The Buffalo

                     a book he was reading

suggests(inanely)  subtly  seductively  --  as if it were trying to talk a girl out of her panties  --  that the Native Indian tribes across pre-historic America and into its western push  plugged as Manifest Destiny(Gaaaad  --  aint that the best reason ever) saw benefits from the European White Man’s arrival on the shores of the Continent(Their Continent would have been more appealing  but they did not conceive of land ownership  --   another White Man’s concept

and His Appropriation)

the author touts how Natives were introduced to horses 

he touts the benefit they learned of improved hunting by the introduction of firearms

the enlightened trade of tangible Goods  for liquor

the writer even touts how the White Man tried to stop Indian tribes from becoming infected by smallpox   and while methods of vaccinations were had in the Cuntry’s(even then) urban centers they did not make them available to the Indians

aptly quoting the writer:

“(1837) In Dakota the smallpox left a wide stretch of open land on both sides of the Missouri from Fort Pierre about 250 miles upstream, in country formerly claimed by the Arikara, Mandan, and Hidatsa.”

while he and who he associated with would call that genocide

the writer did not

it was among many genocides perpetuated in the New World(not America  --  he had to catch himself) with a deathly agent 

 

either a trick picked up from Cortez the Killer in 1521 against the Aztecs                                             

a priest who witnessed the events wrote:

“As the Indians did not know the remedy of the disease they died in heaps like bedbugs. In many places it happened that everyone in a house died and, as it was impossible to bury the great number of dead, they pulled down the houses over them so that their homes become their tombs.” *

or the Massachusetts(it wasnt called Massachusetts then) smallpox genocide of 1617 – 1619(a historical footnote) where an estimated 90% of Native Indians died

its survivors were the Machicans of Berkshire who limited their contact with the infectious Europeans

evidently the New World tribes couldnt handle Old World cooties

the corruption of European(Eurasian) plagues and diseases

they never became so civilised to squander their health  their nearness to the Land or its Earthling Brothers and Sisters

and while many tribes fashioned and wore elaborate ceremonial headdresses 

not one was fashioned like the Plague doctors anteater masks

or did they make lousy their villages with the foetid squalor that existed in Old World cities

those who claimed to be Gaaads Chosen  the Most Perfect People  existed only in their racial and societal constructs

and their bloodlust for armament to kill The Other

this book of The Buffalo

                                        unleashed more than he bargained for

Fadder’s Day afternoon,  21  6. 15

*  http://mason.gmu.edu/~alaemmer/disease/smallpox.pdf

 

Walp
          she welched on their deal 

he couldnt miss it if he tried

a big gauzy cottonball of eggs

Really eighteyes  What was the deal  I know you got enough brain matter to stitch out a web and agreed to our agreement

why would she  a black widow  renege

all eight eyes blinked simultaneously 

the big eyes silent treatment

she might have had a better shot at it if they were big brown eyes

not black 

                not black like the harbinger of death or the soulless eyes of a Great White

that merely reflect your horrified terror-distended features    before it strikes

and then leaves you alive  disabled  gored

leaking blood like engine oil   knowing there will be another strike

and perhaps another strike

before you pass out from massive blood loss

or perhaps your endorphins  dopamine  kicks in to anaesthetise you

and you bob haphazardly  lazily  on the rolling surface

a blissful junkie

No sweetheart  that aint cutting it

We had a deal

I got opposable thumbs

I got a stick

I pick up the stick in my fist and the cotton candy ball goes byebye

Sorry  

          a late abortifacient

Im usually prochoice

 

but not when an agreement is violated  a trust denied

You can stay in the tin mailbox if you want

                                                                                                                              But you cant be surprised by my actions

I dig Nature calls  but when She did   you should have taken the call outside the box

Ca pische

if she didnt get his English maybe she could take a hint from his mongrel Italian syllables

he just ran the gamut of his Romantic Languages

 

blinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblink

Thats all you got

Big black eyes

Ill give you a moment

Say yer goodbyes

Im getting a stick

he couldnt say that he didnt have misgivings

he pulled the egg sac intact from the mailbox and considerable strands from her web that trailed off the stick like iridescent streamers he had on his first bicycle as a boy

it had training wheels

he found a favorable shaded spot and wound the strands  --  with much ado for its stickiness  --  to a thatch of dead weeds

if they hatched thered be plenty of creepers and crawlers to nosh on

hed check after the weekend to see if she blew the pop stand  vacated the premise for another dig

he hoped not

but he couldnt blame her

though hed miss the brittle empties scattered on the floor of the mailbox like tea leaves from which to divine

animals bones guts insect carapaces and yarrow sticks

                                                                                            beggars cant be choosers

afternoon,  Friday,  19  6. 15

at a piqued distance

                                  they were hard edged silhouettes

against a Magritte blue sky and glacial white billowing clouds

they stood at the edge of the world

their upper bodies   thick skeins of firesmoke falling up off hardwood coals

burning in the sacred metalworked bowls of their bellies and loins

                                                                                                            incensors  scorching the sky nearest them

machismo

one  dark  Mexican 

the other  lighter   Spanish

squared in profile

facing each other

approximate heights    slender  muscular builds

hung from either of their hips were holstered six-guns  tethered with rawhide cords to their thighs

above them she thought she heard the hiss of the thinnest wind  then recognised  in it

there were words  their words spit between them

she was riding her sorrel mare parallel to the ridge they stood on

they did not acknowledge her

trying to arrest their attention  she waved her wide-rimmed work-stained hat in her gloved fist

they began stepping back away from each other 
  

the wind dead

their arms went lax to their sides

their hands their wrists at the leatherworked holsters

recognising their face-off

she yanked her hat down roughly onto her head  wheeled her pony   dug in her spurs

she went at them in a dead run

they never looked

at a sudden they drew their revolvers 

red flames from the muzzles uplit their faces horribly

revealing the savagery

she saw individual bullets streak the sky and strike their bodies  tearing their way through them  through their profiles  like obscene papermache strips ripped away
exposing the Magritte sky behind where they had been

the bullets howled and exceeded what could possibly have been loaded into the revolvers
the reports thundered
more strips ripped away
                                         where legs had been  

torsos

and heads

they did not collapse onto themselves
the strips filled in by the Magritte sky

then
         with scant tatters left
the revolvers went quiet
fell onto the yellow sand

the tatters began to coil onto themselves as ribbon

and then faded

and disappeared



when she dismounted the sorrel on top of the ridge
she found only the six-guns       

    she buried them there
                                                  under the bloodless sand and words she learned at funerals

dream from Day-between-Two-Ts,  17  6. 15

1627,  Friday,  19  6. 15