Tag Archives: USA

I Got My…

01 Sunday Sep 2019

Posted by in Poem, Poems, Poesia, Poetic Blog, Poetry

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Headshot -- Bill Watkins

I got my eyes from my mom,
she got hers from Scandinavian
Winters and endless days unseen
between songs, Viking memories
and Celtic dreams.

I got my soul from pain, rap music
and jazz from Dad and the strange
winds in life that turn Welsh into
“American,” stolen land and the
sin of slavery to work it.

A black nanny raised me, as one
raised Dad, his dad I’m sure
the same, in the deep south
still awaiting freedom and the
return of Native people—

whose gold was wisdom and love for
the land.  Unfortunately the
British and Spanish crowns, among
others sought metal and cash only,
skipped that which could

have been truly brought back
to save them more than even
great bible messages!

I got my humor from God
as I understand God, at the time
I prayed for one it was the
Judeo-Christian kind, biblical
certainly, then add to it some
Alcoholics Anonymous truth
and flavor, Al-Anon for the
family members or friends
of drunks.

I got poetry from the same
source a year before in 1995,
started to tell the truth,
has led me to more and more
until I now demand it from myself
and others.

I got some wisdom, as I spoke
of before—from the Native
American chiefs, who lived close
to and with the land.  They were
one with the Earth, listened and
knew how to live here.

Harmony and song, between us
and our lives;

the poetry of birth, landing, leaving—
dreaming and living those dreams.

The vision, inspiration—being
true to our callings;

Yell the truth with me, “We
Stole Land.”

***

I got my injuries from mistakes,
what hurts me most teaches
and challenges, the game so
fair it seems unfair!

I got to go, soon to remove
myself from Native American
land, I got my plan from the
conscience I got, when I
got sober and started to work
the twelve steps.

I got some peace listening to
the Tao Te Ching; Bibles and gospels
of nature, trying the impossible
task of capturing truth in words,
paper and ink, computer screens
and social media posts…

I’ll be saying this with a sigh,
as Frost said, somewhere ages and
ages—you know…

I got my song for the day, and
it’s been good, a day is life, karma
play, working no longer alone but
for the Great Spirit, the inkless god.

I’d rather be a poor original than
a fancy, loud, flying fraud

Let’s Stop the War

01 Sunday Sep 2019

Posted by in History, Poetic Blog, Politics, USA

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Native Map of America

by Bill Watkins, Land Thief, 9/1/2019

We’ve been waging war on this land ever since Columbus first “discovered and conquered” the West Indies for Catholic Spain.  First the Spanish, then the English in a land called Wingandacoa—which they changed to “Virginia” after Elizabeth I, the virgin queen, who King James loosely quotes in his first Virginia Charter of 1606:

…our licence to make habitacion, plantacion and to deduce a colonie of sondrie of our people into that parte of America commonly called Virginia, and other parts and territories in America either appartaining unto us or which are not nowe actuallie possessed by anie Christian prince or people…

“If they’re not Christian—take it,” was the attitude.  By force.  Build a fort, plantations, seek gold, bring most back to the Crown, take some for yourself, call yourself an admiral and own the land you find.  Never mind the native people and their way of life; that there was more to heaven and earth than was dreamt of in European philosophy!  Some could dismiss this all as history, if we lived in the United States of Native American Nations.  But we do not.

We live on stolen land, most of us, while its original caretakers have been pushed nearly off the map into tiny reservations.  The native people loved the land, used it wisely, moderately and with great care.  They were grateful for it, the seasons, lived in and amongst nature in a cycle of life that didn’t need books or written law codes to direct. Their art was composed by the Great Spirit; the waterfalls, valleys and rivers along with wildlife provided their entertainment and joy.

There’s the Gold, Britain!  There, the precious resource, the eternal commodities of Gratitude, Wisdom and love for the Land!

