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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.
