THE LAST WORLD OF FIRE AND TRASH
I don’t know anything anymore
or if that cricket is still singing
in a country where crickets are banned.
I’m a misplaced Mvskoke in a strange pastiche
smells like curry and sweat
from Toi’s rock and roll restaurant
where a native woman drunk on fear
ruins her meal with a sour tirade, then
pushes back for a cigarette
with her pretty man commandeered.
I can’t get her face out of my mind,
in this hotel room where we’re packing for home.
I’ve seen that same face whirring in the blur
of a whiskey glass
after the crashed dance, the goodbye song
in the last world of fire and trash.
Beneath the moon rocking above
to a cricket round dance song
She punched me then for being brown,
she punched me for being white,
for going too far,
for being a nothing next to a nothing like her.
This thought too will pass, I remind myself for the thousandth
time before I drown in the aftermath.
And think about lighting a cigarette
though I now have tobacco just for prayers.
And then I let that thought go running away
because I refuse to stay in bondage to a drunk demon
each filthy cell of the beast
fed by doctored thoughts of an enemy
who thinks he wants what I have.
Here it is, oh fearful one:
my desires have turned into a small mountain
of dirty clothes, sax gig bag, guitar
books, shoes, tossed underwear and grief
to be packed and carried
from one raw wound to another.
I consider then how the last council of peace was disrupted by bombs
as I fled from the house of my mother
through this severed country,
and see again the stumble of the woman who could not
find peace anywhere as she headed out the door
for her next fix of cigarette.
I turned my cheek as my head parted through a curtain of blood, like birth
as most humans do when erupting from the spirit world to this gambling place--
to enter the story
of the giant breaking down the door to kill or save us
My companion on this dangerous journey
you know too much already.
I've brought more than my share of bags
on this travel.
Don't worry. I see you through the haze of pain.
You are a bear hunkering over a salmon.
No, you’ve grown out of the myth and
you’ve resorted to sorting clothes
instead of luring sailors
to their death.
I refuse to sum it up anymore;
it’s not possible.
I want to give it up
to the battering of songs against the light,
to the singing of the earnest cricket.
For years I have been making a thought like the dignity of an eagle
who can lead us into the next place with thunder and grace.
What is it we must do alone in this world, yet only with each other
I haven't got the riddle straight, yet.
October 2003 West Hollywood copyright Joy Harjo
10/26/03
Reading by first half of my 313 poetry Workshop
YOU ARE INVITED TO A READING BY HARJO’S 313 POETRY WORKSHOP
SOME OF THE BEST UP-AND-COMING POETS
ON THE ISLAND
WHERE: KUYKENDALL 410
WHEN: MONDAY, OCTOBER 27TH, 2003
4:30 PM
WHO:
The class includes:
CHAE BAE
JENSEN CHANG
AGNES CHUN
FANUA
SABRINA FAVORS
LESLIE GOO
HYEN KOBAYASHI
MARIA MEHR
MIRIAM NEUMAN
KAIPO PATTERSON
JANNA PLANT
LEN SHIGEMOTO
JERI TATEISHI
LIANNE UESATO
TIFFANY YORITA
and JOY HARJO
WE LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU THERE
FOR MORE INFO PLEASE CALL: 781-6558
SOME OF THE BEST UP-AND-COMING POETS
ON THE ISLAND
WHERE: KUYKENDALL 410
WHEN: MONDAY, OCTOBER 27TH, 2003
4:30 PM
WHO:
The class includes:
CHAE BAE
JENSEN CHANG
AGNES CHUN
FANUA
SABRINA FAVORS
LESLIE GOO
HYEN KOBAYASHI
MARIA MEHR
MIRIAM NEUMAN
KAIPO PATTERSON
JANNA PLANT
LEN SHIGEMOTO
JERI TATEISHI
LIANNE UESATO
TIFFANY YORITA
and JOY HARJO
WE LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU THERE
FOR MORE INFO PLEASE CALL: 781-6558
10/1/03
Please note.
