The conventional categories
Of ordinary experience
Let you become one
W/ this dusted world
An ant rising
Out of a bowl
“Goes” ah baby ah baby
This life is good
So let us go
This life is good
“To a mountaineer a
sea voyage is a pleasant
and restful change.”
—John Muir
“It seemed strange
that everyone more or
less afflicted [w/
seasickness] should seem
ashamed.”
—John Muir
Strong, glad life
All of us in the brawling traffic
Sun-spanglettes in the ditch
Tumbling black bag, plastic, inflated
In an accident
Of wind
Rolls, dog sized, along
A tan of the concrete
Median barrier
The world indeed this moment
Is kind of a sloppy dock
In a broader, happy bay
Whose flotsam at night
Chips the sky
In stripes of flame
The taillights towing a chain
Of red fire through a tearing fog
Of quadrangular quanta
“Go where we will, all the world
over, we seem to have been
there before.” —John Muir
“The world though made
is yet being made
and this is but
the morning of creation.” —JM
Paints fade
Patinas grow
Scratches froth
Muds puff
And we jig still
“Most people when they
travel only look at
what they are directed to
look at.”
—John Muir
Beautiful mallard blue
& red feathers brown head down
Dead at confluence of on-ramp
With I-80 near Milton PA
Noon. Susquehanna River
V. high & turbid brown
Sometimes cresting a hill, the sudden
New view, our skin is made
Of sails, our thighs are girls, all
Those books we ever read are
Opened in a bright wind and remembered
—there is a bright bridge
“If totalitarianism comes to this
country, it will almost surely do so
in the guise of 100% Americanism.”
—Huey Long
Christian Bök and I
built a fjord together
Marianne Moore sd
“It is an honor to have witnessed
so much confusion.”
Woke at 6 Five hrs sleep
ITHACA—Island Kingdom of Odysseus
This is a Waterman Phileas
Broad nib and Noodler’s black
Noodler's Black ink is made by
An engineer for Ford named Nathan Tardif
Who lives in South Dartmouth, MA
As far as I know and
He is very patriotic, perhaps even
Nationalist, but he makes the best
Fountain Pen ink anyone has ever used
Makes it in his home can you believe that?
Guy's a genius
Also best price of any ink ever
7am on road 1/2 hr low overcast
Past dawn in April
Empty wet fields filled & seeded
Made espresso this morning
With fussy chrome espresso pot
Farmer City Gibson City
There is a group really out there
Called “The Righteous Brothers Foundation”
Supports the “This I Believe” show
On NPR. I reject the Augustinian
Formulation “Credo ut intelligam”
And recall Confucius’s “A fool
Rejects what he sees for what he
Thinks
A wise person rejects what she thinks
For what she sees”
“Intelligo ut intelligam”’s a better
Formulation for me
Little white shack on left labeled
St Josephs Sportsmen’s Club
Near HOMER Illinois
Is at edge of hwy & bunch of
Hay bales as a target wall
And a shabby shooting cage
There is a ratty mist in the sky
Danville home of Gene Hackman and
Bobby Short the piano prodigy
Who talks like he’s from England
“Us folks” or “Plains People.”
“They call themselves ‘Indian’….
They say they do not want to change
Their way of life”—Wm Blackmore
The North American Indian, 1869
In the 1760s during the
French and Indian War
The Ottawa chief Pontiac almost drove
The British out of Michigan
During the War of 1812 Tecumseh
The Shawnee nearly united all the Indians
Against the Americans in the Ohio valley
But Sitting Bull was not only
A great warrior he was a
Holy man who had the ability
To see into the past and into the future
His name in Lakota Teton
Was Tatonka Iotakay
Considered by his people as a seer
A Weechashah Waukahn
He was born in 1831
Died in 1890. That same year
The US govt declared
The frontier no longer existed.
The Lakota name for white people was
Waséetchoo. Between 1862 and
1890 the US govt fought 11
Indian wars – About 200 separate
Military actions: Ambushes, Raids
And the chasing down and killing
Of fleeing family groups.
