TASHA'S TRUTH

TASHA’S TRUTH

(We see men as shadows, moving into position. There is a white man in a business suit. There is a white man in paramilitary uniform. There is a (Indian or White) man in policeman’s uniform. There are two young Indian men. There is an older Indian woman. They all carry pistols. There is a young Indian woman kneeling at the edge of the stage. The light rises on her. It is daybreak.)

TASHA

Creator Father, Earth Mother if this is to be my last day of life, grant me this request. I don’t want anyone to take my life, to snuff it out like a candle. If I am to die, I give my life freely for The People and my children, in exchange for their freedom, for their healing. May my name burn with the fire of youth and power and truth, all that I sacrifice. I have served you faithfully and I have done everything you have asked of me. I left the home of my Ancestors and traveled to this harsh land. I have stood between these beautiful people and the ones who want to kill them. I did not run when fear and suspicion turned my way. I am not what they say. I am not a traitor. I held my ground and carried this burden that you gave to me. It was all for my children, that they might be free. Light the pathway for my children so they won’t get lost or forget who they are. They are Native, born from Mother Earth. Let them walk forever in love. Don’t let them know hurt or harm. Keep me in their hearts. Let them understand that everything I did, I did for them. I leave my life force and all the love in my heart for my people and my children.

(The shadow people raise their weapons and fire.)
(Lights black out.)

FOR THE LOVE OF WHALES

You called your gods of death and destruction
To bury our village in blood and guts
To drown us in our own pride and culture
And capture the souls of those you had judged

Your curse circled the world for all to hear
Like a frightened sparrow sent into combat
With the spirit guardian of my blood
Who rose to meet the small pitiful thing

I sing and dance in ancient agreement
For the love of the one who dies to feed me
I will forever live in her power
She will live forever in my spirit

You and I could throw power for ten days
In a Spiritual War of light and dark
The skies would thunder with our hate and fears
Mother Earth would shudder in deep sorrow

You howl your virtuous creeds and hexes
As I raise the protectors of this land
The Creator weeps for all the children
Locked in lost battle for the love of whales

HISTORY

(for Paul Watson)

What is the past the sage asked the student?
Does it fade like mist in the glaring sun?
Is it scrawled in sand as the tide turns?
Is it a perfectly woven basket
preserved in a mud slide until needed?
Is it the hunched brown woman with bright eyes?
Her cragged face is the face of Mother Earth.
Do you wear time as a stink albatross
Rotting with your sins and redemptions.
Is age the red rose you planted last year
Lush and fragrant with your tribute of love

Will your words be sung by your grandchildren
or be born as a curse mumbling in the dark?

PAUL WATSON

THE SEASHEPHERD
AND POLITICALY CORRECT RACISM
(a parody of his parody of "The Walrus and the Carpenter")

by Monica J Charles
(A VETERAN OF WOUNDED KNEE 1973

The Shepherd slithered upon the sea
Painted with Killer Whales
Who do understand the hunt
He played tapes of their hunting songs
Not knowing what they said
As pods of Orca gathered

The Makah silently ignored him
And prayed for his eyes and heart to open
To the sacred circle of life
But he made too much money
Playing cowboys and Indians
Howling racist stereotypes

"You alcoholics and drug users!"
He screamed on the front pages
He didn't say it was his government
That gave these t o us for genocide
So they could steal our resources
It was they who endangered the gray

"I'm not a racist!" He bellowed for the TV
"I was the medic at Wounded Knee in 1973
The REAL veterans phoned each other perplexed
"I don't remember this guy, do you?"
"The medic was tall, skinny, handsome and black."
"Were you an FBI agent Paul? Are you now?

Pods of Killer Whales gather in council
To figure out this abberation
The sounds of a hunt and gray whales dying
When no such thing was happening
A warning Paul, you'd better listen good
You can't play with the Spirit without paying

He conned a lonely elder
into abandoning her traditional wisdom
And parroting his words instead
"You're the good Indian. They're the bad."
"Come with me, I'll make it worth your while,"
"If you tell the world, The Makah are tainted."

But the Whalers maintained discipline
They paddled each day out to sea
"Bare chested warriors!" He leered to the press.
But who's the savage? Who's the gentleman?
Who did not answer hate with hate?
Who turned the other cheek?

