I am standing in the middle of my dream
Lasting imagery of Indian girls in red velvet with turquoise draped carefully
Indian boys with  brown arms wrapped around little necks tenderly
Coated in slick denim booted leather with urban warrior pens as lances
Poets wrapped in cotton blues and button down stanzas
Ripping open lies and lines sealed up for generations loathing the truth
Never mind the oatmeal and gas oven heated roof , dripping monsoons leak physical proof
Never mind the city bus wage earners ,who ride crowded singing sweet
Diesel chariots let me ride down these crazed city streets
Never mind house keeps for Jewish mavens paying low wages for weeks
Of worry and woe weighted down with arched backs scrubbing
Month after month winding into years
In some Kosher kitchens where God listens to  Mama’s  whispered tears
How Daddy’s hard won work in the fields of Arizona’s vengeful sun
In dark earth  deserts  where  dirty deals get done
In a place where its been long forgotten
How he chopped your cotton ,four quarters an hour
How we drank your milk when you gave it to us rotten and sour
While your up to your knees in dirt plowed money
Remember how we crowded into our used Chevy  you thought was so funny
He asked repeatedly for a decent wage
On your paltry sum 12 kids he raised
Now I’m standing up not hiding my fathers silent rage
Your evolutionary greed has set the stage...  for people to know..
We built these canals now we plow your fields you reap where we sowed
Plant your cotton seeds sown like tears in winters breeze
This so called “fabric of our lives”  rising up  with cloudy ease
Watered by our blood sweating over your greed
While our water was dammed up stream...Oh I see now we need to be
Satisfied with ghetto tract homes, cardboard commodified and  cordoned off to fend for our own
Feeding our babies watered down vegetables we used to grow
Now we eat canned pesticide sprayed  preservation man made
Come to where we stay for a night or a day
With diabetic ease we happily slice bricked cheese
Excuse me wait til’ my physician leaves
I’m trying now after 100 hundred years to eat healthy
Thank you for the last supper we ever had under the trees
Of the Salt River which was once an aquatic oasis
Now home to sunburned half-naked faces and exhaust burning gas wasting big money boat races
Look closely though you’ll see  our originating traces
Our roots are  down deep in this desert fading
Brown like the earth baking we’re here clinging singing dancing swaying and staying
The City approaches like bandits  raiding encroaching approaching
 Our land like gold again, valuable to corporations with trinkets trading
Its the same story replicating
But we were born here and we’re staying. Here were staying, not enough money you could be paying
Like the mesquite rattlesnakes bighorn sheep and coyote wailing
Saguaro blooming, scorpion, horned toad, wild gourds growing  jackrabbits playing
Rattlesnake shaking, tortoise is watching  waiting
We were made to be here and here we’re staying...
Here we‘re staying.

Douglas Miles, © 2001