Pandora of Pine Ridge

Pandora of Pine Ridge
has settled in
she has opened her parfleche
that is her skin
she has learned the rez way
and her plagues don't
discriminate
will take you--gay or straight
wrapped in a papoose
and evangelical truths
she'll get through
with the booze
she'll steal the youth


And once its jarred
our earthenware heads
that these epidemics
are traditional-fatal
wrapped around
our family trees
another twisted vehicle
of countless tragedies

For generations
she has come
bestowing old testament gifts
who ever asked for this?
An extended olive branch
---of a missionary bitch?

Oh dear Pandora of Pine Ridge,
was it curiosity
that did us all in the end?
--to be culturally diverse
or maybe it was too perverse
to think we'd fit right in
with the new empire
of foreign titans

For Prometheus
Is doing time served
Do the fire people
Then, still
Get what they were deserved?

Hope is only a drink away.

Prometheus Pt.2

How long must we sizzle
in Zeus's judgement?
a wicked fate predestined
by the U.S. government

Who've resurrected their eastern gods
in statues and monoliths
to show their rule over us
with a heavy head
we bow to all the mt. rushmores
and libertas
it is collosal
the false freedoms
that hang over us

and if we were to resist
do we run the risk of being made
out as terrorists?
for the vulture
of this new Athenian culture
has taken its toll
on our livers
and upon our souls
around here
it's all about
the gods that you know

is the trick on the trickster
--that lovely creator?
for our livers
do not grow back
what Pandora unleashed
will not go back

bound to be forgotten
until the day comes....
oh Zeus,
just bring your son

UPDATE

3 of my poems have been accepted to yellowmedicinereview.com
The poems are:
Prometheus Pt. 1
Minotaur
and Chimera

They will appear in the spring issue 2012
due out any day now.

SOVEREIGN EROTICS

Here's a link to a new anthology I am currently a part of, its an amazing collection-the first of its kind and I am very proud to be a part of it

Minotaur

what bullshit
the government
spewed about us
while licking clean
the land of milk
and honey
and just how many
still worship
that golden calf
we call america
just raise up your flag
new Athenians
you'll never understand
this land
will never be just your land

for centuries
they've scoffed
and blew smoke
up their own asses
telling themselves
that we were the heathen ones
the savage in his loincloth
making a Minotaur
out of us

and they still know
how to maneuver well
in their labyrinth of lies
in this land of cow shit
attracting
the lord of the flies

there is a truth in fear
you've just got to know how
to shape it
you can manifest a destiny
you've just got to know
how to rape it

will we ever be able
to separate
the myth from the bullshit
O America,
Pasiphae,
--will you love your mixed blood
or kill it?

UPDATE


My poem Kid Icarus has been picked up
for an as yet to be titled anthology
due out sometime this year.

an afterthought

i am a pharaoh
painted on a casket face
and i dare not crack a smile
for if i do all of the colors
would bleed
and that would be the end
of pretty little stoic me
not much remains
behind my garments
you can open my mouth and see
there is no mention of you
and what was sacred
is shriveled up
or embalmed in canopic jars
waiting to be ransacked
it is just me in my apt now
the heiroglyphs
go unnoticed
--left to the afterlife with my cat
the other was looted
thought of as some kind of valuable
though nothing is eternal
just remnants of a time lost
are wrapped up loosely in me
of something african
or perhaps asian
--an old mystery that cares not
to speak of itself
but you would not find me special anyway
because my resting place
has not gone untouched
vandalised
several times
no more diamond-encrusted shine
behind my eyes
no sapphires ignite your interest
no gold-plated chest
just a whole lot of emptiness
and when you find i have
gone to ash, to dust
will you think of me/you?
and what we all go back into?

i hope in the next life
i shall never meet you

Here's a good review in Rapid City Journal
that I was interviewed for
Shedding Skins Review in RCJ

Janus

why not shut my eyes up on me
god of gates and doors?
with a stinging wince
i cannot bear witness
to my life anymore
---to any true meaning
i have shut down
at thirty
but am somewhere past fifty
now it seems i can't
even have a simple rage
the pheonix flew
but walked back to the cage
my mind falls like feathers
i pop a pill
---one good idea,
perhaps two
manages to permeate
through the gilded lids
"not good enough"
some demigods say
wants more purity
wants the removal of foreskin
even the oracle lies to me
---says just a little more suffering
and you'll be pure prophesy
the furies
the minotaurs
continue to bullshit on
courting the debutantes
who have all dyed their hair blonde
meanwhile Medusa
spits out bad poetry
i see the weight
on atlas's corroded palms
and so i lie
down
with my makeshift
laurel-leaf crown
i have overpleaded
to many gods
amongst the ashtray altars
been reborn in the
beer-drenched waters
and Venus with her clammy hands
was a sugarcoating bitch
i could not bear to stand
Not even Janus could
give me a new beginning
so when he turned away
---it was even more
insulting

