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Lost Tribesmen, One Throne Magazine

"Soul Ascending" by Josh Hutchinson.
© Please do not reproduce without artist's permission.

LOST TRIBESMEN
by Grimace
 

Who's going to be the rosetta guardian

When we need more protection

To utilize our core defenses

Because the suicides, the booze and crime

Are just poor reflections

Unless you're born against them

Take a vision quest, we listen less

Mapquesting the four directions

War prevention is what the denizen feels

The laughing and lessons will heal

Exempt what the psychos do, so cycle through

Adapt the urban, re-inventing the medicine wheel

Rejecting the deals of land claims

Fixing our wounds with bandaids

With these simpleton apologies of past wrongs we can't change

Tobacco is not sacred in an ashtray

And we're closing off the last days of our past ways

Cats replacing smudging with sweetgrass

With blunts and a weed sack

Don't feel foolish if you wanna grow your hair longer

It isn't stupid to believe in windigo, shape shifters and bear walkers

Or the benevolent elements 'cause our medicine men would scare doctors

But we can get back to that, just got to find where our fire went

'Cause we're the left over products of our environment

But hey, call me red cloud look up the sun's bleeding

Spit it out you don't need rum for a fun evening

Open your eyes

The spirits

Broke in your minds

For a drum teaching

But nowadays if you don't listen,

I think they're done speaking

 

Grimace (Caleb Trudeau) is a hip hop artist and painter from the Wikwemikong First Nation, who's now living in Toronto. He is a former facilitator of the Sound Poets' Circle at the Acadmey of the Impossible. "Lost Tribesmen" was originally published in the Toronto Street Writers anthology West of What We Know.

 

 
 
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