Some historians believe US troops
Killed btw 1776 & 1890 about
4,000 Native Americans by
Gunshot or fire or knifing or bayoneting
It is estimated by some that Indians
May have killed 7000 soldiers
And civilians during that same time.
Th. Jefferson believed white folk
Cd not live on the plains:
& the Chickasaw—& the Cherokee—
Were ordered removed from
Alabama, Georgia, & Mississippi
B/c the whites wanted their land
Which they owned outright
For the growing of cotton Oklahoma
Was to belong to them forever
Genl Philip H. Sheridan
Who devised the masterplan
And coordinated the systematic
Genocide of the the plains Indians
Wrote in 1878 “The govt made treaties,
Gave presents, made promises—none
Of which were honestly fulfilled”
“We took away their country and then
Their means of support, broke up their
Mode of living and habits of life,
Introduced disease among them—and
It was for this, and against this,
They made war.”
This was the same
Soldier Sheridan who fought
So viciously in the civil war
Weighed 100 75 pound
Had red brown / brown red skin
Eyes brown large & white
In each eye nestled a great student
Each of his eyeballs was a schoolhouse
Sitting Bull was a highly confident man
He wore 2 long braids
He wrapped them in badger skin
A badger is a bad animal
They are hard to catch and subdue
And once you catch one
God help you
The subduction of a badger is difficult
2 hrs 42 mins enter Indy
His buckskin jerkin was ornamented
With strands of human hair
From hanks of hair of men
Whom he had defeated in knife fights
3 hrs 5 minutes exit Indy
1st erection 3 hrs 15 mins
Espresso 50¢ 3:28 on hwy
Bright gray altostratus cool day
His battle headdress when he wore it
Had a hundred feathers in it
From the eagles of the Black Hills
And the Tetons but mostly he just wore
A single feather in his hair
Sitting Bull was a primate
A great ape
He once to a reporter in the west
“I see. I know. I began to see
Before I was born, when I was
Not in my mother’s arms but inside
My mother’s belly. It was there
That I began to study about my people.
The Great Spirit gave me the power
To see out of the womb.
I studied there in the womb
About many things.
I was so interested that I
Turned over on my side.
The Great Spirit must have
Told me at that time
That I wd be the man to be the judge
Of all the other Indians.
A big man to decide for them
In all their ways.”
Warm Glow Candle Co. Outlet Store
Country Kitchen: “1/2 restaurant 1/2 store:
All Country.” “Shelton Fireworks, Shoot The Moon
World’s Largest Warehouse”
The Lakota had rules of engagement
He never broke them.
If he had he wd have lost
The respect of his people. The sight of
A sick child, any child,
Any such child—the child
Of a fat lady, the child
Of a white lady—the child
Of a fat white lady
Any such sick child, any child,
Brought tears to his eyes
Tahtónka Iyotáke
Have seen 3 Bush/Cheney stickers
In the two parking lots
A Confederate flag bumpersticker
That says “Keep it Flyin’”
Few trees if any near Dayton
Have fully matured leaves
A wan unripe green yellow green
Poor Poor Kernel George
Armstrong Custer
For you hath been killed
By Tahtónka Iyotáke
And his regiment too
Little Bighorde, Battle thereof
Sitting Bull never attacked a
White settlement. Sitting Bull
Always released the white women
And the white children
In a notebook during the 1860s
Sitting Bull drew an autobiography
41 pictures using a crayon
Again with a white elder couple
In a maroon Buick
A burgundy Buick
What is it about that car
That demographic
The 41 pictures matter of factly depict
Violent events in Sitting Bull’s life
His drawings were signed w/ a
Line connecting a seated buffalo
To a human head
Varment [sic] Guard 794 8169
In the Great Plains alone there
Were over 30 different
Tribal languages
Each w/ multiple dialects
50 miles north of Columbus
Few trees in leaf bloom
A whole field is stained
In blaring dandelions. Near a sign
For Schwartenberg Farm
Now I come
To the breast hip
Shoulder hills
Of northern Ohio
Amish land hip hill land, land of pig
Sausage, juice of loins land
Thick nipple women land
The superfluity of languages
Meant that for trade a
Common language of signs and gestures
Was invented by the plains Indians
Which became the basis
Of what is now American Sign Language
Tushunkah Weekoh in the
Language of the Oglala Lakota
Means Untamed Horse
But 1/2 breed interpretors
Translated his name as Crazy Horse
Often the Whites got things really wrong
When they were talking w/ the Indians
Such that the name “Man Whose
Enemies are Afraid of His Very Horses”
Became “Man Afraid of His Own Horses”
Thus placing in the names of things Indian
Slight denigration
Squaw is a word fr the Algonquin Meaning Woman whereas the Lakota Word for Woman was Wéeñahn. Whites
Referred to Lakota women as
Squaws.
