Children Shining On the Moon
Witiko lives in the North
Witiko lives in the Wind
Witiko's gift is the Wind
Witiko's voice howls and cuts
Witiko kills the father's eyes
Witiko slices the mother's tongue
And children whirl like lost chicks
like when the grouse hen is dead and eaten
the wind blows hard and cold
Witiko screams and tears up the land
Everyone is scattered and blown up by the force of it
Flying crystals of ice glittering
The cold white softness of snow
Screaming, still screaming across the black sky
The moon watches, glowing like steel,
Quiet and smooth.
and the snowdrifts pile up in the alleys
where the children got blown
with the dirt and the garbage
trying to hide from the screaming
It doesn't stop.
Their beautiful brown skin melts the snow,
softens the cold hard glaze on the old men's eyes.
and the car door closes.
Slamming out the moon.
Kids turn hard when they learn
to suck cock for cash,
hard and cold at the same time.
Their gentle glow masked by knives in their eyes
"Fucker tried to rip me off,
rip off my sister and my brother,
so I cut him up.
I think he shit himself.
You should'a seen all the blood,
he was fucking spraying it all over."
Tough kids laugh at cruelty.
Then they look up into the cold black sky,
They see the moon sewn into the grandmothers'
web of stars, and hear its song.
Then they shake and cry hot swollen tears that won't stop,
until the needle goes in.
The boys are eager and hungry
They stand close to each other
Their traplines on the dark streets
uncoiled and faded away.
Time to poke up, swim in the heat of the blood,
the needle finds a vein and blooms
hot and red in its barrel
Hungry eyes, eager eyes,
the soft brown skin stretched tight like a drum,
and their breath is shaking, shaking.
He pulls it out and just as fast, faster
pokes his friend, his brother, his lover
and they poke each other circling,
and flying together, harder and faster,
expanding inside their trembling bodies
and filling the world
and each poke is a stab
that slices them off
killing each other
like shadows, the final prints of their bodies in the whiteness,
where they lay melting the snow
where they were thrown,
where they lay down softly, in slow motion.
and their heat rises from deep inside their ass,
deep when the spine is anchored,
the place where the soul doesn't know itself.
Watch that process now
because you can
because your anchor is not torn out
and hanging by a bloody shred.
Watch the shadows grow to cover their eyes
spreading softly across their burning skin.
Watch their flesh dissolve
until your tears blind you
and your crying throat threatens to choke off the air.
Witiko screams with laughter and tears up the world
Witiko's gift is the wind
It lifts the boys out and away
rising through the black sky
and condenses them softly into the furious brilliance of the moon.
Safe and luminous,
they finally shine.
That peaceful, cold shining
that throbs and resonates
Singing in our hearts
because that light is made of the souls
of all the dead children.
Their song is sewn gently and with care
into the grandmothers' web of stars.
For us, Witiko can only scream with laughter
Watching us pinned down and wiggling
scorched by the burden of our nightmares.
Witiko lives in the North
Witiko lives in the Wind
Witiko's gift is the wind
Witiko's voice howls and cuts
Witiko screams and tears up the land
Everyone is scattered and blown
by the force of it.
Screaming, still screaming across the black sky,
The moon watches,
Glowing like steel, quiet and smooth.
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