The CD demo Native Joy is no longer available. A new full ten song CD is in the works, so please stay tuned.
Important, there has been a major change in the band line up. The site will be revised once the webmaster returns from a hard-earned and much needed vacation.
Keep posted for new tunes, and the new CD which has been postponed to early next year. Thank you for your patience and continued support.
Remember, this weekend will be at the Deadwood Writers Festival, which includes performances and readings by some of your favorite native writers.
The CD demo Native Joy is no longer available. A new full ten song CD is in the works, so please stay tuned.
Important, there has been a major change in the band line up. The site will be revised once the webmaster returns from a hard-earned and much needed vacation.
Keep posted for new tunes, and the new CD which has been postponed to early next year. Thank you for your patience and continued support.
Remember, this weekend will be at the Deadwood Writers Festival, which includes performances and readings by some of your favorite native writers.
9/8/03
Untitled
The truth does not shout or whisper goddamn
and slam the unbeliever against the wall
of its church or government building.
Nor does it covertly send its henchmen from the courts of law
into the homes of those it governs
with God chained to its side.
Nor does the truth order the beloved children of those
who feed it with labor and taxes
to foreign lands as fodder, while it sits
in a guarded house picking its teeth
with slats from the ruins of freedom.
c Joy Harjo 6 Sept 03
and slam the unbeliever against the wall
of its church or government building.
Nor does it covertly send its henchmen from the courts of law
into the homes of those it governs
with God chained to its side.
Nor does the truth order the beloved children of those
who feed it with labor and taxes
to foreign lands as fodder, while it sits
in a guarded house picking its teeth
with slats from the ruins of freedom.
c Joy Harjo 6 Sept 03
Forgetfulness
FORGETFULNESS
I have exhausted my mind with details
of addresses and letters of need
from those who have died recklessly
with no one to sing for them
no one to remember each scar
each delicate whorl of skin
on fingertips.
So they wander recklessly
the neighborhoods
of memory, graze at windows
lit up by tv, walk through traffic
of passengers listening to
digital singing.
I do not know how to lead them from despair
to a spring of fresh water, clean clothes
and songs to send them brightly
on their way.
Maybe I am speaking of a nation
who does not know
how to mourn the dead
and is too numb or crazy to be aware
of its own dying.
I do know that when I get up again
from my restless sleep
I will begin once more this song against
forgetfulness,
this song of falling rain.
c Joy Harjo Honolulu, Hawaii 2003
.
I have exhausted my mind with details
of addresses and letters of need
from those who have died recklessly
with no one to sing for them
no one to remember each scar
each delicate whorl of skin
on fingertips.
So they wander recklessly
the neighborhoods
of memory, graze at windows
lit up by tv, walk through traffic
of passengers listening to
digital singing.
I do not know how to lead them from despair
to a spring of fresh water, clean clothes
and songs to send them brightly
on their way.
Maybe I am speaking of a nation
who does not know
how to mourn the dead
and is too numb or crazy to be aware
of its own dying.
I do know that when I get up again
from my restless sleep
I will begin once more this song against
forgetfulness,
this song of falling rain.
c Joy Harjo Honolulu, Hawaii 2003
.
8/11/03
In Memorium, James Welch
Funny how life is. Just an hour before logging on and learning of Jim Welch's death I had told the story of celebrating Jim's birthday in Amsterdam in 1980 during the One World Poetry Festival to a co-writer who had just discovered Welch's novel Fool's Crow and was asking me about him. How long had it been since I had seen Jim or remembered that story? I didn't know he had been stricken with lung cancer or anything of that struggle. Like others, I anticipated his next book, and wondered when we'd see each other, which conference, which city? I always smile when asked about Jim. In my catalogue of memories he's always leaning into that enigmatic grin,with some humorous comment, some angle of vision that made a grease so we could slide through the pain in this world a little easier. His celebrated Winter in the Blood, was like that, though the critics often found it too morose and depressing. Beneath the eternal winters of human suffering and relentless cold, there angled that sideways vision. I knew Jim mostly from others stories at first. Simon Ortiz urged me to read this fantastic young poet, then novelist from Montana when I began writing in Albuquerque in the early seventies. Riding the Earthboy 40, his only book of poetry was influential for many of us. Still one of the classics of American Indian poetry.
