Empty...
An Indian is only six feet tall. If he
leaves the Great Valley at daybreak —
and follows the sun — he can reach the
Sea by nightfall, with a steady stride
and good luck.
The white man covers the distance in
less than an hour. He races across the
earth almost as swiftly as the sun moves
across the sky. And without effort. A
slight twist of his wrist to begin, and
then steady pressure applied through
his leg to the ball of his right foot. No
thing more. He sits there, enclosed in a
hulk of steel, rushing through space.
Conversation
With Bob
Me and Bob Dylan
sat down to talk of a time
soon to come, about writing
songs and sonnets and playing
a guitar and drinking
beer and smoking
things
and just living.
We talked for a few minutes
and 1 was silent most of the time
‘cept for a passing comment,
and I thought about his age
and his past and his drawings,
books, and tunes and 1 saw
that he has no throne,
‘s'pose he didn’t want one,
no matter,
they couldn’t make one big enough for
him to sit in.
And that time will soon be here
when we run out of sonnets
and all the other stuff
1 mentioned,
but no matter,
I just flip the record over.
Untitled
You white men think you are gods
To travel from the Great Valley to the
Sea in less than an hour
But not for free. The chrome horse
demands it price.
You must lay a hard mixture of sand
and rock over the brown earth You
must criss-cross this land with huge,
smooth paths. You must destroy the
trees. You must remove the wild ani
mals. You must make a part of the
world regular, even predictable.
What energy hurtles you through
space? A series of small explosions in
the center of that hulk of metal Explo
sions terrify my people. They are
man-made thunder. Man does not
make thunder cheaply. The small exp
losions fill the air with poison gas Soon
you will not be able to breathe without
KPM
I hate to hurt them
but it happens.
Knowing if i married their image
Id only fall to some existence >
of briefcases and
writings that even 1 wouldnt read.
I stand beautiful girl
in their dreams,
now turn to music that was
played for me...
When knife words and statements
slice into us we sit there,
stare at faces that used to
hold all the truths.
We bleed alone and still
its the same color.
Kate Andersen
choking, soon you will not be able to
open your eyes without crying, soon
you will not be able to live at all
It is not an easy journey to walk from
the Great Valley to the Sea. My people
would not make such a journey without
good reason We would finish the day
tired and hungry. But when we travel
led the distance we knew the earth we
walked across. We knew the leaves of
the live oak, the chatter of the squirrel,
the tap of the woodpecker
White man, what do you know?
Staff photo
' A biweekly