But no.  We have our bibles, our guns—they, these savages, must leave while we erect Europe Part II in this glorious land.  We’ll run our concrete and asphalt over it, build our buildings, drive our vehicles—burn the earth the natives cherished in order to go faster, higher and farther…  If there was a flame, we’d be a moth bound for it, and so there was and that flame was war.  And we are still waging that war in the city of Los Angeles, formerly Otsungna—the native place of roses.  From military to paramilitary police, we equate might with right still, pat ourselves on the back as we kill silence with our helicopters and sirens,

then we train to kill and kill our fellow human beings, if the mood strikes us, call it self-defense, say the Constitution allows us to have guns and shoot people.  Good guys and bad guys, calling ourselves Christian, while Jesus’ words echo unheard: “Only God is good,” he said, but what is he next to our own will to steal and destroy land the native people used to love and revere?  The USA is a sad ruse of stealing land, breaking from England, and playing house.

The native Great Spirit is still king here.  Get ready, if you’ve never felt it, for its proud light is soon returning, as this land thief soon removes himself.  And some day I plan to bring “gold” back to my queen or king, teach them the native ways of loving our land.

Land Theft Invalidates USA

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Posted by in History, Native, Native American, Poetic Blog, Politics, USA

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Native People Mapping1

by Bill Watkins 9/5//2019

Men will not think that robbers and pirates have a right of empire over whomsoever they have force enough to master, or that men are bound by promises which unlawful force extorts from them.  —John Locke

Land theft is no basis for a valid government.  Someone could appeal to violence and war, rationalize the European conquest of the Americas, but underneath the movement and close to the soil of this land is the truth that crimes against humanity established the thirteen colonies, who rebelled against England to assert themselves as the United States of America, while America’s original inhabitants were to be killed off, subdued, moved and forgotten.  A criminal for-profit enterprise, leaving us with usurped land, its native inhabitants pushed into small reservations—a miniscule percentage of their natural inheritance—people who never gave consent to be governed by Europeans, and never should.

When Queen Elizabeth chartered Sir Walter Raleigh’s exploration of the American eastern coast in 1584, she granted him license “to discover, search, finde out, and view such remote, heathen and barbarous lands, countries and territories, not actually possessed of any Christian Prince.”  The first “Virginia Charter” backed up that thought, as King James urged English adventurers to “bring the infidels and salvages living in those parts to humane civilitie and to a setled and quiet govermente.”  Professed Christianity would help the English usurp the land called Wingandacoa by the natives, James ordering his sailors to propagate the “Christian religion to suche people as yet live in darkeness and miserable ignorance of the true knoweledge and worshippe of God.”

Having studied native American culture diligently for a few years, sober for twenty years, sensitive and aware, hungry for truth, it is clearer to me every day that it was the alcohol-consuming, cursing, armor and gun-loving Europeans—not the natives—who lived in darkness and miserable ignorance of the truth that the Earth was to be honored, respected and preserved. That guns, explosions, killing and noise were not strength but weakness.  And strength?  Witness a piece of it in the eloquence of a great native chief:

From Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit, there came a great unifying life force that flowed in and through all things—the flowers of the plains, blowing winds, rocks, trees, birds, animals—and was the same force that had been breathed into the first man.  Thus all things were kindred, and were brought together by the same Great Mystery.  

Chief Luther Standing Bear1

Chief Luther Standing Bear, Oglala Lakota Sioux

Like the English, the Spanish were guilty of land theft, starting with Columbus’ 1492 raid, leading to a threatening letter from King Ferdinand to the Taino-Arawak people of the West Indies.  In the letter, King Ferdinand informs the native people that the Pope is the ruler of the world, the bible’s God is the ruler of the universe, and that Spain shall be the ruler of all non-Christian lands they discover.  Should any of the native tribes resist, the Spanish would declare “war upon you from all sides and with all possible means, and we shall bind you to the yoke of the Church and of Their Highnesses.”  Further that “we shall enslave your persons, wives and sons, sell you or dispose of you as the King sees fit; we shall seize your possessions and harm you as much as we can as disobedient and resisting vassals.”

