Give Me A Name

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Give Me A Name

It gets dark now at dawn

The old ones say the world has died

But just hasn't laid down to sleep yet

I don't know about that

But I know that everything just feels wrong.

I found me a diamond yesterday

Laying in the midnight sun

Down in the creek bed big as my fist

Fishes swimming all around it

Like they were protecting it for me.

My grandfather started singing a song

But got too choked up to finish

And he handed me his drum

And said "I'm giving you this song

I can't sing it anymore."

So I caught my pony

And we ran over thirty two miles of red dirt 

Dark clouds passing over our heads like birds

Laughing, trying to hold onto childhood

And singing my grandfather's song.

If I grow up, I want to be...I want to be a human

A being made of ground

And breath breathed by the Creator

Not one of the clay people who walk around

With hollow eyes and empty souls.

My brother's like that

He was human before he went away to war

But he came back hollow and soul-less

With broken eyes and no sound to his laughter

I don't think he's in there anymore.

My father hasn't spoken in thirteen years

Not since the day I was born

Not once has he smiled at me or touched my hair

My mother said he wanted a boy to replace my brother

But I came into the world in a feminine form.

I hear the old ones sometimes

They whisper to me in the woods

And down by the river when I'm fishing

Sometimes we sing together in the native tongue

And they make me forget that I'm a nameless child.

There are no children here, only me

And what I know, I've taught myself

We live so far away from civilization

I'm not sure what country we are in

Or what planet we live on.

When my grandmother lay dying

She gave me her beads and her wedding dress

Made of fine, soft skins made by her mother

And she said, "Daughter, don't let yourself die."

And I promised I wouldn't but I'm not sure, I'm not sure.

I wish I lived in the days of the warriors

And teepees and buffaloes and sharp arrowheads

Not this faded gray world and this tar papered shack

On this plot of dead earth

Where hope no longer grows.

If I grow up....if I become a woman

I think I might try to run away from here

I'll take my pony, for I can see the longing, too, in his eyes

And we'll walk until we can see the sun still shining in the morning

There among the humans.... if we find any.

 And I'll give my diamond

To the man who will give me a name.

                    

  ©By Voo

     Nov 10, 07

     6:45 p.m.