-outline.
Like Taurus.
I remember the smell
Of their liquor
(The death breath)
---A vapor.
Sometimes they would knock me over.
And I fell like so many other stars.
It is no wonder
That I never died before!
Falling down the basement stairs,
Into a different atmosphere.
Many moons
With many different care givers.
All because of a mom
Who never wanted to be there.
I looked towards the hills for her
And even searched the cosmos,
But all I found were shadows
And a lot of black holes.
Often times people
Just left me in a walker
Or a highchair.
I was Sky Woman’s son.
But when she fell she disappeared.
I had nothing to hold on to.
---Only air.
Then came the nighttime beasts.
Always crashing around
Like thunder.
Throwing bottles of beer
Hunting each other
It is very clear, Orion.
---The presentiment.
A breakdown!
Over six hundred years.
But I was too young
To stop anything.
A starling.
With just a walker.
Maybe they’ll walk it off.
Just a highchair.
Maybe they’ll never reach me there.
But the fowl comments
Always showered from their mouths
And the choking smoke
Would always find me out.
And when the booze turned them sour.
---They’d offer me sugar water.
So that I’d only taste the sweet sweet,
Of their milky ways.
Never mind that they are gone
In the hot sober day.
Just like mom,
Like dad.
I am the son they've never seen,
The son they've never had.

Copyright YellowMedicineReview 2007.

Just got my copy of this fabulous book
that gives me the courage to write again.
It is so beautifully written and put together
It was nice to be a part of it especially with all
those great writers. Those of you who read me out there
should really think about picking this up. It's a great
follow up to GENOCIDE OF THE MIND. Both edited by the amazing
Marijo Moore and both have a poem by little ol' me.
Below is a link i have put in:
Eating Fire, Tasting Blood

YELLOW PRAIRIES

Country music always haunts me.
The twang of the guitar strings
--Takes me to the bad memories
And in the vast lands
Of prairie grass
--The color of pee stains
on a white clay man's pants,
or the dead dreams of an Indian.
This earth is dying.
The Black Hills herself
Is just an old charcoal heart,
Barely surviving
The cardiac arrest
From the fat of her land.
Even the activists just smoke her weed
And say, “peace man.”
I feel like a typical squaw-whore
--I feel like something written
By Louis L'Amour.
I am so co-dependant
On the land of the free.
Home of the brave
--The savage that never wanted me.
I am such a liver failure.
Like a drunk lover
It waits for me there.
With my fat heart
And no backbone.
I am ready for the cirrhosis
--The fate that was always mine
To call my own

COOL NEWS:

Just got word from Adrian Louis
our anthology *as yet to be titled*
just got picked up by a publisher
which will feature several of my poems
including works by Trevino Brings Plenty,
Luke Warm Water, Steve Pacheco, and Adrian himself<--i think.
This is so fucken awesome!

pole dancing

hot summer days and nights
i wait for the time to shine
bright as the aztec sun
whose face shines down upon
me
i am in the spotlight now
no food, no water
just the suffering
that i must adapt to
for all the indian lovers,
the wannabe's
the entire crowd is waiting
for me to be their fool

and i ask of you
is this indian enough?
or do you wanna see
more sioux sioux
peering through the
loin cloth

as i make my way
center stage
i get to the pole
where the whole world
has got a pretty good view
i am ready
to bear all for you

i know how to
whore out my tragedy
i just puff out my chest
and show a little breast
for your eager eyes
to pierce through

as i look at the world
--my audience
i wonder if my moves
are genuine
do i need to lose
a little more land?
i do what i do
--whatever it takes
to be your private indian

but sometimes
i just want to get off the stage
but i'm still stuck to the pole
and i pull and i pull
trying to break free
from your clutching claws
from the images
i just want to break free
what medicine
ties me to this tree?
hanging man
i cannot stand
this
because my skin has been pierced
far too much
i am no one's answers
i am no one's jesus

so i pick up
what remains of me
and i leave the stage
being so tragic
is all the rage
but i break from this circle, jerk
because no one really knows me
no one can possibly know
and so i leave this tourist site
of sundancing, lapdancing
at least until
the next big show

REZ CARS CRASH

seems like all my life
has been just bits and pieces
of junk cars, rez cars
loud and exploding
as they pass me by
like some bad nightmare
i have to open my eyes
and everyone i know
just gives a part of themselves
a junkyard of living
and then they die
without me truly knowing them

seems like everytime
i try to fix up my life
and make it shine
i break down
and i end up
hiding inside
my family's house
where my dreams rust
and I cover it with lies

and I ignore the problems
and they become like those
junk cars
ditched in the river
and like them
i am halfway submerged
in the murky water
of this world's tired womb
abort
breech
and divert
this
contract i have made
with god?
the creator? the spirit world?
i am done
thumbing
down that highway to heaven
that has claimed so many indians

i am just shattered glass
by the side of the road
and i just want to pop
egos
because no indian can suffer
more than me
i am the epitome
of the tragic indian
with a backseat
back trunk
full of baggage
and my therapist
has broken the lock
and i have used
so many wire hangers
trying to scratch
at the afterbirth
because mom
never wanted me
because dad
never claimed me

i am a fetus
exposed
and ready to crash
and jesus
everyone on the rez
is ready to crash
implode and explode
let our deaths be as violent
as our births
and maybe when we hit
head on
we can knock through
the misconception
that we are going
to the white mans' heaven
lord, god, tunkasila(grandfather),
i am tired of stalling
and co-dependently
waiting for a ride
i just want to drive
i just want to drive
and then dive into the ditch and die

INDIAN COUNTRY TODAY:

wow, i made it into Indian Country Today. if it weren't for adrian pointing it out to me i would've never known.ty. it's an essay i wrote last semester for a scholarship but was never made aware they were going to publish it. the bio is a little wrong and the i hate the pic but it's cool to see me somewhere. below is the link.