DOG DAYS

The days here do not move
they drag on
like a dog pulling its dead legs
and there is simply
nowhere to get to
they just fester and blister
in the fullblown sun
snapping at me
like a wild thing
it's hot sour breath
melts me to sinewy meat
I am overwhelmed
by the manginess
of my poverty
an itch that cannot be scratched
a past that cannot be passed

I long for the days
when my eyes stared glossy
---a simple dull
like a puppies
even the moon picks on me
it's sickly yellow eyes
are daunting
the damn rays from its bald face
weigh on me
like porcupine quills
on a dog's snout
and there is no one around
to pull them out

KID ICARUS


Every Indian has a silver lining
I thought to myself
As I saw a young skin
Trying to fly
through downtown Pine Ridge
Amidst all the dirt clouds
He had speckles of silver paint
Around his mouth
And zeppelins
That were his fingertips
Making zig zags
Across the air
But he was going nowhere
I’d thought had the spray paint
Been gold
He’d be Icarus
Befittingly burnt by the sun

What mangy wings we have
Unable to get off the ground
Without a wicked substance
We are the meek
But we will not inherent a thing
Even if we could rise
With our degenerated bones
Most of us around here know
It’s a no-fly zone
How amazing
Those golden gates must be
But I cannot imagine standing
On a white cloud
Tracking mud into heaven
I would never be let in
Perhaps I should’ve ran to
That Gabriel Indian
Blowing into his plastic
Bag trumpet
Perhaps I should’ve rose up and joined him
It’d be the closest I’d ever get
in the sweet chariot, the sweet vapors
of a heaven

Hello. Just an update.
The new book that I am in along with
three other talented writers can now be preordered
at the following links:
SHEDDING SKINS

Shedding Skins: 4 Sioux Poets

WHITE CLAY PIGEONS

In White Clay, Nebraska
I go shopping with my sister
for groceries
“It’s cheaper here…”
she says,
“…Because no one wants to come here.”

upon checking out
the buzzard lady
scowls at the food stamp card
ready to pick
the stereotypes from our bones
but then she smiles
at my niece’s pretty little face
and leaves us quietly alone

outside the store
a broken wing
Indian
stumbles to our car door
"Cousin, cousin,
can you spare me some change
a quarter, a dime, anything?"

"No I don't have any money"
my sister angrily says,
loading up the groceries
But then the wounded thing
comes around to my end
I quickly fish out
what change I have
and chuck it at him
like bread crumbs

because I know
how close you can come
to flying
out there
in the real white world
I know how easy it is
to spread your wings
to want to soar
golden
and majestic
like the white men
only to crumble
into pieces
when someone shoots
down your dreams

in White Clay
the drunks pick each other up
when one of them
has fallen
So many shattered
So few that matter

*NOT CHINESE

Small towns seem to duplicate themselves
As ignorance shits out ignorance
Making a franchise out of my hell.
“No, I’m not going to steal from your store!”
I want to yell to the old white lady
Eyeing me from behind the counter.
“After all…that’s what your taxes are for.”
And I know that I should let karma do its job,
But I’m not that kind of Indian anyway.
I’m the one with the feather, not the dot.
Who am I though to say what I want to say?
I’m just one of those invisible type of minorities.
At least that’s what I heard,
That’s what I’m called on network TV.

“No Ma’m I’m not Chinese.”
I tell the white waitress working at the Oriental buffet.
“But hand me some chopsticks please…
…and I’ll be on my way.”
They call me Native American now
Because India holds the real Indians.
But it turns out that I’m just what people think I am
But what I am to them doesn’t make any sense.
But no, I’m not Chinese.
Or a Mexican-Redman-crossed the Bering Strait-type of Homo sapien.
But please hand me some chopsticks,
And I’ll play along
--With these know-it-all pricks.

*Originally appeared in
Red Ink Magazine

Coypright JoelWaters 2002.

*JAPANESE GARDENS

In the Japanese gardens
I wait for the H-Bomb
to drop.
I feel like
the little trees
they have cut and trimmed
into a forced bonsai.
As fake as the bamboo
house that I sit in.
Concentrating,
like the camps
the U.S. government
put our people in.
First the Indians,
and then Japanese Americans.
Preserving cultures
by putting up a fence.
Keeping it safe from us
as though we plan
to hara-kiri.
We should be so lucky.

Stone and cement
lanterns
light the way
of a dim view.
As though to say,
“Hiroshima
was not bombed into ash.”
Like the tree
they have planted.
In the garden,
where every culture
is perfectly positioned.
An origami America
that nobody wants to unfold.


*Originally Appeared in EATING FIRE, TASTING BLOOD.
Copyright Thunder's Mouth Press 2006.

*UPDATE*

just got news three more of my poems will be appearing in a journal
called Yellow Medicine Review
put out by Minnesota State University.
it will feature my poems:
BEING WHITE
THE GREAT AMERICAN POW WOW
SUGARWATER.
you can find them all here for a limited time
and after that well, you can check them out in the journal above.

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