poem written while listening to a news documentary on the lakotah devastations of 1862

i'm listening to an MPR story on the
dakotah wars of 1862
the piece about general sibley
and his bitterness in regard to

the native warriors
the native warriors who had had enough
who knew this wasn't to be a  fair game

settlers died
the dominance of the people was nothing
to the anger exacerbated war

big guns came in
a bounty was called
for scalps

little crow was a smart man
but he was not going to give up his hunting land

 lakotah men believed sibley's lies
this was a mistake and the leaders chuckled
along the way
the way of tears
 they were kept in a concentration camp says
the smart sounding young lady
until they managed to get to
crow creek
which was the geographical center of desolation

the lakotah spread out
they started to die
there was a plan for extermination
and it was carried
out

almost

gwen westerman and the wind

blue earth river

the men turned themselves in
it was fate
a terrible deliberate fate
that was certainly conceived ahead of time

lincoln could do little
camp lincoln so nicknamed
is still a place of reservation
a geographical point
named sibley park

wipe out the warriors
spare no murderous way

the hanging was inevitable
the anger was stinking in the air
the hateful fearful

transcript gleanings

38 dakotah names
38 to shame them
38 to reference the civilization of europe

the men chanted together before they fell

tornadoes speak more than words

still only a ride could heal the old wound
still we're devasted for all time
still the most horrendous miscarriage of justice
 in modern memory
still the complex misunderstandings of the Metis

why we're doomed
but go on walking each day
is beyond me

we smell old dust in the wind







.

gratitude effusive

from a found found poem

el rucio's dream

would i be one to carry so valiantly
up from  the river depths of an earthy glimmering canyon
i to labour up up
to be so knighted to be so squired to be so honored
to carry the burden of word on my haunches

mailed by a mule at

the bottom
of the
grand canyon

phantom ranch
the ranch that may or may not exist
the ranch that may harbour monsters
for all we know

this drudgery would not be worth it
if i did not know that valuable words
are on my back

it is a good thing i can sleep a little while  i walk
a trick not even the cowpoke leading this line up the mountain
understands
 though he looks to be sleeping almost all the time

i know these words are destined to land in the mind
in the eyes in the heart of one who isn't even always sure
he is waiting for such kindness

and so the world turns
so my hoof clicks and clomps on stone
so i alone am called to carry

words so weighted
as to strain my haunches

yet i strive upward with this load
upward to the rim
and i will afford there
the postal system to do its duty
and for my part i will return
and return and return
 like a mule lost in an endless dream
and hold out the vague but important hope
that these words will indeed
find their way
to the wretched and destitute
yet noble knight errant
who will be humbled to no end
with such brilliant entreaty
from one so fair

ah
if life were everyday this sweet

tragedy in the first person

CADOTTE, Joseph, 26, Fort Benton, 1895-12-27, MONT06-36, 1896-01-10.
Cadotte's Last Statement
Story of his life and how he came to be bad.
Joseph Cadotte, the young half-breed who killed Oliver Richards last June at the Henault ranch on the Teton and who was hung for the crime at Fort Benton on Dec. 27, [1895] made a written statement the night before he was hung.
Cadotte was born in Choteau country some 26 years ago.
His father was a Red River half-breed and his mother a Piegan woman. Both died when Cadotte was quite young and for 15 years the youngster lived with the Indians. Later, he came amongst the whites, went to school and learned to read and then drifted out for himself, forgetting the good things and retaining the bad until too late.
Following is his statement written by himself and in his half Indian style.

It is dated at “Fort Benton, in the Choteau county jail, Dec. 21, 1895:

