For Bear. The earthquake child. Because you love your polaroid camera. And also for Saginaw.
We're sitting on the barn porch at 2am
breathing heavy clouds into the frigid dark
my brothers' chest is swelling
in and out and out and OUT
he's holding his beer like a microphone
he says that we are all official members of the church of insomnia
It was founded by a two headed deer in the 60's
I say "Ok"
He says the earth is tilting
There's lightning out over the reservation
It's making the clouds glow green
We feel like we're looking into space
He asks if I remember the Indian pow-wows we went to as kids
He spits on the ground
I think about the Apache medicine man we met at once
Whos name was Saginaw
He was so old his voice sounded like two stones
grinding together
He said he was one hundred and nineteen years old
He told us
that native americans believe if their photograph is taken
that their soul is stolen
My brother asked why their were so many pictures of Indians then
Saginaw told us a story:
He said the pale faces came when he was 6
they shot his father in the back
because he had a gun for hunting deer
they raped his mother
tied her to a horse
and dragged her through the prairie naked
until she died
they stuck his three year old sister
into the dirt with their bayonets
and they spit on him,
and made him watch until she was dead
Saginaws' stones stop grinding for a minute
Then they come grinding out from behind a smile
"You see, we tricked the soldiers.
We said we would all let our souls go
that we give up, surrender and go to reservations
Even Geronimo did this
but we live in the spirit world now
we do not live in the pictures
we are ghosts and they cannot chase us
they cannot tame us
we are free"
My brother spits on the ground again
He talks about his Polaroid Camera
And how he hopes native americans were right
We sit for 45 minutes in the wind
watching the reservation light up
and feel the thunder shake our guts like a firing squad
The little kid in me knows its a pow-wow
in the spirit world
Long rainy fingers are tapping on the windows upstairs
tapping tapping tapping
the rainstorm is begging to come in
Somebody in the kitchen yells that tornadoes are coming
But there hasnt been a tornado here in years
probably decades
maybe not ever
My brother says its a waste
unless it kills someone
He says people die choking on hot dogs
people die vaccuming their cars
people die in their bathubs
"People drown in their fucking bathtubs"
Why not go in a tornado that only comes once a century?
Why can't I die in a tornado Dave?
I dont know...
Why can't we all die in tornados?
Theres people still dancing upstairs
Still singing
Like they're way out in space
Swirling around with ghosts that only live here
only here and only this once
They can feel the earth is tilting.
What if the tornado is here already
What if we just don't know it yet?
What if the tornado is made of ghosts?
Swirling around taking us to the spirit world
Taking us out to space
We collect zip lock baggies
we breathe into them
my lungs feel like buzzing chainsaws
trying to zip lock enough air to last us
a year in space
just in case
He say's "Its a party in there."
And closes the screen door behind him
Talking to my brother
feels like standing in an empty trainstation
Im counting the seconds between seeing and hearing the lightning
I don't know the formula anymore
I dont know if there's another train scheduled
in my lifetime
I wonder is my brother is on the same train that took Geronimo
out of his desert
and into Florida
The two headed church deer is hanging on the wall inside
My brother shot it.
10 Times
"Wow" is the usual response.
And then everyone looks at it
because something that takes ten bullets
never REALLY dies
We all know it
We're all waiting for something
The way Geronimo waited in shackles
for years to be released back to his desert
The same way my brother waited for storms
when he was six
on the trampoline
jumping into the sky in the rain
higher and higher
screaming "Come on!"
Come on!
....Come
on....
The earth is tilting
There's water running down the stairs
It might be someones bathtub overflowing
It might be the storm coming in the screens of the windows
But nobody notices
Or nobody cares
Our "church" is packed
Its shaking
The water is ankle deep
The tornado touched down in the field outside the barn.
And that was the end of a perfectly good Church.
There are no official records
of a 119 year old Apache shaman in Palm Desert
Theres never officially been
a substantial tornado in California
And theres never been any official evidence
of where my brother went.
But if you ask me,
I'd tell you that I saw a 6 year old boy
on the balcony
holding zip lock bags
shouting at a tornado "Come on!"
And that somewhere out in space
Geronimo is probably hunting a two headed dear
outside a church thats filled with a million dancing Indians
and one happy kid
