by Mankh
You give but
where do you get
from
so as to give?
Did someone give to you?
And where did they get from?
or did it come
from inside of you or
from the sweat of your labor?
Did the Earth give it to you
or did you just take,
or give and take?
Or did you receive
and now give?
Giving
is no guarantee of good things.
The Native Peoples gave
but were taken
advantage of
by those who only wanted
to get, to take
without giving back
but now pretend for a day
by giving to each other.
Research the Pequot massacre — 1637,
also the Wampanoag,
also the dinner modeled after a dinner
in a 1927 book Northwood: A Tale of New England
with an epigraph:
“He who loves not his country, can love nothing.”
That “country” was super-imposed over Native lands,
teaching school kids to forget the Earth,
forget their Mother,
forget the Natives
except for some fairy tale slower than normal
but still fastfood meal
before it’s buy buy buy
so as to give give give.
Did the Earth give it to you
or did you just take,
or give and take?
~ Mankh (Walter E. Harris III)
allbook-books.com