Simon told me about the time he and Jim performed at a university in Buffalo, New York with a known Jewish writer who "translated" indigenous songs though he didn't know tribal languages. He sang and chanted his performance, even shook rattles and drummed, while Jim and Simon read without fanfare in their pressed slacks and button down shirts. After the reading the Jewish man was inundated by attention from audience members who loved the performance of real Indian poetry, while Jim and Simon, the real Indians, stood virtuallly ignored to the side. We laughed about it. I can hear Jim telling telling the story,too, in a pub in upstate New York, with his finely tuned self-deprecatory style, adding to the tale. Once Jim and I convinced the sponsor of a writers conference in Fargo, North Dakota-- a wonderful host whose name I forget--that it was an old Indian custom for the host to swallow the worm in a bottle of mescale. He did so, much to our amusement. It was after this conference, as I flew back to the southwest over the Dakotas and Iowa that I wrote the poem, Grace. It was originally dedicated to him, inspired by how Jim found a way to move with grace through all the wounds that lingered beneath the surface.
You never know when it will be the last time you see someone on this earth. Earth time goes by very very quickly, even through there are drag points made by suffering. I don't know when it was I last saw Jim. I do know that I will never forget our irreverent interview to the press as guests at the One World Poetry Festival in 1980 in Amsterdam, Holland. We knew that they didn't really see us as exemplary Indians. We didn't appear or speak Hollywood or AIMster style. Jim looked like a ruffled college student and I looked of questionable origins; neither of us wore buckskin and feathers. We'd already disappointed them, so we became comedians, or thought we did. I'm sure we failed miserably.
Jim quietly informed me afterward that it was his birthday, so after dinner with Allen Ginsberg and his hipster entourage, we took off for a tour of the canals and the red-light district to celebrate. All night we walked the streets of that lively city until 4 in the morning. We'd wandered far in the labyrinth. We talked about home. I'm sure I had some kind of romantic soap opera going on that I felt free to unload. And then we didn't talk. Just walked and observed the human traffic. Jim has left an incredible literary legacy that has survived him and will continue to influence those who are still here. We can know him in those pages. I still see Jim on a dank early morning in Amsterdam, so far away from home together. We hailed several taxis for the return to the hotel, but none would stop because we looked too Indian and too dangerous. We had to laugh and kept walking. He gave companionship, and always friendship, through it all, wherever we were in the world. In the end, that's what matters, what survives us.
August 11, 2003
Grace
for James Welch
I think of Wind and her wild ways the year we had nothing to lose
and lost it anyway in the cursed country of the fox. We still talk
about that winter, how the cold froze imaginary buffalo on the stuffed
horizon of snowbanks. The haunting voices of the starved and mutilated
broke fences, crashed our thermostat dreams, and we couldn't stand it
one more time. So once again we lost a winter in stubborn memory, walked
through cheap apartment walls, skated through fields of ghosts into
a town that never wanted us, in the epic search for grace.
Like Coyote, like Rabbit, we could not contain our terror and clowned
our way through a season of false midnights. We had to swallow
that town with laughter, so it would go down easy as honey. And one
morning as the sun struggled to break ice, and our dreams had found us
with coffee and pancakes in a truck stop along Highway So,
we found grace.
1 could say grace was a woman with time on her hands, or a white
buffalo escaped from memory. But in that dingy light it was a promise
of balance. We once again understood the talk of animals, and spring
was lean and hungry with the hope of children and corn.
1 would like to say, with grace, we picked ourselves up and walked
into the spring thaw. We didn't; the next season was worse. You went
home to Leech Lake to work with the tribe and 1 went south. And, Wind,
1 am still crazy. I know there is something larger than the memory
of a dispossessed people. We have seen it.
