Well, how, big chief,
I am an Indian too.
Well let’s get drunk around
my fireplace too.
Let’s get drunk one time
together and take a nap together;
after, let’s throw away our past,
every blessed thing we loved,
throw it away for good;
it betrayed us, we
hate it all, the sacred dances,
the forest, the plains,
the wigwams, long houses, horses,
birch-bark canoes, bloody war-raids,
bloody scalps, bows and arrows,
all of it, we hate it all,
reminders, remainders
of despair and loss,
the trappings of disappointment,
the junk of millennia, chains
harnessed to hold us close
to those days
on the reservation,
not gone in a moment, we know,
not gone ever.
Toss it all, toss it all,
those memories,
don’t think about them,
don’t think at all;
just take a rest
from everything awhile
and let it be.
