Tag Archives: Native America

The Search for Meaning

06 Tuesday Jun 2017

Posted by in Blogs, Native, Peace, Poetry, Political

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Ancient Sins, Amends
and Justice

-by Bill Watkins 6/5/2017

Livingston2 -- Work Walk

LORD, help me communicate your message.

Amen.

***

I have left Los Angeles, California in search of meaning, poetic justice—taking my sins east someday across the ocean back to Europe.

I have decided to pass through beautiful Livingston, Montana for a year or two to gain a different experience, to become a man, prepare for England’s colder weather, and to get some financial standing.

410 years ago three Watkins brothers arrived in the land we now call Virginia—a land that was inhabited by a great people.  We, the English, named it what we wanted and called it ours.

We measured ourselves against the natives by skin color, dress and military weapons—saw an “advantage,” sought to conquer.

Our sins are vast.  Sins of judgment, murder, selfishness, ingratitude, ignorance, and self-righteousness.  Sure, we were chased there by religious wars, oppressive social structures and monarchy.

But also greed.  Vanity; the desire for fame and glory, riches—gold and spices.

A name to place in history as the man or men who discovered a new land or route around the world.

Notice no mention of “God” yet.  While our explorers spoke of “mission” and Bible and bringing God to the New World, our actions were GodLESS.

We lived by the gun and sword.  Died by it.  So many of us throughout history to now just on that Jesus-mentioned “wide path to destruction.”

Lao Tzu said “You cannot change the world.  It cannot be done.”

So why write a piece like this?  Why leave Los Angeles?

Why come to Montana, en route to Wales, United Kingdom—home of the Watkins family that stayed in Europe?

Meaning.

For this poet, meaning… For the world, this poet sets out with the gift God directly gave to drive truth into the wide path.

To split that path, and light the trail back to Heaven’s narrow road.

If I believe through fast and prayer that I may move a mountain from there to here, it shall be done.

If I know CIA killed JFK, then covered up the crime—I shall say so, demand truth, and move on to other dark chapters, light them with alacrity.

If I am sure that we owe amends to anyone related to American SLAVES, I shall write that fact—and push us to truth, action and needed reparations.

Hurting others is hurting ourselves.  Killing off Native America, is killing off Nature in this land.

We must stop, restore land to the Native peoples “won” through bloodshed, threats and broken promises—bring Karma back to the land…

The Great Spirit, often forgotten from big cities to the hearts of reservations—sad with despondent reservation, alcohol, depression—will and must rise again.

The Great Spirit will rise when the Native American people rise again, and the land will prosper.

A Third Political party will emerge.  One of peace and love for Mother Earth.

But first I must remove myself back to England.  Back across the sea, and take our sins with me.

I do so for the Cherokee.  For the Sioux.  For the Crow, the Blackfoot, the Tongva out west—all the tribes, together must rise as I leave with God’s spirit East from here to the land of the Celts.

I will take back, finally, the land’s Gold:

Native American Wisdom and Love for Land.

Europe will thrive when I bring this gold back to them.

And meaning will come to me, a life poetic that gave up comfort to honor God.

Lies

10 Wednesday May 2017

Posted by in Blogs, Poem, Politics

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-by Bill Watkins and Robert Frost