In 1877 Sitting Bull sd
“What I am, I am.” Which I guess
Was his way of saying
He accepts himself & is comfortable
With his position in the world
This is a Rotring Core fountain pen
When he was born the midwife
Covered Sitting Bull in bear grease.
Lakota parents did not boss
Their children or other children the children
Sleep when they want eat when
They want they were never put
To bed, never forced to eat “on time”
The Lakota never struck their children
Nor did they yell Lakota
Babies were not allowed to cry
For crying cd learn the enemy to them
At junction I-71 / I-76 now just boards
Heaped btw the 2 longest walls
In the 1600s when the French Jesuits
Encountered them the Lakota lived
In the parts of Minnesota
I grew up in, at, among other places
The headwaters of the Mississippi
Near now Itasca State Park
Which I visited as a boy
And thought a swiz
They were living
Then in timber framed houses
A Father Marquette sd
They do not attack until attacked
And they keep their own word
The Creek and Chippewa were
Their enemies and the French
Trade happened to reach the Chippewa first
The Creek first
Bringing them thus firearms who made
Then war (there again the Daily
Monument Gravestone Manufactory
8 hrs 4 mins) driving the Lakota out
Of the forests west & south
To the valley of the Missouri
The journey taking decades
And the Lakota separating into 3
Peoples: the Teton, The Santée, and
The Yankton groups. Oglala means
People who Scatter Their Own
Sitting Bull’s family belonged
To the band called Itchy-Craw
Which means those who laugh
At each other. The Lakota
Languages contain no swear words.
By 1700 the Lakota reached the Missouri
8:18 – 8:24 Stop Pee, walk
8:44 – 8:57 Stop Eat
Shenango! River! 9:09
Former radio personality
Pappy O’Daniel former gov of TX
Was the 1st media personality in US
To go into politics preceding
Reagan, Sonny Bono, and Schwarzenegger
As I pass under bridge 13 m into PA
Near Lackawanna Twnship
Woodchuck lies on its side
Curled up & hugging itself, its
Head in its paws, fetal position
It obviously fell from the bridge
& curled up in pain and died
“You – on the road –
Must have a code –
That you can –
live – by –
So you can grow
Teach –
yr children well”
“Work is for people
Who don’t know how to fish”
Allegheny River 9 hr 54
Near Sign: “Welcome to Pennsylvania
Wilds” just across Allegheny River bridge
James Brown has made a career
Out of apoplexy
I wonder what that dude’s
EEG looks like
I believe it is the Hitchcock film
“Notorious,” starring the Glorious
Ingrid Bergman in which a young
James Brown is filmed as a nightclub act
Whose onstage apoplexies are
“Patronized to” by an eyerolling
Obese whiteboy businessman who does not
Understand what James Brown is doing
The sublimation of Rage
The affrontive subversion of Minstrelsy
“Bad Bad Leroy Brown” An
Example of Modern Balladry
3 characteristics of a ballad:
1) Impersonal narrator
3) Often based on real events
I pity Leroy Brown when he
Loses the knife fight
Even tho he was so formidable
I pity Leroy Brown
His loss of life in the fight
I cross again the great Allegheny
And pass the smear of coal vein open
In the ditch hill on right
Surfing channels in PA:
In an important and somber tone
“It’s a shame. This comes as
A disappointment to many
Pittsburgh Pirates fans. As it
Should be…” 6pm Eastern
10 hrs 48 minutes NO leaves
On trees – the small buds only –
At the highest point on I-80
Prior to Edward Bernays
A propagandist employed
By Woodrow Wilson, toast and coffee
