Thursday, February 12, 2026

Starlight Tours


 (For all the MMIW&M in Canada and the U.S.)


Here down south 

and nearly everywhere else

hatred has endured 

and my brothers up north

got the starlight tours


and it'll be a cold day in hell

when justice is served

as the sky collects more stars

from all of the missing and murdered

--my brothers and sisters


Just cruise down 

the highway of tears

with your window down

and you'll hear their sounds

you'll see the signs

of how many disappeared


Our only crime 

--hitch-hiking while brown

being a woman and brown

being a young native in a white town

like Saskatoon

and pretty soon

it became clear

that we are hated by the police, 

by the RCMP

How often I pray it doesn't happen

To my family, or friends,

Or even to me


It is a fear 

Every native lives through

I imagine all those poor souls

walking, shivering, thru the cold

looking towards the city lights 

Gleaming with hope


Some are frozen in time

Some were found

Like my nephew

Who we thought left town

His body discovered 

But the cause left unknown

He joined the ancestors in the sky

After we buried his bones

This we know for sure 

Hope was in their eyes

as they walked towards the skyline

on those starlight tours












Friday, January 09, 2026

Where Did You Go To Die

(For Baby Matt)

 

 Where do we go to die?

like a dog who knows its 

days are numbered

Did you walk towards the sunset?

what were the last words you muttered?

 

I ask myself these questions 

over and over

because the end of you

was not imaginable

I thought maybe he's gone to a city

like Kerouac or Cassidy

 

Off to find yourself

old man who wanted to live off the land

Maybe a hermit, always a wanderer

but I thought no, he would never leave sister

or me, or mother

And then I felt this dread knowing

you became one of the missing, the murdered.

 

my toksa, my boy

where did you go to die?

what took you from the future, the hope 

I used to see in your eyes?

I look for you still in the horizon,

in sunsets and risings

But just tell me where do you go to die?

I'll head there too

and maybe..you'll be there waiting