Shame on!

By Chrystos

fake shamen give me some money
I’ll make you a catholic priest in a week
couple thousand I’ll name you pope
of our crystal breakfast cereal circle of healers
Give me some money you’ll be free
Give me some money you’ll be whole
Give me some money you’ll be right
with past lives zooming by your door
Steal from anybody to make a paste-up tacked-on
holy cat box of nothing
I tell you I’m sincere & that excuses everything
I’m a sincere thief a sincere rapist a sincere killer
My heart is pure my head is fuzzy give me some money
& you’ll be clear
Your pockets will be anyhow
Give me a dime I’ll erase your crime
Give me a dollar give me a ten give me a thousand
Fastest growing business in America
is shame men shame women
You could have a sweat same as you took manhattan
you could initiate people same as into the elks
with a bit of light around your head
& some “Indian” jewelry from hong kong why you’re all set
Come on now take something more that doesn’t belong to you
Come on & take that’s what you know best
Whites takes Reds turns away
Listen I’ve got a whole bunch of holey underpants
you could use in a ceremony you can make up yourself
Be a born again Indian it’s easy
You want to buy spiritual enlightenment we got plenty
& if you act today we’ll throw in four free 100-watt lightbulbs
so you can have your own private halo
What did you say? You met lynn andrews in person?
That woman ought to be in a bitter herb stew
I’ll send you lies half-price better than hers
america is starvng to death for spiritual meaning
It’s the price you pay for taking everything
It’s the price you pay for buying everything
It’s the price you pay for loving your stuff more than life
Everything goes on without you
You can’t hear the grass breath
Because you’re too busy talking
About being an Indian holy woman two hundred years ago
You sure must stink if you didn’t let go
The wind doesn’t want to talk to you
because you’re always right
even when you don’t know what you’re talking about
We’ve been polite for five hundred years
& you still don’t get it
Take nothing you cannot return
Give to others give more
Walk quietly Do what needs to be done
Give thanks for your life
Respect all beings
Simple & it doesn’t cost a penny

Untitled

By Chrystos

This is a give-away poem
I want to give you the first daffodil opening from the earth I have sown
To give you warm loaves of bread baked in soft mounds like breasts...
I have wrapped your face around me, a warm robe
I give you blankets woven of flowers and roots
Come closer
I have more to give
this basket is very large
I have stitched it out of your kind words...
This basket is only the beginning...
Within this basket is something you have been looking for all of your life
Come take it
Take as much as you want
I give you seeds of a new way
I give you the moon shining on a fire of singing women
I give you the sound of our feet dancing
I gve you the sound of our thoughts flying
I give you the sound of peace moving into our faces and sitting down
Come
This is a give away poem...
When my hands are empty
I will be full

Alone

in the Queer bar with ice water that costs $1.50
twenty years & hundreds of girlfriends later
I still
don't know how to do this
Never will
So I enjoy the closely swaying women's bodies
flicker of simmering desire
in this one place where we can sort of be
ourselves
that in every town is always smoky, tacky, & not quite clean
where class & race dim in red spinning lights
a haze of booze
Sober
this is not my home
but there's no place else to go
in a strange city.