Was the typical breakfast – but after
Wilson was paid by the AG industry
It was eggs & sausage
69% of all freight in US
Is moved by trucks
Right now there are 25 % fewer
Trucks on the road
This cd be an indication
That the economy is taking a dive
Tonight I will look at the
Trucks stops to see if fewer are there
Still bright at 12 hrs and
Sun behind me, low 7:40 eastern
The light behind me comes
Thru the car the color of pale
Maraschino cherry juice
Or the color of light
Through lemonade
12 hrs 12 mins the great cliffs
Sunset on them like an orange movie
The Waterman Phileas again
With broad nib
Strangely the majority of women
I have been lovers with
Have been Catholic
And the rest atheist
Wyoming is Lakota for “Large plain”
In the 1520s the Conquistadores
Brought horses to the Americas
Re-introducing the animal
Which had died out here 15000 years ago
In the Ice Age
Between 1640 & 1770 37
Tribes abandoned farming
And began to hunt buffalo full-time
With horses. Some of these came from
Outside the plains.
Lakota boys liked to paint
Scars on their bodies
14 hrs 43 mins NY state
August 17 1862 New Ulm, MN
Santee Lakota killed 700 whites
September 3 1863 White Stone Hill, MN
Cavalry killed 150, captured 156
& burned village (near Monroe)
A collection of rocking engines
Capture gold
A collection of shelves, squirrels
Churches, Storms
Collection of that stem
Collection of ointments
Of steam
That crooked thrown-out
Yodeller at trouts
In 1863 (?) near Killdeer Hills, ND
Sitting Bull fought whites for
1st time: 2000 soldiers
Led by Genl Sully
Then Sully went to junction
Of Missouri & Yellowstone River
Fanny Kelly: Book
My Captivity Among the Sioux Indians
Col. George Armstrong Custer
Was a great ape
Formerly Maj Genl Custer
Gave a standing order to
His aide that if
Indians should attack when Custer was
Away, his aide was to
Shoot Custer’s wife in the head
If her capture
Was to seem imminent
There was a fort at the
Confluence of the Cannonball
And Missouri in what wd be
North Dakota
At this fort (Fort Rice) for several days
Sitting Bull ran off its
Cattle and ineffectively
Harassed its defenses
But the soldiers responded
W/ cannon & exploding shells
A Cpt Rankin
At Fort Beauford MT
Shot his own wife
Afraid she wd be taken
As Sitting Bull harried
The outside of the fort
Sitting Bull never captured the fort
As a matter of fact no fort on the plains
Was ever captured by Native Americans
Cpt Rankin shot his wife too soon
“We must act w/ vicious
Earnestness against the Sioux.
Men, women, children:
Even to their extermination.”
—Wm Tecumseh Sherman
After the Fetterman Massacre of 1866
Led by Crazy Horse
Both Sherman and Sheridan
Believed in Total War
The targeting not only of combatants
But of Civilians
At one massacre, on the Washutah River
Custer killed 93 women & children
In Rhode Island & CT & NY
When you go to pass a car
The other drive will speed up
Anywhere from 5 to 15 an hr
To prevent you from passing
By late 1860s the 750 mile
Journey between NYC and Chicago
Could be done in 3 days by rail
Custer’s job was to stop the
Lakota from robbing & sabotaging
The Northern Pacific Railroad
Which started in Duluth, MN
And was planned to extend
The valley of the Yellowstone
The way to Seattle
George Armstrong Custer
Was not unlike Geo. W. Bush
A very poor student he
Graduated last in his class
At West Point NY & once
Broke into a professor’s office
To steal exam questions
Following a battle once he shouted
“I cannot but exclaim
Glorious War!”