Joel Waters in Indian Country Today

the remains of me (reworked)

the remains of me
have been scattered
here and there
torn to shreds by enemies
the rest died with a lover
i scattered out like stars
the vast prairie hills
still show my scars
scattered like glass
from a car crash
i pass through the area
like the way
wind blows trash
no fence can hold me
no landfill
i am even on the highways
like roadkill

i remain
with the burial grounds
no scafolds
like the day of old
a time when flesh
rotted away
in the clean light of day
now we must be hidden
like a deep secret
churches hush
gods judge
only the bones still keep it
in these days of archeology
no one
will pick my bones clean
no formaldehyde
no mortuary

i will live in the marrow
in what remains
i will lie down
with ancient bones
and listen to the seasons
and be a brother to the stones
it is here
here will i remain
with those
that will share the grave
and what is left of me
my family
will divide up equally
inside a niece's eyes
or a brother
who shares the same
talented side
so to the maggots
i will go
then the grass
and maybe an antelope
after all
i am just coyote food
but that in itself
is still pretty good

THOUGHTS:
working on my first novel again has brought a wave of memories back to me. it's a fiction piece that i finished years ago about the very first friends i had in my life who meant a lot to me. i finished it in 2001, sent it off to get critiqued and was very disappointed with it. then life got in the way, school, job, falling in love, etc. i shelved it for several years. i just didn't have that excitement and feel for it when i was writing it, at least not until this past new years eve. i was in the town my story takes place in --at the bar celebrating. when i ran into the person my book was soley based on. it was such a shock, i hadn't talked to him in years, but then there we were right at the stroke of midnight talking and drinking together and it was as if the years just melted away, and we were both 15 again causing trouble and just being best friends. i'd seen him in college before and said hi, but he had said he didn't recognize me, so i thought," well, i guess we're not friends anymore." anyway i told him about the novel and said i was writing about him and our adventures and he was actually suprised. he said, "Who am i to be written about?" just the type of thing he'd say. so i gave him the reasons as we tripped down memory lane and oh my god it was so much fun to retell old stories! so he wants to read my book, and now i'm back to writing it and this time i will finish it completely. i have the excitement back and am extremely confident it will be better than ever. we spent the next two days together drinking beer and hanging out, i despise beer but i thought, "what the heck." i'm just glad to have my old friend back.

THOUGHTS:
i have just finished typing up an essay that took me about 40 min. it's for a class i need to finish, but i think it's so good that i'm thinking about sending it to a journal or something. maybe redink or lakota times or something native american. it's about the blatant racism hidden, yet not, in network shows, or rather cartoons. i watch a lot of comedic stuff to improve my standup pieces whenever i host or perform onstage, so i've come across a lot of bullshit that they put on tv all for the sake of a good laugh. the title for my piece is called Hysterical Blindness and all for good reason. my classes are rather boring this semester, but i finally get to read REINVENTING THE ENEMIES LANGUAGE, an anthology edited by the fabulous JOY HARJO. i also get to watch my favorite show the L word. i must admit i used to hate shows like that, but so much drama you've gotta watch. soon when i get the time i will go back and rework my first novel, i have to show it to someone who i really love and adore and who's opinion matters a whole lot, someone who i haven't seen in years...but i'll get to more on that some other day.

UPDATE:

my poetry has always been confessional. i write the things i endured and still endure, and most would say it's rather dark and depressing, but that life sometimes. although i had a rough life, and am still an artist in the bowels of poverty i can't complain. i used to hate living on the reservation. but moving from pine ridge to rosebud, sd isn't all that bad because i've lived in three different states in three years and hell is what you make of it. i stopped a lot of negative things since 2003. i've grown to be more positive in life, and in my dealing with three relatives death, has helped me cope with life better--as weird as that sounds. you can only cry for so long, before you run out of tears. it is not so bad being on the reservation, but i tell you it is a hell of a lot better being away from pine ridge. there's so much drinking and fighitng and rumors of destruction you have to deal with. plus you deal with ignorance everywhere, but these places have helped me deal with the things i must kill. the demons of my past--that i am trying to put to rest. i have finished my final manuscript in poetry, as a way to put an end to some of it. and i tell you it's like throwing a heavy weight off of your shoulders. i am still going to school. i am almost done. one more year at least. one thing's for certain though, i must return to usd in vermillion to graduate, plus i owe them money and they won't release my transcripts. *bleh!* anyway this is an update on my life of writing poetry and stories. more to come again soon. ttfn.