A Duck's Tune

Ya kut unta pishno ma*

Ya kut unta pishno ma

So I moved to this place,

Iowa City, Ioway

Where green-headed mallards

walk the streets day and night,

and defecate on sidewalks.

Greasy meat bags in wetsuits,

disguise themselves as pets

and are free as birds.

Maybe Indians should have thought of that?

Ya kut unta pishno ma

Maybe you would have

left us alone,

if we put on rubber bills,

and rubber feet,

Quacked instead of complained,

Swam instead of danced

waddled away when you did

what you did…

Ya kut unta pishno ma

So I moved to the Place

The “Jewel of the Midwest”

Where ghosts of ourselves

Dance the sulphur trails.

Fumes emerge continuous

from the mouths of

Three-faced Deities who preach,

“We absolve joy through suffering.”

Ya kut unta pishno ma

So I moved to this place where

in 1992, up washed Columbus again

like a pointy-chinned Son of Cannibals.

His spin doctors rewrite his successes

“After 500 years and 25 million dead,

One out of 100 American Indians commit suicide

One out of 10 American Indians are alcoholics

49 years is the average lifespan of American Indians.”

Each minute burns

the useful and useless alike

Sing Hallelujah

Praise the Lord

Ya kut unta pishno ma

And when you foreigners

build your off-world colonies

and relocate in outer space

This is what we will do

We will dance,

We will dance

to a duck’s tune.

Ya kut unta pishno ma

Notes:

* This is a dance refrain for a song. The phrase is to be performed. Ya kut unta pishno ma means "We were doing this." Dancing.

Poetry and Music