Ka'wahse (audio poem) feat. Duane Howard

Flute: Duane Howard

Ka'wahse*

wherever it is
i’ll more than likely see you there

i marvel at what is to be found at 2 am
(2:20, technically)

only in poems do dogs bite gently
and we call ourselves poets

sometimes I am taken by the thrill of recognition
of who we are (who the other is)
of what we do (have always done)
traveling light leaving nothing behind
packing up heavy sorrows for when they become useful
forced to understand, that at times,
we may make sense only to ourselves

there is nothing un-real
about an embrace on some half-remembered shore –
words spent high in mountaintops (which of course, you understand,
were once at the bottom of the sea?)

we dance our ridiculous lives beneath the pen
but eventually come clean,
admit these things matter
love things hard to hold onto –
people now distant as the moon, some only an arm’s length away

what will they understand of your footprints upon this ground? –
ashes that were once your bones –
your fingerprints upon their minds –
echoes of your voice in their dreams
when there was so much in the world to make us bleed

will everything you gave be enough?
the sad and beautiful part is that it will have to be

ours is to be transient and grounded at once
rooted in something no one can say

i say:
let those without black hair fret and strut
their final hour upon the stage, their idiot’s tale

which is simply another way to say:
i’m glad i was an indian

it is crucial to believe in things
like a good song,
time spent on that half-forgotten shore,
that somewhere,
we signified something

it is good knowing
that it is a cold distance
from here to the nearest star
but warm between this page
and where these words go


* (Mohawk word, meaning - Where are you going?)

© 2010 Champsteen Publishing

Faces (audio poem)

Duane Howard: Flute


FACES

a part of me died with him
a part of him lives with me
- Eduardo Galeano

Last night I saw you again, cousin, propped against the tree where I found you. Only this time, you weren’t holding a bottle. Instead, iced in your grip was a book. The one I always wanted you to read. I tried prying it from your hand but you wouldn’t let it go. When I woke up I smiled because it occurred to me that you never liked to read, saying life was too short for it. Then I got up and wrote about a storyteller.


-You can always tell when dogs have found someone and when coyotes have. Coyotes, you understand, are not like dogs. Out of fear, a dog will not eat from a discovered carcass for several days. But when he does, it is the stomach first - the delicate organs, I suppose. Next, the buttocks and thighs, then the calves and onward until finally, the gnawed remnants are discovered and eventually placed where they belong. No, they are not like dogs at all. Coyotes begin with the face and often it is all they eat. Maybe they think they can fool us and we won’t recognize the person we are looking for. When you are looking for someone who can’t be found, go out at night and listen. If you are patient you will hear them gather, those coyotes. Then you must go where the yips and barks are. When you get there, you must say nothing and move carefully until everything has been made proper. It’s like hunting.


Yes, we did these things together didn’t we, cousin? – Fracturing our delicate selves with the desperate company of strangers who did things dangerous and beautiful. Didn’t we quarrel and contend with the enemy, determined in the destruction of myth and making our own, sometimes actually making history? Didn’t we leave behind the cages, the scorched earth and fermented dreams, and a kind of slaughter every place we went?

We put you in the frozen ground and Joey cried, “I ain’t got a big brother no more!” I didn’t tell him he was wrong or right because I always doubt the things I’m sure of.

I left too, and went across the mountains. Now I live by the ocean, where the Indians are nice and care what people think of them. You don’t have to know anything out here, you need only appear to. You’d hate it, cousin. But, you’d be glad to know I still break the occasional glass and remain hell-bent on destroying notions. I write it down and read it for us and everyone at home and anybody else who cares to listen.

Tonight, I’ll take some of our favorite into the woods with me and spread a blanket out under a tree somewhere. Maybe I’ll hear coyotes. I’ll tilt my head back and listen for the rush of water and smoke a cigarette for you – that maybe, this is all there is…

this terminal condition.


© 2010 Champsteen Publishing

fuck (audio poem)

Fuck
(or What Happens When Too Much Blood Enters the Alcohol System)

nothing seems to kill me,
no matter how hard i try…

and once again,
all this time there has been winter in my blood

but fuck it!
what i mean to say is:

yeah, i know,
nobody asked me to suffer,
that was my idea
but you have to grant me
that there is something sadly magnificent
about missing people you love
that you never even met

me and all other majestic groove locaters
from villages near and far
have decided it’s last call
down the hatch and bottoms up
this last one’s on you
(and believe me, one way or another, you’ll pay)

i have attacked ships on fire off the shoulder of orion
and at times drank like a pirate
i have blessed virgins in my own way
saw fit to shed them of their baubles
and though i didn’t love `em all
i loved as many of `em as i could

just like ronnie said: be my little baby!

i love her…i just don’t need her

in every dive, flop-house,
gin mill, hootch parlor
and booze can this side of the west pecos
i have been known to experience
the odd momentary lapse
in both judgment and reason

but i too have been known to sit with coyote
and grandma,
we raise our glasses, toast each other
and discuss corporations and bodily functions

blues?
yeah, i got the blues
i got the tombstone blues
and i ain’t never been to no delta
but i know what it is to be chased
by those same insatiable hellhounds

split my head open eight more times
i don’t give a rat’s ass
8 concussions can’t compare to the hangover
of a pint
plus a flap
plus a 26
plus an double
plus an eight ball
plus a 40 pounder
plus blah, blah, blah
plus yadda, yadda, yadda…

i’m the answer with all the questions,
try me

alex, i’ll take who the fuck am I?...for the whole fucken works!

and fuck kerouac, i really am Standing-
On-The-Road,
believe it

(did I hear someone free-associating?)

and, by the way!
that fucken guy didn’t die for my sins
i’m doing that every single day of my life
you’re all just the same old preachers selling the devil,
yourselves and all those other lame concepts
like canada and manifest destiny
and still wrapping yourselves in the strong arms of the union

so i think i’ll hang on to this aching heart
while tasting the liquor on these lips



© 2010 Champsteen Publishing

Honour Song (poem)...

