my poverty

growing up,
i felt like i had a place to run.
even if, it was full of violence,
alcoholism and more domestic violence
than could fit in a years worth of cops shows

but at my grandmas
there were doorknobs with no locks
a frig with an endless supply of commodity cheese
unleashed animals to play with
an unfenced yard that only ended
when i was too tired to walk

i loved how we lived back then
in a one room house
not a one bedroom
but a house that was all of one room
a connected kitchen
and a bathroom that was so cold
it might as well been
and outhouse

i miss the wood stove
the cold morning
i miss hearing my parents make love
the sounds that made me feel loved too
the uniqueness of the sounds of nine sleeping people

i was never ashamed or aware of the awkwardness
of being thirteen and still sharing a bed with my three sisters

i miss the games we played
with the static of the blankets
mostly used hospital blankets
and wool itchy green ones
that i later found the comfort in
while i visited several institutions
because they reminded me of better times

mostly i miss my poverty
the way we lived
was beautiful
and i should thank
this reservation
this united states
for the exclusion
the placement
and colonization
and outright forgetting
us indigenous people
forcing family ties
to become tightened knots
that i have fastened
my own life to

but now we got this casino
that sounds like a six letter cuss word
or even our last breath
and we thought was for the children
and their future
but it’s gone
all the reasons
all the money
all gone

now we got big buildings
full of people losing their social security checks
and their retirement funds
including my grandparents

and we got political policies that now controls everyone
everything and ever aspect of our lives
we have been fooled
that we are some how sovereign
free to make rules and change the course of our slavery
because we are now
our own slave owners
we wield the whip
that scores the lines of oppression

and we wonder what has happen to  our children
when we have a rising drug problem
to  promote the original alcohol problem
domestic violence and child abuse

now we got kids dropping out of college
to come work at a casino
get money now
get stupid quick

and be a happy little consumer
who does this all benefit?
i don’t know
not me
not us
not our children

and no one reads any more
we don’t read the paper
we don’t read the books
we don’t read the poetry

or the signs in the sun and moon
or the signs in the tears
that our children shed
when alcohol lies them down
in early graves
and the drugs take away
all proper judgment
then we see the signs
of our failure to see
in their dilated eyes

what are we doing anymore
to get scholarships
for school
becomes a political ploy
to just get more money
higher more people
to run the machine
to process the dead minds
of people we were
never meant to be

and now we have been taught to be
money hungry selfish dream killers
taking everything in our reach
and we have lost it all
to gangsters from chicago
crime families
while our families
still starve for educations
they will likely piss away

gun-toting indians is what we have become
gangsters in  a place that use to be sacred
because we are hiding
out of fear of one another
not guns for hunting
for providing
but for death

hunting each others fears
and using them
to kill all the dreams we had
because we have stolen from our people
taken all the trust
and did it like our souls
and sold out to more television dreams
that we think we need

learning all that bullshit from a box
that sits in my living room and my bedroom
and tells me that i need to buy new cloths
buy new dreams
that match like socks
to everyone else’s
and my poverty is lost
and all i want is my poverty
and i can’t even have that

i have been pushed into a corner
no endings
no edges to hold on to
just darkness to get lost in

where i hide and hold my own pistol
even the fifteen mandatory years
the federal prison holds for me
is not enough for me to let go of my guns

to let go and be shot down
at some massacre that we all carry in our hearts
because i’m just a victim trying to make sense
of my situation and make myself an explanation

why my freedom is worth so little
and why the heart in me wants cold steel in my hand
to rise and point at criminals of this place
and let loose the only justice at hand
taking only liars and thieves

to lie with the dead they have left
the dead lives souls and dreams
of my people
of their people
that they have stolen from
but i chose not to pull this trigger
and fight every last breath of my final life sentence