"The time has come," the racist said
"To crow and shout and spin."
"They survived our smallpox and alcohol."
"But we'll call it their sin."
"Their Treaty we'll destroy
Then throw it in the trash bin."

"But hold on now," the shepherds wailed
"Real Indians should paint their face!"
"And tie feathers in their braided hair."
Okay Paul, let's play fair!
Put on your kilt, paint yourself blue.
Where's your 18th century ship?

An anti-tank gun, the shepherd lied
Another time an elephant gun
"I'll use whatever image
will bleed your hearts and wallets
They're on welfare not me!
Just send me money! More money"

"I know what's best!" did the shepherd cry
For my skin is white
"A new industry for you,
Cameras not harpoons
Look over there while I dump my bilge
You didn't see Jonathon strike a whale!

"It seems a shame," The shepherd said,
"The lies and hate didn't work."
"They got their whale on live TV"
All the Tribes did rejoice.
They came to the feast from Fiji and Africa.
Nothing we did could stop it."

"In Port Angeles they marched
To stop the hate
I tried so hard to generate."
The world is evolving Paul
Despite your machinations
Love always overcomes fear.

There were no Samurai
That was another racist ploy
To create a backlash of white fear,
While Killer Whales are dying
And Nuclear plants reopen
Are you an agent from some secret government cell?

THE REINCARNATION OF GEORGE ARMSTRONG CUSTER

A black ship sneaks out of the seething mists
Booming shrieks of orca slaying gray whales
A new steed and battle song for pogroms
For survivors of small pox and liquor
His bullets are words of racial hatred
His new black plague is disinformation
A drop of truth in a gallon of lies
George staged his crusade on the front pages
In pompous headlines and action photos
Of blackships and jet skis and zodiacs
Swarming a lone hand-carved whaling canoe
"Little Johnny" missed the final battle
He committed a high seas felony
His pony trampled a trusting gray whale
George lost his hair again at Neah Bay
When the Makah harpooned their first gray whale
And took us to the new millenium
As real Indians like our ancestors

SOUL MATES

Boy and girl babies
stretch to grasp each others hand
passing in the crowd

THE LEGACY

I've given your name
To my teddy bear
I call him friend
I share my troubles
He let's me cry
Until I feel better
I hold him at night
When I am afraid
When he reminds
me too much of you
I beat the shit out of him

STELLAR HEALING

Granny says when you look to the night sky
You are seeing your soul naked and burning
Phosphorescent footprints of your journey
How can I tell you that I've discovered
loneliness entombed in the cramped ravines
of a city filled with unsung people
I am lost without the Seven Sisters
Or the full moon luminous and perfect
behind trees outside my bedroom window
Skeletal dances ending winter's cold
I've lived a thousand lives watching shooting stars
blast across waters stilled with reverence
I've tied my prayers to a meteor
for the grace to heal my life in stories

LOVE MEDICINE 2

You thought you had trapped a sparrow
Yet I am the mother of all eagles
I watch you struggle in my grasp
Talons that could scoop your heart
Still beating as I feed it to my young

I wondered why I couldn't release you
Or throw you to the wind
And watch you spiral to earth
Land born as you are

This morning just before the sun rose
Burning away your darkness
I smelled the ugliness
I once called love

I roll you in my talons
As I decide t o crush you
And listen to your bones pop
Or to smash you on the rocks
And smell your blood

Or I could open my hand
And watch you run
Staggering and stumbling in your realization
That you brought down an eagle

THE ORDEAL

Creator Father, Creator Mother
I will do whatever needs to be done
All I ask in return is you be there
As I hold Truth burning white in my hands

When I have wrestled hate and discovered
it's source flourishing in my very soul
A toxic vine growing in the fertile
beliefs of all my self doubts and judgments

Watch me hunt greed like a ravenous wolf
tracking a deer through the woods to water
I see in the shimmering reflection
my fear of not-enough devouring me

When I have tired of running from my lust
I find fear of creative passion
forcing me to steal power from another
creating a cycle of victimhood

When I have faced jealousy and found
my own fear of flying too near the sun
My eagle feathers burned from borrowed wings
I crash to earth another fallen star

When you find me huddled in a corner
afraid to reach out to love and be loved
Stand with me Creator God through it all
I promise to do what needs to be done

