Aboriginal Warrior Spiritual

[kolemath]

Aboriginal Warrior Spiritual 

War paint on my face like Sitting Bull,
or is it the blood and mud of generations
undone with a trace barely left in my testicles?

My great great grand daddy raped an Indian,
so here I stand what's left of taken land,
a half breed, that's me, progeny
of a demon that can get it up hatefully.

I can still hear him whispering in Mammy's ear,
"I could fucking kill you if you dare. Try
to resist.  Try to
escape."
The voice is still there; it persists, can't get away.

So I burn my whole soul with fire water
to flush out the voice of culture slaughter.
That's the excuse, no other reason to do it,
the only way I know to cope through it.

Sing warrior music,
the culture of sound,
Listen to Red Cloud
and you will find beyond
the eyes of the lies 
that marginal people are here, haven't died.
That's why we have to stay alive.
Grand daddy tries to convince me otherwise,
his voice in me alive.

[dukealien]

Interestingly ambivalent, or so I read it.  (Starting out, the title reference to aboriginals and the site's association with the Australian region had me trying to fit it into Australian aborigines or Maori, but by the end  all that lacked to make the subject positively the people we're now to call Native Americans was reference to casinos.)

As such it seems to be a straightforward recitation of the white man's sins and aboriginals' resentment... until those two or more little hooks about drink and (at the very end) motivation insert doubts into that narrative.  Very nicely done.  (And if those hooks were meant, instead, to be further effects of the old sins, without questioning the motives and actions of their present-day victims, the work admits other interpretations.  Which is great.)

A good read.  Thanks!

[kolemath]

thanks for the read, duke! your comments take to poem to a place i hadn't considered; it's all about your perspective..

i thought this one would be too weird for some people; maybe it is..