.poems.from.the.rez.

The following poems, words, and perspectives were harvested through many years of being a young child growing up in Canyon De Chelly, my hand in my mothers, and then the later reflections of being an adult, off the reservation, and living in a mainly anglo society. All through my life the sounds of the canyon haunted my ears, and only until I was a freshman in High School, living far away from the reservation in Wisconsin, did I unearth the unspoken atrocities my people are facing on the mesa. This is what I have to say....
- Nichole Luedke

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Not as Ugly as Your Genocide
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Here I sit under your feet,

In the dust and in the rocks,

A harmless third party in my intentions,

But performing for you comes with a cost.

Caked into my layers is your history

Finished off with a core as black as their eyes,

The ones that haunt you in your mirrors,

Those lives you work through me to destroy.

The moccasins above me speak candidly

Of traditions ruined through my use,

Transforming me into a scapegoat

For all those glamorous nights spent in the lights,

Yet I've never walked down the strip,

Rocks and cotton peeking from my pockets,

Sipping a long island in one hand

While wearing satin pants that glitter in the golden rays.

Dirty you may see me,

But look at the blood on your hands,

I'm not as ugly as your genocide.





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We'd Rather Enlighten
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The depths of your greed

Requires strength to shine through

while ignorance breeds on the strip below.

But as strong as we are,

We can't seem to expose your shadows

Of trading birth defects for umbrella drinks.

Creating day out of night

We shine on with one million strong

Praying for our power lines to be cut.

At least in the dark

There could be a chance for silence

To reflect the lives that living in a house

Upon a lawn of Uranium

Have extinguished.



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Ashamed
-------

A ghost haunts me,

Crouching haughtily in the back of my mind

Cluttered among dreams cloaked in spiders;

While hushed atrocities stem from my hands.

My life is not about living,

But rather existing long enough

To cash in each paycheck

Feeding the dependent mouths of my family.

My suit sits quietly on my grandma's table,

Black swallowing up white as the seams try to run.

reluctantly, they hold me in chains.


I've scanned the reports,

Ways of life diminishing into the sand

As the black smoke stacks continue to rise,

10,000 dead, but I push through their sorrow.


One million green a year is worth it,

worth keeping my voice dormant,

enough to insure my head is kept down low

while shamefully averting my eyes

as my hand scribbles a pass

onto crisp papers accepting a genocide.