***

When I see lies hurt left and right,
Across party lines equally,
I like to think my president didn’t make them.
But making lies isn’t bad enough—
You have to Act.  Often you must have
Seen DJT’s lies loaded with blaming
Others and advancing his bank account.
They click against each other on Twitter,
One lie after another getting in line
To be the next lie to drive the news story.
Michael Scherer of Time set to interview
The guy about “truth” and “lies,” a lo and
Behold:  Devin Nunes is running around the
White House lawn spreading more lies,
Like Easter eggs to spoil the kids a day after
Easter.  You may see lies arching in and under
Old tweets:  one says we should not involve
Ourselves in Syria from years ago, surfacing
As 59 missiles are sent to explode an airport
There.  “Who knew health care was so
Complicated?” was such a true statement in the
Form of a question from a gentleman whose
Lack of education and political experience is
Worn as a badge of dishonor, day after day
In the face of p-hats yelling injustice
And sexism.  “Locker room talk” brings
Chaffetz and others back into the fold
In time to rally the vote in 2016, Jared
“Playing Moneyball” with American votes,
Winning always the goal, not helping
The country with good legislation.
Winning, helping Russia—Trump’s apparent
Leading creditor, growing Ivanka’s brand,
Extending Trump family reach, helping
Russia, helping Russia, helping Russia.
And Turkey, Le Pen—anyone who shows
A strong hand and an antiquated nationalist
View.  Kick out immigrants, purify the race,
Build a wall and put it all in Barack Obama’s
Soulful, smiling face.  Tear Hillary down like
Someone who never had a mother.
Fuck you, Donald Trump, and all your
Ignorant hillbilly fans.  God bless us to a
Proper disclosure of your lies, your certain ouster,
And the restoration of dishonest business as usual
In Washington.  We need to pay our debts—the twenty
trillion dollars, the promises we made to
Native American tribes, reparations for
African Americans who descend from unwilling,
Sinful slavery—
And could we kill covert CIA, bring John
F. Kennedy’s murderers to justice, tell the Truth
About All our Sins?  Re-open RFK, MLK,
The bullshit Chapman murder of Lennon with
Clear political pro-Reagan cold war motives.
“Earth is the right place for love,” Frost had
Something there.  “I don’t know where it’s
Likely to go better.”  Indeed.  I wish loud
Helicopter pilots would read that line,
And I guess that’s my Truth, spoon-fed in
Frostian lines to remind us all:
It’s not where you start, it’s where you
Wanna go that’s important.  Dream and do,
But do not do anything over doing something bad.
And do not say anything, over saying
Something untrue—especially from the Oval
Office in Washington.
One could do worse than be Donald Trump,
If he wisens up and clears out of
Politics before he winds up in jail…
And us?  May we pay all our debts, and
Invite the Indian back to the table they
Helped us to set.

—Love, Bill

Concrete, Pills and Metal

23 Wednesday Nov 2016

Posted by in Native America, Poetry

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The Indians lived with the land.

Honored it.

Did Europe lack this profound respect
for its land?

Was the corruption of monarchy
so corrupt, so abusive, that
the free-thinkers and free-believers
had to cross an ocean to be free?

Perhaps.

***

Then the hosts, the Native Americans,
they pitied their guests, helped them through
a winter or two.

The natives thought rightly that it
was their duty under God to help
fellow humans get through their hard
times.

But surely they would not stay there
long. And surely, there would not be
many more, would there?

For how many white men and women
could possibly stand uprooting, and leaving
their birth countries to settle in “America?”

How many could stomach abandoning the graves
of their fathers and mothers?

***

So thought the Indian at first, most of them
anyway. And most of them had it wrong.

***

A cold edge came. The rifle. The warlord. Fear
and racism. Lies that come with any
bedeviled people.

Sickness, disease. Alcoholism, greed.

“You cannot change the world.
It cannot be done,” said Lao Tzu in
600 BC, and he was probably right.

But it is ours to try. Just to try.

***

And we try by standing up for Truth.
Writing about it. Seeking it. Expressing
it.

Truth in this case was the sad lie
told again and again by the sick, Godless
and greedy white man—

set up I suspect by Satan himself, to lie and
cheat the Indians out of God’s land.

The native peoples were its great and
honorable caretaker.

Not a perfect people, but imperfect only
in the way that a buffalo has a scar,
or a bear cub stumbles on the way down
to the river.

The Indian was one with the land, one
with nature.

Admired the rocks, the cold running water
and the animals that inhabited their glorious
home.

They were and are human, like us, one doesn’t
have to reach to great unknowns to imagine
the life of the Indian.

It was natural. Naked. True.

***

So, who wins? The group that admires
the rock? Or the group who knows how
to grind the rock down, make gravel and cement,
make square blocks of building blocks,
roads and walkways to separate man from
other animals?

Man from dirt. Man from Nature…

We’re the same species, the Indian and the
white man—different in that the Indian
loved and gloried nature, fit itself to honor
it and live gratefully within it.

While the white man for some reason had
always a mind to cover it up, to be the
head “creators” on board, to exert power and
control on it—

then marvel at our achievements over God’s.

***

Then laugh with me at the notion of a Catholic
missionary trying to give the Indians a lesson
in spirituality!!!!

It was and is always the Native American, not
the missionary, with the more true
and honest conception of God, of true
living and humility.

Dress, pomp, and ceremony in fancy robes?

Haha!!