Custer led haphazard charges
Against the Confederates
Assuring that his command
Suffered more losses than any other
Outfit in the Union army
[katabasis]
Iron in the limestone
Rust on the bridges
I just stopped in Southbury CT
For 2 Boston Creams and a latte
Someone seems less short-tempered around me But is still rude: won’t say
“You’re welcome” when I say “thank you”
The boy general George W. Custer
Received Robert E. Lee’s flag
At Appomattox and led the
In DC. He loved loudly tailored uniforms
And ostentatious headwear
Very like Lord Cardigan
“Like a woman” he was very fond
Of his hair his hair fell to his shoulders
The Indians called him Long Hair
He designed his own uniform
Custer loved animals tho
And was filled often with a buoyancy
Resembling joy
He had a pet porcupine, pet badger
A pet wild turkey, pet beaver
A pet prairie dog and a fieldmouse
That lived on his desk
In an unused inkwell
And a pet raccoon
And hounds upon hounds upon hounds
Houndreds of them
Yet for all he loved animals
He hated human beings
Most specifically black people and Indians
And if any subordinates broke his rules
He actually ordered them tied up in
Funny positions
And exposed them to flies and gnats
Many leaves blooming
In the valley of the Hudson
His own troops called him Iron Butt
On June 18th 1873 he got telegram
While at Fort Abraham Lincoln
& Left for the Yellowstone country
With the 7th Cavalry on Aug 4th
Sitting Bull ambushed Custer
As he rode ahead of his main force
With a 90 man escort
Whitey took cover in a riverside copse
& Sitting Bull set fire to the tall grass
Custer’s ammo ran very low
Before the main force arrived
In late afternoon
3 hr 30 min PA border
The Black Hills in 1776
They pushed out the Kiowa
Felt the place was full of a life
Giving energy called Wákan
In 1823 Jedediah Smith first
White man in Black Hills. In 1873
Pres. Grant orders Genl Sheridan
(Mr. Total War) into the Black Hills to
Determine if gold was there as the
US was suffering from a mini depression
Due to bank failures & the idea was
More gold was needed but the
Fort Laramie Treaty stipulated this
Area as a Sioux Reservation
Snow making banana shaped dives
At my window
East of Scranton (in Catskills?)
Near Lake Wallenpaupeck
Because the Lakota refused
To sell the Black Hills
Pres. Grant decided
To provoke a fight w/ the Lakota
5 hrs 1 to 5 hrs 6 – rest stop
In Pennsylvania
I see on the right an ancient
Dilapidated
Chicken house
In the rain
Use less, window less chicken house
Near Mainville / Mifflinville
Brown swollen grey-bubbled
Susquehanna
Berwick Lime Ridge
The Indian name for the Battle
Of the Little Big Horn
Is
The Battle of the Greasy Grass
The Lakota medicine man
Who would come to be known as Black Elk
Was there at the Battle
Of the Greasy Grass and he
Was thirteen
Near Limestone new graffito on bridge
On 2 pillars in white spray pain
2nd pillar: IS GOD
My enemies are the kind of personnel who Read abridged books
(—if I have enemies
—and if they read)
Or who
Try to make books of bridges
Custer’s men & family (some of whom
Died with him) all shot themselves
In the head or shot or were shot
By their comrades
After the death of Custer, Sitting Bull
Was so feared by Americans that
Newspapers surmised he was
Probably white – for it was thought
An Indian cd not kill a white man
Newspapers conjectured Sitting Bull
Was in fact a renegade white man
Who spoke English, German, French &
Chinese fluently
It was first the newspaper
Editors who suggested
That the government should spread
Smallpox deliberately among them
Custer, like Genl Grant, from Ohio
A town called New Rumly
“The only good Indians I ever saw
Were dead.” —Genl Sheridan
“We’re making off for Sitting Bull
And this is the way we go:
40 miles a day on beans and hay
In the regular army, O!”