And so these supposed Christian people stole land, people who touted a bible that forbade stealing.  We erected laws and a Constitution that also forbade stealing, even though the privilege to write laws and hold land here was obtained through armed theft. Usurpation and theft can never be a valid basis for government, something John Locke proposed and I hereby second today.

…the aggressor, who puts himself into the state of war with another, and unjustly invades another man’s right, can, by such an unjust war, never come to have a right over the conquered…

Yes, Sir John, you speak the truth.  So should all of us, so should all of us!

The True Colossus

30 Friday Aug 2019

Posted by in History, Poem, Poems, Poesia, Poetic Blog, Poetry, USA

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Colossus1

Not like the racist giants that seek fame,
With orange hair, brawn and very big hands;
Here at port in New York, on stolen land
A mighty French statue of a lady and flame
Is the symbol of euphemized conquest and shame
Mother Earth and natives tamed, freedom a sham
Glows world-wide welcome, to all but Indians
The New Europe slapped down in Jesus’ name.
“Keep, ancient lands, your empire!” cries she
With loud police.  “Give me your slaves and more,
Your gathered weapons as vast as the sea,
The wretched ignorant knocking at our door.
Send these, the homeless, ignorantly to me,
We ruined Native America, nature itself with war.”

Citizenship

14 Thursday Feb 2019

Posted by in Citizenship, Poem, Poems, Poesia, Poetic Blog, Poetry

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Flag Wall

The skill so grand of mine
to be gloriously born on
American soil!

Never mind I never learned
much law, graduated high
school a drunk.

I belched and laid my first
significant cry right here
in the USA!!

Never mind we skipped over
civics, waltzed around in
a haze of privilege.

I live on stolen Native American
land, hail from immigrants
but am not one!

Never mind the Bible;
Christianity cool when convened
as a wall.

Wide is this path to destroy,
so here we are finding ways
to hate them—

the “immigrant,” figuring ways
to differentiate them from our
fathers, grandfathers—

mothers, too.

Make America white again,
MAGA hats worn by absurd
ignorance;

if keeping score, forgive them—
the land belongs not to man
but God,

Good Orderly Direction, Great
Spirit beyond the divide of
borders,

National leaders, a unity bound
on native blood, slave sweat, tears—
Kennedy murdered

by lies, perfidy and deceit, the
ruse of cloaks, daggers, and CIA
cold war sleet.

Peace is the rainbow following
rain on the other side.  The baby
born

en route to my city, my home;
no skill in birth, yet I came out
documented,

they documented another way
to protect the apparent privilege
of the scared elite.

Standards, 911 Los Angeles!

22 Sunday Jul 2018

Posted by in Law, Los Angeles, Poem, Poems, Poetic Blog, Poetry

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I have seen a few things, the
light bright from a Palm Desert
recovery facility.

Allow me to help you see!

Gangs are unnecessary.  To
have them in our city a choice.

They can be budgeted out, if
city leaders would reduce their
own inflated salaries, cut out
the fat of things we do not need.

Illegal fireworks, the booms, could
be budgeted out!

Litter picked up, law enforced,
pedestrian workers employed,
tents removed from sidewalks,
an encampment established
outside city limits with county help.

Sober up, L.A.!!

Really think, use the brain that
will say it’s dumb to drink
flammable liquids!!

Sober up, L.A.!!

Take off your ridiculous monkey
suits, city leaders, and join the
lowly, me and others to clean
this mess up for good!!

Sober up, L.A.!!

Be the first major U.S. city to
raise its standards to eliminate
even a single cigarette butt from
our sidewalk cracks.

Build better sidewalks, have non-
lethally armed security to secure
them, Engage the community!

Let’s be there, at our schools
with law instruction!

Let’s be at our recreation centers
and get to know our children!

Allow them to vote!!!

Anyone should be allowed, who
wants to help our country!

Perfectionism is a curse!

The old way needs changing, unless
you love the trash and bombs
on the fourth so much.

I do not.

I like peace, and obeying the law.

Take off your ties and suits, put
on some work clothes and join
me in a vision of something better.

Garner a day when police answer
the call, because
they are budgeted to win.

