Red Blues

Red Blues

Mom always said life with a poet would be rough
---K.L. Cederblom


1.
Music. Then, more music. Does it matter what kind?
Let's say it is bagpipes. Or a grade school orchestra
practicing "Roll on, Columbus, Roll on".
Or the blues. Or just a drum that sounds like the blues.
I have heard that kind of drum at three in the morning
when I pulled myself from bed and ordinary nighmares.
Listen.

2.
"Listen, listen, the cat is pissing. Where? On the
chair. Where's the chair?" Cousin, that chair is
three-legged, and dangerous. Place it at the
inherited piano and you'll fall when you reach
for the farthest chord. It happens that way. A
white woman loves you so much that seeds fall from
the cuffs of your pants and grow into orange trees.
She tells you,"Don't ever underestimate the
importance of Vitamin C," but she meant to say,
"Don't want everything so much."

3.
So much to say tonight but the only payphone on
the reservation in OUT OF ORDER. Last week
I tried to call and two teenage Indian girls
sent their dogs after me when I told them I
needed the phone. Once, an operator put me
on hold and left me there, halfway between
touching and becoming. I didn't have enough
strength or quarters left to hang up. Then,
your voice. Your voice, again. Or is it just
neon beer signs buzzing outside the Trading
Post? Or is it a car thumping over a cattle
guard? Or is it this silence so brilliant
I can hear my deaf father's television from
a mile away?

4.
The television was always too loud, until
every conversation was distorted, fragmented.
"Come out with your hands up!" sounded like,
"You will never have a dream come true."
"The aliens are coming! The aliens are coming!"
sounded like,"Just one more beer, sweetheart,
and then we'll go home."
"I love you," sounded like,
"You've got so much to lose."

5.
I lost my wallet outside the 7-11 that summer
and all I worried about was my photograph of
you. My last twenty dollar bill, social security
card, driver's license, tribal I.D., could never
be introduced as evidence. I spent hours digging
through the dumpster but there was nothing.

6.
There is nothing as white as the white girl an
Indian boy loves.

7.
Indian boy, can you hear the music? Then, more
music? No, it's only a pebble rolling down to
strike a small stone, rolling down to strike
a larger stone, rolling down to strike a boulder,
bringing down a mountain. This late in the
20th century, we still make the unknown ours
by destroying it. There is nothing strange
about a dead body or a lumber mill. I read
in the newspaper that motorists kill over a
thousand deer a year on the fifteen mile
stretch of highway between Colville and
Chewelah. No one wrote a letter to the
editor. Now, I think of her white hands,
how dissonant they look against my brown
skin, how together we can easily destroy
our worlds.

8.
Spin the globe, faster and faster, revolution
after revolution, until you stop it with
a fingertip. Where are you now? YOU ARE HERE.
Nothing has changed. Black Elk said,
"Everything tries to be round." Van Gogh
said,"Life is probably round." We're all
just trying to find our way back home.

9.
"Touch home."
I'm driving my car up the switchbacks so familiar
I close my eyes.
"Touch home."
Your hands on that piano almost
too large for the room.
"Touch home."
My best friend passed out next to the dumpster
outside the Trading Post.
"Touch home."
Your house older than the trees that surround
it.
"Touch home."
Blue Creek, Turtle Lake, so close to our uranium
mine the water drives a Geiger counter crazy.
"Touch home."
Your mirrors that don't hold my reflection.
"Touch home."
My family portraits that don't carry a white face.
"Touch home."
We don't have keys for the same doors.

10.
The door opens and closes again quickly. I hear
the lock click. I knock at midnight, miles from
my reservation and years from foregiveness.
What can I tell you? What treaties can I sign
now? "I'd hold you to all your promises if I could
find just one I knew you'd keep." America, I can
see you outside my window, just beyond my doorstep,
fading past the battered lawn. America, I hear
your voice, your song every night before I fall
asleep, "at the end of another broadcasting day."
America, I have memorized the Pledge of Allegiance.
But I should have learned to dance. America, I know
the capitals of all fifty states. But I should have
learned to dance. America, I follow your footprints,
glowing in the dark. I followed them through grass,
up walls and across ceilings. But I should have
learned to dance.

11.
During the owldance, the woman asks the man to dance.
If he refuses, he must pay the woman what she wishes
and he must also stand before the entire crowd and
tell them why he refused. Let's change the rules,
reverse the world for a moment:"Will you dance
with me?"

12.
"Hello, you. Hello, me." Can you hear the music,
Indian boy? Maykbe it's a car radio. Maybe it's
Bill Ford's Chevy cruising past the house. He's
got just enough gas money to always be in the car.
"Hello people we used to be." Can you feel that
bass, Indian boy, that treble and tremble?
Maybe it's the last song of the reservation high
school dance. Maybe it's the lead singer with
braids who doesn't know how to read. He never
learned to play guitar. "Isn't that strange?
We never changed. We've been through it all
yet we're still the same." Can you recognize
the tune, Indian boy, can you hum a few bars?
Maybe it's that song you heard in the middle
of the night years ago. Maybe you were half
asleep and thought it was the most beautiful
song you ever heard. Maybe it was drums.
"And I know it's a miracle that we still go,
for all we know, we might still have a way
to go." Can you hear that voice, Indian boy,
like an echo, like a divining rod? Maybe it's
a "Rock and Roll Fantasy." Maybe
it's a summer flood rushing down the hill
toward your future. Maybe it was the blues.

13.
Robert Johnson, Robert Johnson, where is that
missing song? Someone told me it was hidden
at Sand Creek. Someone told me it was buried
near Wounded Knee. Someone told me Crazy
Horse never died; he just picked up a slide
guitar. Here I am, in the reservation of
my mind and I don't even have a drum.

14.
If you listen close, if you listen tight,
you can hear drums 24 hours a day.
Someone told me once that a drum means
"I love you"; someone told me later it
means "Tradition is repetition."
Late at night, I take inventory of what
I have lost, make plans for the future,
but there is only so much I know about
survival. The television is white noise
and the midnight movie is just another
Western where the Indians lose. Nothing
changes. So, I keep counting, "one little
, two little ,three little Indians", all
the way up to ten little Indian boys,
stop, then start again, until I count
the entire world. These small measurements
are all I have as defense against inertia.
Believe me, I can never call the reservation
home. I don't have keys to any doors here;
"I never learned to dance." Listen,
sweetheart. Can you hear the music? Then,
more music? It's just me
and my blues.


Sherman Alexie.........from Old Shirts & New Skins