Poetry Break: "On Shaving My Head", 01/06/09

The bathroom is all over blood.

I had to cut it off. I had
to change. Couldn't
take it any
more and
she can't
take me
any

more.

The bathroom is all over blood.

I learned this trick

From a Lakotah medicine-woman I
once knew. She told me the shamans
among her people (most of 'em, in
short) see what I just did as a sign

of mourning, change, flushing the brain
of uneven cat-steps, dermatitis,
cowlicks that won't stay down,
gray hairs (too many)

equalized,


Razing out the weed-grown mistakes
of the brain that is the soul's worst
enemy, at times like this,

egobabbling cold black fear,
dislocation which she told
me is "the last true trapping
of personal slavery,"
just before

her own medicine
made the owie all
better, just
for that
night.

Sometimes, all you need
is just

that night.