Stop the flow begun with self-
seeking campaigns, appeal to
God or Higher Power, take less,

and allow the city to thrive
the more.

History Knows

15 Friday Jun 2018

Posted by in African, History, JFK, Native, Poem, Poems, Poetic Blog, Poetry

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We’re obsessed with now.

We’re so sure of our reports, that
this or that thing caused this, and
it all happened this week.

The shiny balls bounce, “Trump
is tweeting again,” but history knows
why he is.

What is a Trump “president of the
United States?”

First, the States are not united,
all of them pulled together and
over the years have bullied
minorities, starting with the
American Indian, then of course
the African slave, then the
freed slaves, to name a few.

“United States of America” declares
itself so, historically, as a bastion of
hope and freedom for white males.

European people.

Next, we fought some wars, replaced
the sixth commandment with the
second amendment, made killing
“good.”

We killed and killed some more, got
good at it, and prided ourselves in
winning wars, winning territory, often
overlooking original sins against black,
brown and other people—

the “country” had an official line,
ones drawn by…

White males.

****

So we fought World War I, jumped
into Europe, played hero and “won.”

Instead of being humble in victory,
and mourning all the dead on all
sides, we raised our hands and did the
flapper dance for the next decade—

most of it all over the German people,
who we made pay for starting that dang
war.

We could have graciously helped them
to their feet and forgiven them, but
we drove the stake in hard—

enough to create Hitler and a backlash
good enough to start another war,
and the Jewish holocaust.

The United Nations formed after
World War II, and unlike the Kellogg-
Briand Pact of the 1920’s, this world
peace gig seemed like it could really
work until the American government
ratified its CIA, who along with other
nations kept waging covert wars
behind peace talks.

Shaking hands with the right, stealing
and killing with the left, hiding
documents and lying in the name
of “National Security.”

“Everybody’s doing it” was surely
put forth as they gathered on the
White House lawn in cloaks and
dagger outfits, a ruse of not-so-
funny don’ts and do’s in front
of Truman, Eisenhower then
Kennedy until they killed him
in 1963.

CIA kept its rule of the USA until…

the present day, but the leash is
very long, you might not notice them
unless you loved the Kennedy hope
of the ‘60’s, miss it, and miss truth.

JFK wasn’t perfect, but by ’63 had
grown into a man of peace, amends,
just a little naive on the power of
covert ops and the growing target
on his back.

“They wouldn’t do it, would they?”

They did it.

Cowards from behind a bush, covered
it up just as in Latin America they would.

A pattern attack, this time in our
own land, Julius Caesar by Brutus,

JFK by CIA, Howard Hunt and all those
ticked off Cubans killed or captured
or wounded when Kennedy balked
at helping take the Pigs’ Bay.

But did all that make Donald Trump?

Not yet.

***

Look at Cold War, from Kennedy’s murder
to Vietnam, the CIA’s baby, the path
clear with LBJ, then Nixon to execute
this impossible but profitable fight.

(At least our families are eating?)  Wide
that path to destruction, and boom!

The “American army” blowing a darn
good path through Southeast Asia!!

***

But we “won” the Cold War!!!

Right?

The wall came down in 1989…

Right?

A good day.  A great day?!?!

Make American Great Again?  Reagan
says, “Yes, We Can!?”

Or was that Obama?  Definitely this:
Clinton and the Americans rubbed the
victory in Russia’s nose, and like in
1930’s Germany, we had created
another villain.

This one, named Putin, rose and rose,
and rose some more and again, until
he rose to a place that he could
get his sweet revenge.

Put Trump in the White House; put down
Hillary Clinton and the U.S. dance
with Global Authority, democracy and
another frickin’ flapper dance across
a fallen enemy!

***

History knows, even if the news does
not, why the news is crazy, sad or
weird today.

It’s none of those things, but is a perfect
growth of history’s seed.

We planted everything that is reaped
on TV today.

Mothers and babies separated at the border,
the UN reprimanding the USA!

Puerto Rico shunned and neglected
by a racist regime in the USA!