Joy Harjo
Simon told me about the time he and Jim performed at a university in Buffalo, New York with a known Jewish writer who "translated" indigenous songs though he didn't know tribal languages. He sang and chanted his performance, even shook rattles and drummed, while Jim and Simon read without fanfare in their pressed slacks and button down shirts. After the reading the Jewish man was inundated by attention from audience members who loved the performance of real Indian poetry, while Jim and Simon, the real Indians, stood virtuallly ignored to the side. We laughed about it. I can hear Jim telling telling the story,too, in a pub in upstate New York, with his finely tuned self-deprecatory style, adding to the tale. Once Jim and I convinced the sponsor of a writers conference in Fargo, North Dakota-- a wonderful host whose name I forget--that it was an old Indian custom for the host to swallow the worm in a bottle of mescale. He did so, much to our amusement. It was after this conference, as I flew back to the southwest over the Dakotas and Iowa that I wrote the poem, Grace. It was originally dedicated to him, inspired by how Jim found a way to move with grace through all the wounds that lingered beneath the surface.
You never know when it will be the last time you see someone on this earth. Earth time goes by very very quickly, even through there are drag points made by suffering. I don't know when it was I last saw Jim. I do know that I will never forget our irreverent interview to the press as guests at the One World Poetry Festival in 1980 in Amsterdam, Holland. We knew that they didn't really see us as exemplary Indians. We didn't appear or speak Hollywood or AIMster style. Jim looked like a ruffled college student and I looked of questionable origins; neither of us wore buckskin and feathers. We'd already disappointed them, so we became comedians, or thought we did. I'm sure we failed miserably.
Jim quietly informed me afterward that it was his birthday, so after dinner with Allen Ginsberg and his hipster entourage, we took off for a tour of the canals and the red-light district to celebrate. All night we walked the streets of that lively city until 4 in the morning. We'd wandered far in the labyrinth. We talked about home. I'm sure I had some kind of romantic soap opera going on that I felt free to unload. And then we didn't talk. Just walked and observed the human traffic. Jim has left an incredible literary legacy that has survived him and will continue to influence those who are still here. We can know him in those pages. I still see Jim on a dank early morning in Amsterdam, so far away from home together. We hailed several taxis for the return to the hotel, but none would stop because we looked too Indian and too dangerous. We had to laugh and kept walking. He gave companionship, and always friendship, through it all, wherever we were in the world. In the end, that's what matters, what survives us.
August 11, 2003
Grace
for James Welch
I think of Wind and her wild ways the year we had nothing to lose
and lost it anyway in the cursed country of the fox. We still talk
about that winter, how the cold froze imaginary buffalo on the stuffed
horizon of snowbanks. The haunting voices of the starved and mutilated
broke fences, crashed our thermostat dreams, and we couldn't stand it
one more time. So once again we lost a winter in stubborn memory, walked
through cheap apartment walls, skated through fields of ghosts into
a town that never wanted us, in the epic search for grace.
Like Coyote, like Rabbit, we could not contain our terror and clowned
our way through a season of false midnights. We had to swallow
that town with laughter, so it would go down easy as honey. And one
morning as the sun struggled to break ice, and our dreams had found us
with coffee and pancakes in a truck stop along Highway So,
we found grace.
1 could say grace was a woman with time on her hands, or a white
buffalo escaped from memory. But in that dingy light it was a promise
of balance. We once again understood the talk of animals, and spring
was lean and hungry with the hope of children and corn.
1 would like to say, with grace, we picked ourselves up and walked
into the spring thaw. We didn't; the next season was worse. You went
home to Leech Lake to work with the tribe and 1 went south. And, Wind,
1 am still crazy. I know there is something larger than the memory
of a dispossessed people. We have seen it.
Joy Harjo
7/28/03
Joy Harjo at Riddu Riddu Festival
Harjo and her new band just returned from the Riddu Riddu Festival in Samiland, Norway.
New Web Log for Joy Harjo
This is the new weblog where Joy Harjo can post trip reports, information on new publications, tell you how the gigs went, and, in general, say how things are going.
Look in often to keep up!
Look in often to keep up!
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