Paha Sapa (in the time of Corona)

I drove out a gravel road on the cusp of society past a lumber yard and the deep rutted ruins of a drive-by deer decapitation and I parked in the dirt parking lot of a pole barn and looked to the east
Where the air curdled and spun above murky swamp areas the snow melt
The Badlands
Rising into the low hanging snow clouds threatening apocalypse on apocalypse
The lone blackbird on the telephone line
Eyeing for an apology

To the west where the cellular towers hover spewing 5G over my house built on the unstable back slope of a limestone cliff a landfill a landslide waiting to happen built on the backs of the people whose bones lie buried in these sacred soils
Souls in soil in soul in oil and
Would you love me in a landslide
Hold your fingertips to mine as mud filled our screams and memories flooded our minds as life slid into a backyard as helicopters hovered over the emergency room just a block away and
full

To the north where racism whispers louder than is polite because our town is divided and conquered because we thought we would take what we could when we could and now we wonder why others squander what we so easily attained
The bully on the playground never eats
All his taken lunches
Spends all his milk money
Flies over oceans to visit prehistoric or renaissance lands and understand the smallness…