A 2019 AFH Manifesto Poem Story Post

I found my voice in a holster

I follow an echo into a river

No mystic venture strips a hull full of holes

This heart is riven by hollow promises

Lost to me.

I moved my people cross a desert

Torments of winter we bore

A dark wind in their fingers, curling and shaken

Roots shearing underground breakin

witnesses

Lost in the sea.

A cravin not literal but actual hunger

my relatives lingering on the edge of camp,

fearful of a Shade flickerin

by a tipi door flap. You hold my hand,

snakes held @ bay by a fire in a shallow pit,

dug out of the blue clay

with a pick and a spade

I know we

Will find our lost keys in the shallows

or the weeds along a walking path

to a car park.

Teeth rotting in my mouth and foot

Swelling too

stinking

a new anguish

With each rising sun. I tell the boy

An eclipse is come,

and a misting of rain will

Wash your sorrows away.

Don’t look fellas,

Don’t look, she ~ no more

can she hear you.

I thought

she would not tarry

by a dock in a gale

Waves as tall as towers

I got a carved stick to beat a hand drum.

I made a good noise like sea lions

en e foyggye fieyelds teh flrrrighten doom

as ‘hey marrcht oos doon.

Scaly bodies are hidden

In the nets of fishers who line the banks

with torches

bangn pots loud, hard w spoons.

Still they are coming, a witherin’ hatred.

Nay carved a shield beyond reckon

No pendant or ward repels the advance

Ne surrender is offered & none will be given

We join arms, lower our heads, keep eyes upon them,

their line is crimson, then black

B’nighted, a shufflin horde right ‘pon oor main,

a clang of metal n flaish shorn asunder,

we stood strung ayn solid buoy

You did wonder ifn I tells it fair and flush, I does

Child, I do.

A massyv m bled out into yon crick

gore soak’d soil round here n here n thyar

everwun like ta cheer, n ta weep

‘neath ay bluddy full woolf moon

bay a dismal niche.

We ladled clain watersh n ate smoke faysh

scorchin flames n dancin merray,

scratching prayers inta tin foil,

reciten poems (pomez), sungs bye d scuore.

Scatterin survivors fled in pickups

Or by train. The choppers hunted stragglers

up ravines n th’ Column.

Seamstresses staid t stitch a history,

but tis us who knows wha happen’d, sure.

You child.

Our axes a bone an hair

Hung on a wall yonder, amidst trophies

Ar foinest heirlooms, b’God, see m?

Woven ena tartan ew don aych marnin

‘s a message you wull carry t kith and tew kin,

A warnin to any who betray their clan folk

Nstead to chase fame, bluster n gin.

Gold, dat sairpnt

it shines n silver,

sparklay emeralds and busy numbers

snaky payper n deeds. Yes

Some will not bow nor borrow, nor sway like reeds.

We plot grain seeds in th’ beds naow dry and dreamy

with harvests watersh we feed m a trickle then

a flood

The shoots swell to the sky

then oor mad prophat he howels out for rivets

to fall n fly upon the beast of arrows

to strip m o all her waste o gran’ fortunes,

to bury m in comeuppance of measures

stoneless, toomluss

To end m for good

to end m wi brute pleasure

Together we waves o warrior human

to sing m away for-e’er n a day

a day a heroes n tales adorned

w smears o rosy paint on oor torn glad visage

Zuccotti [Photo by Chris Borrok (2019)]