Peace, my friend,
peace

there is no darkness, only not knowing

so pray…and believe

and I think I can see you –
I can see those brown eyes half on their way to heaven
I look with sight more honest
than my eyes deliver
I listen to you, to your songs
(some unchanged in a thousand years)
with something more true
than my ears can hear
Walk with me awhile
with something more real
than the touch of my hand upon your shoulder

Here, together
there is no more turning away
there is no more tearing ourselves in two
If there is any comfort here for you
know that I too am sick with my experience
I marvel at the strange rivers we have crossed
rivers on whose far banks lie forests
where men, women and children are lost
we seek shelter
and someone with that look in their eye
though our hearts may have grown weary
and just a little shy

In another life
I may have brought bridled horses and game –
for you, for your family
and spoken of good things between us and Nations
For a night or two
I might have stayed outside your lodges
with those horses, and waited
sleeping only after you and yours had done so first
perhaps I carried a powerful bundle or shield –
carried them for everyone

Yet today,
we are here, together
Though there may still be an aching sadness –
for those ones crossed over –
they are not gone – they do not sleep
but have awakened from the dream of life
(as spirits live forever)
It is we who stumble
through these stormy visions
chasing phantoms and madness
Must we still decay and wither
and fall each day with our fear, shame and grief? –
our days before this
little more than cold hopes?

Then pray…and believe

The Oldest One remains
Many will change and pass
but there is a light that forever shines
and while Earth’s shadows fly
our hearts will be opened wide

And when I fall –
when I am caught down deep, beyond all reach
I will keep you safe with me, like a warm wind
like a sweet waterfall

When I close my eyes I see you –
you are walking on a bridge
glancing over the mysterious water
there is still a trace of fear
but I can also see that you know
there is something better
yes, you know there are things better
than to live in dark water

And after all this,
when some gentle night descends
when there is, at last, stillness
when you are no longer alone at sea
but close to my heart
I will look to the West
to see a great and glorious red sky – an eternal sky

I will whisper things sacred
like…hear me
like…remember
like…your name,
and I will wonder
if you too can see that same red sky

Audio Poem (Is It Your Blood?...)

(Larry Nicholson)

IS IT YOUR BLOOD?...

in these children
as they lark in the shallow water of the river
oblivious to old words
and so much time

these shiny-haired children at play
some named after you,
some with your eyes
these sons and daughters of darkness and light
carrying our best hopes, vague as they may be
that here, 100 years on
things might be different

to sit and look upon the young at their brilliant best
is to hear echoes of you in their laughter
it is to remember time out of mind
before a cavalcade of others
and their rush for gold – their lust
left so many of the brightest trampled underfoot

Is it your blood?

in dense sagebrush, sun-baked hills
and coursing through steel-head streams
that moves us to demand an accounting of things
to cling to the notions behind words that read:
they might do the square thing by us in the end

some days it takes a kind of strength
to remember (or believe)
that there ever was a day when hearts were warm
when all the country was so much more
than just pieces of land

to sit quiet and listen for the rush of water
is to seek your whispered words
learn your hard lessons
know the quiet victories
of you the peaceful soldiers of nameless nights
many times without place to rest your thoughts

100 years on
we know the tongues of angels and the tongues of men
we ride the ribbon highways
walk the golden valleys
see the endless sky-way
we leave our own impressions
spread across silver sand and diamond desert

we form markers and monuments
so others may know something of the sacred trust
that lies before us all

we find ourselves, at times, in the border towns of despair
asking what it is to regret what you’ve done
when you’ve never had a choice
(forgetting there is only one thing we must do)
thinking that somehow we needed to nurse your wounds
heal your hurts, soothe your aches
losing sight of the fact
that as you surge through these veins
we are your prayers answered

Is it your blood?

that sounds in the windy voice of conscience
that resonates louder and more deeply
with each passing hour
each passing day
each passing life

that reminds us the land is not merely a stage
upon which mountains, rivers and forests are simply props
little places, set pieces, where we play out our human drama

no,
this land lives
surely as i walk and talk and take you with me
some days the best i can do is resist the urge to sit back
and curse being caught between overlapping nightmares

Is it your blood?

that remind us
that children raised to revere this land as the domain of spirits
will not be the same as ones brought up to cut the land –
to tame it

there is no wilderness but what is in the heart
if you know this country as the people do

long, long after there are any voices
to ask these questions
there is just your good blood
coursing throughout

i raise my arms to the night time sky –
the great nation that is the sky
where you glimmer in constellations

where the only darkness is in not knowing
that we are lost…

only in wonder



Vancouver, July 27, 2010


© 2010 Champsteen Publishing