Long Lakota Poems

Poems about Fathers and Grandfathers I

I translated the first six Native American poems for my father when he chose to enter hospice and end his life by not taking dialysis …


Cherokee Travelers' Blessing I
loose translation/interpretation...

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Native American Translations

Cherokee Travelers' Blessing I
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

I will extract the thorns from your feet.
For yet a little while, we will walk life's sunlit paths together.
I will love you like my own...

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Salat Days
by Michael R. Burch 

(dedicated to my grandfather, Paul Ray Burch Sr.)

I remember how my grandfather used to pick poke salat ...
though first, usually, he’d stretch back in the front porch swing,
dangling his long...

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Crazy Horse Monument

Up there! On the Black Hills Mountain, 1
A work in progress sculptured in granite,
Of a stern faced warrior, strong and determined, 2
Unadorned in a war bonnet, with his hair flowing in the wind,
And...

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On December the twenty eight in the year eighteen ninety
Major Samuel Whitside was on patrol, with the seventh cavalry
When they sighted a party of Indians from the Lakota nation
And told them they'd be escorted to...

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Mount Rushmore; Carved In Stone

From deep within the earth’s crust,
An orogeny pushes
The batholith upwards
To become ‘The Shrine of Democracy,’
Of weathered presidential faces
Chiseled in rock in South Dakota;
Representing 150 years of history
(From birth of a nation
To...

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Cerebral Intelligence Empowered With...
Google Embedded Microchip™¡åßç

Nowadays...ah so passe routine top notch roboticized
brain surgery ushers, inoculates, begets... promising
immunity against pesky flagging and/or absent minded
precursor to dementia praecox, alzheimer's regarding
partial/total recall asper memory, said loss linkedin with
age...

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THE LAST STAND

Where have all my people gone, the Navaho, Lakota, and the Sue,
Smothered beneath the white man's blanket,
Chocking for a breath of airs life's sustaining oxygen.
The beating heart of native drums, are stilled frozen,
In...

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Erasure Poem 
So many fake Indians these days
Elizabeth Warren is one
And according to my DNA results
I am too

But my grand-parents spoke Cherokee my mom claims
And they disappeared into the hills 
She claims

Is the DNA test...

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Silent lake secrets of a summer’s evening
Beyond meadow’s grasses, rustled in bits of expectation
Light sparkle of reflected diamonds dance on shimmery pond 
Cool clear waters delighting the heart of Sister Raccoon and Brother Opossum

Devoted forest...

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Where have all my people gone, the Navaho, Lakota,
And the Sioux,
Choking for a breath of life's sustaining air,
Smothered beneath the white man's blanket.
The beating heart of native drums, are stilled, frozen
In the middle of it's...

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Hey Mitch McConnell...
about all this talk (I hear) about indefatigable (Phila/ Philly-buster)

Police sirens wail doth punctuate the air
ear splitting soundclouds blare
another typical arrest
(guilty until proven innocent if ever)
so much for Black Lives matter protests
biased accusations...

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‘Wana Hin Gle’ the Lakota call me,
‘Wana Hin Gle’ my given name

‘He Who Happens Now,’ the drum beat has found me,
reaching into this moment beyond glory and fame

As ‘Wana Hin Gle,’ my spirit has wandered,
as...

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Layli Long Soldier speaks ...
Legalese: with lots of "Whereas"

Her Lakota people make other news in praying -
She really believes in prayer as resistance

Yes, "Indians" are so very different
But I have not read, ever, they fought...

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‘Wana Hin Gle’ the Lakota call me,
‘Wana Hin Gle’ my given name

‘He Who Happens Now,’ the drumbeat has found me,
reaching into this moment beyond glory and fame

As ‘Wana Hin Gle,’ my spirit has wandered,
as ‘Wana...

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This poem was written after I took a tour of the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in Wyoming, the site of Custer's Last Stand.

It was the year eighteen sixty-eight.
The U.S. government signed the Fort Laramie...

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‘Wana Hin Gle’ the Lakota call me,
  ‘Wana Hin Gle’ my given name

‘He Who Happens Now,’ the drum beat has found me,
  reaching into this moment beyond glory and fame

As ‘Wana Hin Gle,’...

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_____________________________________
 
The black mesa yield 
of goodness, peacefulness
and gifts of knowledge abound

With a building rhythm  upon stretched elk hide
the ominous drum beat plays loud
a ceremony has begun 
as the sun set calm Westward

Incessant whispers...

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Government (show) Shut Down December 2018

Messianic Don found tarnished appeal
trumpeted bluster thwarted
with muted (hip hip hooray) Democratic zeal
played (on microscale) like quashed
ill fated braggadocio big deal

bombast, sans General George Armstrong
Custer's last stand,
viz Little Bighorn, achilles...

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Where will I be?
When your plane bursts the clouds
On its way back home
To your boys’ embrace and Asia 
Dissolves
Like a forgotten stopover
On another ticket to Destination 
Life.

So where will I be?
When the softness of your...

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They call me Brave Heart
Not because of my courage but because it is my last name
And not because I "like" Mel Gibson that much but because it is 
how I was raised.
Half black and native...

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The Black Hills wept for Thee

East of the Black Hills of South Dakota, 
On the Pine Ridge Reservation,
Live a proud tribe of Oglala Lakota, 
Part of the Great Sioux Nation.

On saddled chargers rode half the...

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Lakota, Arapaho
Cheyenne, Oglala
Minneconjou
Where are they now?
Why is there so much dust
Over a fillet of memory?
The smoke fires are dead
And the discords of our life
We write as history.

     It is significant still
...

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I love art and I love history….and I love how each one is transcended
when, to my joy and utter delight, the two of them are blended .

On a bluff overlooking the Missouri River in South...

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I'm very small
I am called Standing Tall
My story to be read as i live through it all.

Our Dakota lands are forest and vast
Where our ancestors have hunted
From long in the past.

Our tribes are, a confederation...

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