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Lying in Wait

Lance Wood

This is inspired by the Native people of this country and the diluted history that has served to cover up the truth behind European Colonization. The Great Plains are a sacred place and have been for thousands of years. The Eurpoeans killed off and drove out the buffalo that  were the Native peoples’ greatest resource. This was the ripple effect that created a catalyst for the Natives as famine, disease, and warfare rifled through the land. One by one, village by village, tribe by tribe, the Native people were forced into a European way of life or faced death. This poem is a culture testifying to the crimes against humanity. 

Black light on a white cow,

Whiskey and rye

A broken feather and a ruffled brow

Where are all the buffalo?

Desolation of the Great Plains

Mother Nature weeps from her springs

Flowing water with piercing blood stains

As the village lies in its ruins

Why did they come?

Crippling silhouette of a demon in an angel’s pelt

Death is their answer to a morning’s sun

Every moon is an impending destiny for bloodshed

Why did they come?

Chanting of a summoning of ancestral beings 

For the origins of Coyote shall cast a single pebble

Creating a tidal wave of revelations 

This is the end of days in the Great Plains

The people scatter into tiny ants

Disposed of in every direction

There is no victory

Only the forgotten history

Of a culture buried beneath the leaves

and in between the memories of elders flees

The spirit of the people is awakening now

Hiding in the darkness upon the white cow.

No longer do we drink the devil in the glass bottle

And reside in your prison-walled casinos

A resistance is rising

A reckoning becoming

We are educated doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs

The tools you took away

We are using to take back

The time of reclaiming the land is now

We the people, are the black light 

Shining on the white cow