Putin smiles, a short-lived win,
revenge is sweet, the games may
begin—

Politics and history lost in the eyes
of a child, God’s will charging on—
the aware forging a narrow path,
Wyatt Earps, Bob Muellers, Truth
and Comey with your morning coffee—

John Adams against the Hamilton
frenzy, Lao Tzu and Jesus himself
offering truth against all this hoopla
walking around the White House
dangling pardons and tax scams.

God is good, Trump is not, but seek
history before you judge him or
the present moment too harshly,
for history’s to blame and they are not.

Get the Log Out

11 Monday Jun 2018

Posted by in God, Jesus, Lao Tzu, Poem, Poems, Poetic Blog, Poetry, Political, Tao, Tao Te Ching

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“War is conducted like a funeral.
When many people are being killed,
They should be mourned in heartfelt
sorrow. That is why a victory must be
observed like a funeral.”
—Lao Tzu

It’s a tempting thing, to
criticize and judge everybody
else’s Tao Te Ching;

their way and truth, the what
they said and what they do.

“They need to de-nuclearize”
from a country with thousands
of nukes.

“Those MS-13 animals,” from
a country whose CIA backed the
murderers of El Salvador’s
Archbishop Oscar Romero.

We, the United States of
America, have a large log in
our eye, blinding us as we
seek to remove your splinter;

again and again we throw
weight around making noise,
as the old world shakes its head.

We “won” wars, which is
impossible, and ever since, have
thought ourselves great.

Wars are a necessary evil at best,
and should never be boasted
about—

Lao Tzu’s got a feel for that,
Jesus of Nazareth six hundred
years later with words from God

to keep us happily, humbly
separated.

Babel being built in every
modern city until the next
mass shooting tragedy, God
still picking targets with the
help of hell’s favorite angel;

“From there the LORD scattered
them over the face of the whole
earth.”

“I’m not good.  Only God is
good.”

“You cannot change the world.
It cannot be done!!”

But still we try, and we try,
which is why the United States
government often pulls splinters
out of the world, while failing
to remove the log from our
own eye.

Xenophobe

09 Saturday Jun 2018

Posted by in Immigration, Poem, Poems, Poetic Blog, Poetry, Political Satire, Race, Racism, Satire, Xenophobia

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Let’s stick together, fend off
the other.

We used to be an “other” long ago,
but not me that was my
progenitor, not me—let’s go!

I’d rather be dead than caught
in the web; liberal diversity’s not
for me, I’m a Christian, just
the type who’s white, ticked
and armed, so back off.

Someone once challenged my
right to kill.  They were invading
my house, so I had to defend, but
in the army learned that shooting
for the torso of a human was
defending so killed him.

One must defend one’s family—
which is everything.  Blood relations,
keeping America white.

They say this was native American
before it was white European but I
kinda’ think that’s Fake News.

I ignore God when I want to
and cheer at Liberals’ defeat,
this is a war and I wanna win so
let’s kill as much as we need to
let’s win.

Stop ‘em at the border, kill
‘em if we must, build a wall,
Jews will not replace us.  Divide
and conquer’s not the devil’s
line—Believe Me!!

Let’s go to the rally!  Are you going?

So much winning; I love it
how we won all those wars.

Vietnam was fake news, we won
that too!

Kennedy had it coming, I love
CIA movies and their covert ops,
I wish I could take one now,
see all those babies separated from
their mothers at the border,
I’m Christian but the kind that
likes White Jesus, and sick
of the politically correct brown
one they cook up downtown
in what will become a sanctuary
city if we don’t spread Trump
fever fast and build that damn
wall!

Pyongchang 2018

26 Monday Feb 2018

Posted by in Olympic, Olympics, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Winter Olympics

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Winter Olympics 2018 Collage

Mike Pence should get her a
hot dog, for what else is the Games but
a chance to be human and celebrate
life?

She came from the North, sister to
a Korean prince, and during sixteen
some-odd days there was peace
on the Peninsula—

And why not?

