9 Hands

The First Hand Reaches

“Civilization”
is a wound
still bleeding

Pregnant
She gives birth
Eternally

even as she bleeds

*

You are the Sorcerer
With the many hands
He is Rebellious
and rebellion ever stands

or crouches, waiting
sweating, bleeding
in a Lodge of Flesh

for the raging dawn

Waiting
for the light to come

*

See now in the distance
Sorcerer ye’
nine yards away
a small sacred mound of flesh
and wood
with smoke rising up
subliminally

There crouches
Face down
In the doorway
That flap of skin
A man who sweats
And sweats
And bleeds

Reflecting he
On sin

Now one step closer
One step toward him
Is a start
But not enough

Frozen then
unmoving

From his crouched pose
He raises a hand
The sky parts, black
buffalo skin sliced
from flesh and bone
and laid out over heaven’s
brow

He raises a finger
The earth shakes
And we shake

His left hand was in the dirt
Sodden, drummed down earth

He has lifted that hand
And pointed it to the sky

Now he moves his hand
And points to his right, open eye

From still nothing:
this

From his lips
this:

*

Hear then now of the battle
between the eagle and the condor
That of the Bone and the Sorcerer
Reborn with each passing line

Of 9 hands, attractive, and one
from the marrow shorn

Of slavery ancient, wickedness
overflowing throughout the land

where the homeless burn down
your homes

Of a war recent won
and babes hung by boughs
nailed there to die alone

squirming as they go

Oh woe
They are hanging the native men
Oh woe
This land belongs
to none

This human sacrifice
Sacrificial bones
From scaffolds fall
one to one to one
and the shit drips down
on newfound Christian soil

Oh woes
Of a great long tribal drumming
Upright hands, hands to the sky
Rebellious hearts can never die
And loyalty
Is paid in blood

Rivers flood til symbols drown
The upside: small, sour towns
built red upon the lie

Til comes a channeler
whose right hand withers dry

Against the coming tied
Against the bones
piled to the sky
he asks:

Who was the Diamond Maid?
And did she really die?

Who was the firstborn son?
And where now does he lie?

His asking
Splits the sky

His asking
Splits the sky

Read the Lyric from the Beginning