It is only a few days between me and the grave.
I sincerely hope public will have deep sympathy
 toward me and my poor victim.
I humbly beg all who may have a chance to read this statement,
I asked the public to believe me, I am telling an honest truth.
 I have no doubt there is considerable man have prejudice against me.
I do not blame nobody for having hard feelings towards me.
Every one knows my crime which I am about to pay my life
     is beyond pardon.
But I did not committed my crime over a girl.
I was not jealous of “Oliver Richards.”
The reason we got into trouble
he want to take everything I had away from me.
I was doing my best to prevent him from carrying out his intentions,
which I fail at every point. Of course it made me to get angry at him.
I warn him before all his own folks. Here is what I said,
“Oliver if you compel me to fight you,
remember you shall never get best of me.”
We had two separate quarrels first one I made him put up his knife away,
which he was intend to use on me,   at point of my rifle.
Second one put climax to our fate.
“Now I hope the public will believe me
and not to blame poor 'Miss Mary Henault.'
I swear to god she is not cause of it.
She had nothing to do with the trouble in any shape or form that I know.
'Oliver Richards' and myself are to blame for everything
and no one on the outside is to blame.
“Now I have you all the cause of our trouble.
I hope the public will believe me.
This is not the first time I got into trouble of this kind.
I know when everybody hears of my past life
    they will have a sympathy towards me.
I have lead rough life in my time on this world.
My father and mother both died when I was young.
I did not remember of ever seen them.
 I was with the Indians in my early childhood.
There I was teach by those savages to be brave and fear nothing.
And when I come among the whites
everything I had learn ever since I could remember
it was all reversed.
I went to school in Benton and other places.
“When a little fellow
I leave my people and started out into the broad world all alone,
 no one to guide me.
Every temptation was in my way, but I never see nothing.
I thought I was happy.
“I was on the Roundup and many other places.
 I was among the roughest class of white men,
 and had follow there many wicked ways.
No one to tell me I was doing wrong.
I never was any place where I could learn anything good.
I would get into trouble very often fighting with some one
and get punish for it every time,
and when I began to see the ways of the world it was too late.
I have gone too far to improve.
I have never forgot the lessons I received from the red mans when a child,
and take it on general principal I was not afraid of anything.
I would dare anything others are afraid of,
but never thought time would come I would have to face a doom
which requires every nerve I was trained from a child.
But my main support is Rev. Father Follette,
to help me to bear my misfortune.

“Now I ask the public to study my past life,
and to forgive me,
and I advice my friends not to follow my example,
and I bid them all farewell.
I deserve my fate.
I feel as if I was paying a great and burdensome debt.
I am relieved.
 I shall die a good Christian.

Respectfully Yours, Joseph Cadotte. Montanian Jan. 10, 1896.

momentos nuevos

it may be the way i see the world
my perceptions are no doubt at times skewed
even i acknowledge some startling intellectual gaps and weakness
in my person

human only human

and i'd like to wax poetic but the topic is so prosaic so as to defy verse or lyric impulse

along with arrows
the yellow painted markers at every significant turn
on the streets on the telephone poles on the stone fences
on the corners of walls

quite another trail marker appeared
and my most startling awareness of being nearly lost
was the recognition that i no longer could see
the tell-tale indicators of true traildom

now to what exactly might i be alluding?

in the course of my coming to terms with
expressing this most curious observation
i only wish to state that it indicates something
amounting to a scientific observation
a statement of bold unadulterated fact

and it has to do with an essential but a sort of
private and sensorily unpleasant human physical necessity
bathroom stuff

at one significant level and i wish to state this
in this particular way for i know no other way to state it
that the camino is littered with white blotches of toilet paper
there
OK i said it i wrote it
i mean it i don't think i'm overreacting
 i think what i saw was real
mile after mile section after section
oftentime for miles at a time with relentless consistency
white bits of toilet paper
left to mark the side of the road where a someone
 i can't say who
stopped to do the bathroom do do or tinckle winckle shuffle
and little white mounds of toilet paper were everywhere
sometimes spread out in the brush
but usually damply and mushily sitting there with all the certainty of
territory markers

now i'm sure men just stop and go along the trail all the time
and it takes nothing to do that just a moment and a shake
but the girls do a wipe thing and maybe some of it is
snot cloths that people throw
but anyway
this was meant to be a poem about the white markers
that mark the sacred trail to santiago compostela

twice along the trail i inadvertantly stepped in
human and/or canine shit
i suppose when a person walks for a long ways
he's bound to step in some shit sooner or later

but i was very cognizant of the white splotches of toilet paper
marking the way
as consistent and as trustworthy as the yellow arrows

i tried to be careful and
go aways off the trail if i needed to take a humanphysical relief break
but i take it as a consequence of a mindset that
had some serious mileage to make or had imposed
the pressure of time upon the phenomenon of walking the camino

anyway
the way is lined with garbage
and human excresences

just so you're forwarned
should you dare to walk

the way

tentative return

o blog medium of anonymous bearing
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