Wasn’t that why we had a United Nations
after the horror of two world wars?

We forget to love—that being the doom
of man, that and calling ourselves
“Christian” while we talk of waging
war and giving bloody noses to people
we don’t want armed and nuclear, again
forgetting our own arsenal, that log in our
eye picking at our neighbors’ splinters.

Pyongchang, rhyming with the North’s
Pyongyang—for sixteen days one unified
Korea in a glimpse of what could be,
the shining face of sports for all to
see.

The North’s delegate above the American
“vice president,” so why he doesn’t look up
is a mystery, unless the awakening alludes
him, the one that taps us all on the
shoulder at different times in life to say:

“We are all human.”

Pence missed the first moment to win
the gold of brotherly love.

***

There are always two prizes in sports,
the trophy, the “win,” and the one we
garner when we shake hands—the friendship,
the nod for sportsmanship.

One Korea, a unified team brings tears to eyes
of people who love peace, while folks
who talk and believe in war and division poke
holes and criticize.

One day at a time.

***

Shaun White, Shaun White, the red mop
flying in the night, now with less hair full of
passion, focus and talent, a final jump into
the abyss that can kill on the way down,
“Gravity” thwarted but not beat, Einstein’s
bent space curling gold for the U.S.

Lindsey gets what she needed, another medal
like Bode’s in 2014, a great bow with Julia
covering events for channel four Los Angeles.

Athletes from Russia were tough as always in
the Winter Games, but Norway being Norway,
Sweden and the Dutch on fire.

Canada came to play, but the U.S. ladies borrowed
the gold back in hockey, the men as good
except in penalty shots, which require flare,

the Russian lady skaters showing plenty,
ballerinas on ice, old school beauty, while
jump obsession infected many skates minus
the spirited Adam Rippon putting art first.

American guns shoot children, while
activists debate murder as self-defense.

Meanwhile in Asia are lost arts and philosophies
of the martial kind.

The Sage is fully self-aware, aware of surroundings,
and is ready to help—abhors lethal weapons;
has no real use for them.

The preference in self-defense is never killing
but the restoration of peace!

***

And so the hot dog not bought, the frown
of the Pence in front of the sister of
the Northern Prince.

A sense of humor, a poem, a joke—anything to
cut tension was and is the gold we want
as we snowboard toward another medal
ceremony in winter snow, White’s tears
melting on the close of another Games,
four years in the making, four years from
the next time to make the snow light up
in Olympic flames.

We are at peace, and for those who are not
may we make a prayer.

The two trophies for achievement
and friendship, may you have them both;
Shaun White with three golds now, amended
for the little trash talk in Vancouver, grown
up and back from a misstep in Sochi.

He is the Most Valuable Athlete in the Games
for me, though you may put yours forth.

We watched Shaun grow up, and may he
help the next generation shine.

May we all rise up beyond our sports and
put love into every corner of the Earth.

It is not what we get that counts as
much as what we give.

“America First” dies gloriously when we embrace
humility and generosity.  God sees the lowliest
effort and rewards, so give up keeping and guarding.

Give all you have. Reach one more time past what
you think you have, because a power greater
than yourself has more.

Appeal.  Receive.  Reach for the finish line,
and make a lot of friends along the way.

A little life is lived every time the Olympics
torch is lit.

As this Olympic Games ends, I grieve a little
bit but gather steam to tackle my life
with the gold medal spirit I just saw on
display, a Korea unified in Peace.

Pray for the warriors and guard Olympic
flames and dreams for the young and small
just for today.

Jump into the stands and hug your mom.

Vow to never lose like that again.

Thank God for the win.  For weather in
your favor.

For being the best GS skier in the world,
but realizing that effort may leave you weaker
in another discipline!

We are so human!!  Wait, did your see the
Russian girls skate?  Maybe we are sometimes
angelic!!!

We strive to overcome our shackles and restraints,
Shaun White one more time off the pipe…

Land, squat, Repeat.  We lost a bobsledder.

Land, squat. Repeat.

See you in Beijing…

Land, squat.  Repeat!