Mankato Minnesota 1862 38 Dakota drop
Hearing them
Cry out
Call us in prayer
We’ll return
Pray Dance Sing
Seeking a path to critical refinement I chanced upon a mentor
Antonio
His ink flowing,
Blood from Il Duce’s dungeons
You’re a product of history, he said
Find thyself in its infinite traces Take inventory
Laboriously searching
Ledger in hand
I find myself present in the seedling of an empire
Midnight Manhattan 1463 Refugee Lenape
Women, children, men Limbs hacked
Torsos impaled
Sizzling screaming pyres Light up the night
“Freed black men”
Till this scorched earth among ghosts unsettled
A Two-Thousand-foot palisade Sharpened oak posts
Separates white settlers from their crime scene Wall Street
simultaneously from the white man’s scaffold Warrior Souls driven to the earth neath stretched necks
Lakota
In holy shirts
Frightened
The white man replies
The tongue of mechanized gunfire
Bapp bapp bapp bapp bapp bapp bapp
Denver City 1864
Good citizens howl
This land is our land God’s Doctrine
Discovery FAFO
Exterminate them! Exterminate them! At Sand Creek
Six-hundred Cheyenne Arapaho
Women Children The Aged The infirm
Butchered Breasts
Genitalia
Souvenirs taken by Colorado’s Bloody 3rd
Camped on the River of Talking Stones An Oceti Sakowin cajoled
Wake up my relatives
You two-legged
You who walk on all four You who fly through the sky
Swim in the water Slither
Creepy crawl
Come greet the sun Pray
Give thanks
Smoke to the four winds
Ask the creator for strength Stop the evil DAPL black snake
Protec(ve Presence, First Chapter – By Rob Mulford 3
As I stand near the abutment
Prehistoric orbs bearing me witness from below the torrent
A burned-out carcass
Military surplus truck barricades the bridge
Before me Behind razor wire
Speaking volumes
Men with automatic weapons LRADS
Bullhorns
Three hundred women in prayer
Water protector warriors burning incense
Stand in fear
Antonio’s infinite traces Coalesced My ledger confirmed a deficit
Threaten a corrupted conscience Hegemony
National Security
An incompleteness
My “Gangster of Capitalism” world view shortcoming
The wretched of the earth have borne the brunt My race’s sins
Inequity insult abuse indifference
imperial war ethnic cleansing
The oppressed have little need for my opinion Their liberation precedes mine
To them I offer remittance
Eyes ears tongue hands heart To be paid
On the front lines of their liberation My Protective Presence
genocide