“The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt, are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife.” – Thomas Jefferson (1821)
Balance of Power
by Michael Doyle
Your people came to my people
With all of their demands
Before we knew what coexistence meant
We had lost all our sacred lands
We were offered the peace
That can only be called brutality
As we were savagely rounded up
By your people quite capably
However, you date your people's arrival
Since then, it has been a fight for survival
You presented this as manifested destiny
As you tried to write my people out of history
You claimed your foot on the necks of my people
While you worshipped your God under the steeple
Exterminating the people of this conquered wilderness
Taking from us our last shattered wildness
As you made my people starve and bleed
You used this story as a basis to teach and read
As if this was the message to be spread
As if this was the story of a people now dead
But we will shape our own story
No different than any other people in history
We began with wampum belts to share our glory
Stories of winters spent became our oral story
Frederick Turner Jackson must have been blind
In his visions of my people being left behind
Today, the imprint of Native America is evident
And into the future, we will remain relevant
Inheritors of traumas and children of legacy
To believe us destroyed is your own dramedy
Though vast in its perceived dimensions
The true story is two-way in its precision
Purposeful actions are needed to restore our dignity
As a people in search of redeemed sovereignty
It's this recovery and in our needed revitalization
That the first peoples will restore our traditions
In recovering our proud sense of native community
We will again be part of the Great Spirit's family
Finding ourselves by pushing past a sense of conquest
To an extraordinary people who survived their test
(c) February 7, 2025 Michael Doyle
All Rights Reserved
“You are not judged by the height you have risen, but from the depth you have climbed.” – Frederick Douglass
“Hold fast to the Bible as the sheet-anchor of your liberties; write its precepts in your hearts, and practice them in your lives.” – Ulysses S. Grant
Shifting Through the Ashes
by Michael Doyle
Standing here talking close together
You say it's for worse or for better
Shifting through the ashes of an argument
Can you tell me, baby, where the money's spent?
You laugh and concede it as a steady need
Waiting for me to ignore as you plead
That a woman likes to look good for her man
But how long has it been since you've held my hand?
Angels of fortune, they know their lies
The truths they conceal behind their eyes
Star maps hold the beauty of constellations
But none are so gorgeous as my sweet fascination
Letting go of false idols as you pretend to follow
Child of the sun, but you wear like a shadow
There's the worse sort of danger there inside
It is not of those you can too easily hide
Like a child abandoned in a stranger's room
Your velveteen lips spell echoes of doom
Your joy for life is mired in its bitterness
For so much going on, there is a lot of emptiness
Angels of fortune, they know their lies
The truths they conceal behind their eyes
Star maps hold the beauty of constellations
But none are so gorgeous as my sweet fascination
Somewhere above the skies is what connects us
The trick of this ramble is to reach for the nexus
Like two falling stars that meet as they collide
I open my eyes too late to care about my pride
For the love of the god of wishful thinking
I often find myself alone in my drinking
Making games of guessing at walled shadows
And in the end, all I know is less than the fire's glow
Angels of fortune, they know their lies
The truths they conceal behind their eyes
Star maps hold the beauty of constellations
But none are so gorgeous as my sweet fascination
(c) February 6, 2025 Michael Doyle
All Rights Reserved
“To be prepared for war, is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.” – George Washington (1790)
“Everybody believes in something and everybody, by virtue of the fact that they believe in something, uses that something to support their own existence.” – Frank Zappa
Past Blinking Twice
by Michael Doyle
Some say forgetting is a gift
It's a way past the rift
Between personal rationalization
And what allows you past sensations
The ones that we cannot forgive
And yet it is that we must live
However, far past the threshold
That our senses won't allow told
Lying there in a puddle of blood
We forget we survived crawling from the mud
To become something somehow stronger
And each day of life allowed us longer
We had to become ugly and mean
To evolve into stronger human beings
But most of all, we had to forget to be nice
To do these things without blinking twice
There is no amount of fear or sorrow
That will get us through to our tomorrow
When and if we remember what we've done
Things unthinkable to have happened to anyone
The knife blade caresses but does not cut
Past the truths of the unwilling gut
The last laugh belongs to those strong enough to live
The struggle is found when we forget but don't forgive
A threat is raised to those no longer nice
A cheer is spoken to those who blinked twice
A remembrance that the best part of life is living
And in this rage, decided there was enough forgiving
This thing, half-ignored but passed off as therapy
We'll never likely never find a cure for me
It's the endless discussion that goes on forever
Yet, somehow, someone thinks it's clever
(c) February 5, 2025 Michael Doyle
All Rights Reserved
“I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower
“Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse.”- Adlai E. Stevenson
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