The Dominant Culture

Often I feel alien
stuck in this
white skin,
the skin of
the dominant culture
that has no
discernible culture
except materialism,
Getting More,
on the backs of
our brown brothers
who live in a
leftover world.

I relate to aboriginal
culture more :
smudge smoke rising,
honest eyes,
ceremonial drumming
resonating deep within
my being.
As if,
in another life,
I once grew lithe
along the forests,
listened to
the Old Ones' stories
by the fire,
gave thanks
and found
the rightness of
The Way
based on
the natural order.

Once during a passage
of the Pachelbel,
I had a waking vision.
I saw
black robed women,
row on row,
dead-eyed and weaving
in the Gulag dawn,
and with a chill
I knew
that I had once
been there.

Again and back again
I find I'm drawn
to stories of
the Holocaust:
hollow-eyed Musselmen
living the unsurvivable
living in hell.
I think
I must have
been there, too,
in the lifetime
before this.

Indigenous, dissident
or victim pasts
I can relate to.
What seems more strange
is this culture without
a heart
that needs to change.

It could be,
one day in the Millenium,
in my
Tomorrow life,
I will be looking back
at the last gasp of
materialistic frenzy
upon this earth,
death rattle of
the Myth of More,
just before the system fell
and humankind
was forced to find
a better way,
and I'll be as astounded
at this orgy of destruction
I now witness,
as I now feel
contemplating life
within the death camps.