On May 6 1877 Sitting Bull
Led 889 people & 12000
Horses into captivity at Camp Robinson Nebraska
On bridge near Philipsburg PA
In black paint
“I LOVE SHERRY”
I loved sherry too, a cheap
Drink fr. Juarez Spain
But no longer do I—you
Can have her Mr. Bridge Painter
Next Bridge: mixed words from
Succeeding generations of graffitiists
But near the surface of the
Layers of tangled words this phrase
“Mad Dog Love” something something
7 hrs: 452 miles: 64.57 mph
Strange but patchy snow on ground
In woods to rt and sm. buds on trees
It was in this state, Pennsylvania
In 1871 that a tannery company
Found a way to make quality
Leather out of Buffalo hide
As leather was always in need
For furniture, clothes and drivebelts
(We forget that our rubber drive belts
Were once leather) and at
This time the real slaughter of Buffalo
Started. The term “sharpshooter”comes
From buffalo huntingkilling. The Sharps
Was a rifle, a big game rifle in that it
Shot a shell 2 1/2” long
It could kill a buffalo at 1500 yards
Native Americans said of it
“It shoots today – and kills tomorrow”
THE IDIOT
Joseph Wright Moore killed 20500
In 9 years – a Record
Btw 1872 & 1873 the buffalo
Was wiped out of Kansas
Then they moved into Texas
The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
Was founded as a result of the Buffalo slaughter
In 1866. The army encouraged
The destruction of the buffalo
Because it would hasten
The extermination of Native Americans
8 hrs: 507 miles: 63.38mph
“These men [buffalo hunters]
Have done more in the last 2 yrs
To settle the Indian question
Than the entire regular army
Has done in the last 30 years.
They are destroying the Indian commissary.”
And sd they shd all get medals
It is for this reason that Pres. Grant
Vetoed a preservation bill
Passed by Congress. “The sooner the Indian
Loses all his Indian ways, including
His language, the better it will be for him
And for the government.” – Richard H. Pratt,
Principle of Carlyle Indian School, 1883
Tuesday July 19 1881 Fort Beauford MT
Sitting Bull surrendered with 187
Children & women
“I wish it to be remembered that
I was the last man of my tribe
To surrender my rifle.”
The first white town Sitting Bull visited
Was Bismarck ND – August 1 1881
He ate ice cream in the
Sheridan House Hotel.
Genl Sheridan being the one who
Made the equation btw
Good Indians and the deceased ones.
My little daughter Clio
Named after the muse of history
Talks so much she is a selfdescribed motormouth
At 9 hours I cross the 6pm beautiful
Shenango River under
Dark swirled clouds mottled in sun
And the Shenango swollen brown
Puffy out of its banks.
The Lakota word for cattle was
Wohl-Haw from hearing
Cowboys say this:
Whoa (stop) & Haw (go)
Banned the Lakota from
Practicing their religions thus
Denying them their rights to
Religious Freedom, banned the Sun Dance
The motto of the Carlyle School
A boarding school near here, in
Carlyle PA was “Kill the Indian
To save the Man.”
During the summer of 1855, 150 yrs
Ago this summer, Sitting Bull
Joined the touring show of Wild Bill Cody
Visiting NYC Philadelphia & DC
He gave most of his money
To white beggars in the cities & sd
“The white man knows how to
Make everything, but he does not
Know how to distribute it”
Strange long series of very white snow
On rt hills mid Ohio 685 miles
So late in April & warm
In the light’s lee.
And then more very white snow
Near Mohican State Park
With orange light splashing sundown
Over everything from just above
The right treeline I am traveling south
Coins of apricot colored light
Are flipping on the ditch water
Why not be happy about whatever
Let it come, maybe. Go ahead
And approach, empty in spirit, all the days
At fairs in rain
At fairs in sun
“The gateway to the Buddha’s
Teaching is sadness, sorrow, and grief.
He does not encourage these emotions:
He encourages awareness of these emotions….
The awareness of suffering & sorrow
Is the 1st noble step.”
“The capacity to face pain has been
A virtue in every single culture—
Except for modern America."
—Paul R. Fleischman, MD