LOVE MEDICINE

What happens when the shackles rust away
Or an amethyst and pearls trillium blooms
A wild lily so powerful and fragile
She blooms once every seven years
That love outlasts your lust
What happens when that love turns to hate
As summer turns to frost
And she falls to the ground

THE VITALITY

My Spirit is the cadence and hue of:
a song of white dawn
the flame of yellow noon sun
the red blood of twilight
the cedar smoke of black night sky

My Spirit is the elemental
old growth forest of cedar
a coyote howl of the west wind
a wild fire born of lightning
a dazzling white shell cloud

My Spirit has
hair of pounded cedar bark
and phosphorescent eyes that
sees in a starless night
My Spirit
guards my sleep against ghosts
and loves me when I forget myself

My Spirit's first word was "seagull"
and didn't back down when I abandoned myself
and the smell of whiskey and angry shouts
chased me through incessant mazes of dreams

My Spirit carried the souls of my people
When I ran away to forget
We scrubbed my face with tears
And dried my eyes with laughter

My Spirit says I can walk alone at night
Though I sleep with a night light
My Spirit found the lair of the enemy
and chewed off his tail to tie on my braid

My Spirit calls me "Celestial Lady"
But secretly named me "Story Weaver"
My Spirit taught me songs for wealth
Then made me give away everything, even the spoons

My Spirit painted my face with red earth
and black charcoal from the fiercest fires
My Spirit burned my dreams with apocalyptic terror
Then gifted me petroglyphs of prophecy

My Spirit signed peace treaties
My Spirit escaped into legend
My Spirit survived on the reservation
outliving alcohol, drugs and smallpox blankets

WILD CATS

(For Joy Harjo)

She had some wild cats,
Bits of black fluff
abandoned as the white preacher
fled poverty's flood
that engulfed his flock
in alcohol and drugs

She had some wild cats
who shared her cold spaghetti
cheeks blushed with sauce
They licked each others face
and rolled full-bellied
in the sweet cut grass

She had some wild cats
Who ran away when Dad died
They lived hard in the woods
Fasting and walking for a year
They came home lean silent and healed

She had some wild cats
Who went away to boarding school
And slept through the night
They loved to read books
And feel the weight of words
rolling from her fingers
As she mixed them on a page

She had some wild cats
Who loved with the passion
Of the wild west wind
who brings rains that flood
And flings down trees
that refuse to bend

She had some wild cats
That bathed in icy rivers
They painted their faces
and sang the sun into the sky
Defying white laws of gravity

She had some wild cats
Cats that lived in cartoons
And chased technicolor mice
tiptoeing past the dog
Day after silly day

She had some wild cats
who learned to hate themselves
For their beautiful brown skin
And flew their car into a tree
Into the fabled tunnel of white light

She had some wildcats
who survived the crash
And took their first sober steps
Since their cousin gave them beer
At their ninth birthday party

She had some wildcats
Who learned to love themselves
Bought a second hand computer
And wrote poetry plays and stories
To begin the healing

THE TEARDROP

The curling waves surged higher than I stood
Crashed and rushed inland testing my balance
It pulled me seaward as another rose
I thought myself a broken piece of wood
Dragged here and there on the bottomless sea
At dawn I cried and tasted in my tears
The same cleansing salt of the changing tides
I realized that I am the ocean
The broken piece of wood, just a moment

THE SAVIOR

When I was a child I heard a story
Of a gentle man skewered to a tree
For teaching peace and love to his people
Raven didn't believe and flew to that land
He came home ruffling his coal black feathers
He walked the beach for days saying nothing
"It's true!" He cawed to all who came to hear
"He fed a hundred mouths with three small fish!"
"He prayed clear water to ruby red wine!"
"He carried the cross that would release him!"
"They imprisoned his body in a cave."
"On the third morning he came back to life!"
Raven tilted his head and spread his wings
"I told him he should have come to us first!"

THE TREASURE

I found a curling pink shell that captured
The roar of green ocean whispering songs
of Tribes exploring her watery soul
I held it to my heart and remembered
The first time I saw the bright morning star
A pulsing white cross on the horizon
A dazzling butterfly with tattered wings
The lonely hooting of a spotted owl
The scent of pines after the hot desert
The day my father died and returned home
I lifted the pearly shell to my ear
It sang the sweetest song I'd ever heard
I laid it gently in the wet black sand
For you to find and add your song of life