Three Poems from All of Us the Same
The Gates of Hell
The gates of hell
Are decorated with the bodies
Of all the people
Who thought they knew better
No scorn undeserved
They breathe raggedly
Exhaling lies that they used
To bind flesh to wrought metal
That there is no other way
Than the one
Wrought by the pattern of history
That the heart is a cage
Made to imprison
A piece of God
In each of us
Because the human
Can only damage
The divine
which is powerless to protest,
imprisoned within
Warmth would ease the suffering
They are so
Very cold
Pressed against
The gates
And I will laugh
And spit in their faces
Because humanity
Will be free of this
And they will all sing
As the caged bird
Is released from
Its prison within
Paint on the Walls
Lying, alone
Before the beginning of history
A man stands alone
In the cavern
That his family
Lived and died in
For far longer
Than words can reach
He sleeps
And experiences a vision
Of life and emotion as one
Shape and color dancing
Across the surface of the
The Earth,
A home that is bright
With all of it
When he woke
He splashed his dreams on the walls
Dancing animals and movement
Onto stone with hands
And boar hair
People taking shape
Among the simple pigments
When he sat,
Watching the sun set on his work
He knew that the world
Is much larger than imagination
And that everything in it
Is small
Road Trip
Our family car treads
Steadily northward
As I count
Dead animals that
Litter the highway
Birds and rodents
Sometimes deer
Reduced to something more violent
Than my young mind could comprehend
Every unfortunate body
A testament to the world
That has long fled from them
And I thought that
I had to do something
My teachers would tell me
That I needed to be responsible
That I would learn how
But 8 year-olds are all mistakes
And I understood that the message was
“You should know better”
Not because they wanted to hurt us
But because hurting is how you learn
When teaching fails
So they taught us
Punishments are teachers
For imperfections or are at least
Adequate to fix a childhood
And that we will inherit the world
Because it is our responsibility
And that there is a right way to inherit
And you will do it wrong
And the world is unfair
Because adults know better
And know how to best
Keep it that way
The commute to my university
Is longer than It used to be
And the bodies on the road are not any less
But the prayer is the same
“May you find peace”
Because they are living in a world they don’t understand
And I know the body on the road
Could be me
A reflection on the work and becoming an Indigenous poet
My name is Pat Baker and I am indigenous writer. Poetry was not something that I ever thought about until I was in high school. My first exposure was a piece by Rudy Francisco. I was captivated by the way he shaped language. I had never realized that writing could express such powerful ideas by condensing them into carefully chosen words and metaphors.
It was even more amazing to me that you could write something important and meaningful without needing to follow any particular rules or guidelines. It felt as if poetry could put feeling directly onto a page in the form of commentary. It made me start thinking about my life in a different context. I had never been able to express my own memories in a way that made me feel connected to them. It was as if past events had happened with no affect or emotion. Suddenly, through writing, I found that my life impacted me in ways that I hadn’t realized.
I knew of and was proud of my heritage at a very young age; however, my identity was disconnected from what it meant to be indigenous for a very long time. My grandmother was a medicine woman who lived near us in my home state of Kansas, far from our reservation in North Dakota. Her house was filled with pieces of our culture, including iconic crafts like dream catchers, which she made with her own two hands.
My grandmother was also Catholic. This was one of the first topics that I wrote about. It was difficult to reconcile the idea that she could have a deep and strong connection to our culture while also being a part of a culture that wanted to be rid of us.
This leads into the first piece in the program, titled “The Gates of Hell.” This poem expresses anger over religious trauma, specifically inflicted by Christianity. When you grow up visiting your medicine-woman grandmother, you are taught quickly that there is beauty in everything, including the spiritual.
The continual erasure of indigenous spiritual life is a central theme. White settlers thought that we did things “the wrong way” because they didn’t understand or care to understand the richness and depth to the indigenous way of life. The disconnection of indigenous peoples from our spirituality is the direct result of Christian ideals being forced upon us for so long that our own culture, in some ways, feels unnatural. This piece is my direct rejection of the Christian idea that there is a correct way to live.
The second piece, titled “Paint on the Walls” gives a snapshot of how beautiful human ancient art is and how that fosters a feeling of connection to ancient peoples. When looking at art throughout human history, it is easy to see how their experiences as humans were not much different than our own. The people who made the cave paintings highlighted in the piece had none of the modern tools that we take for granted, but they still had a desire to create. They still had the drive to create a way to contextualize their part in and connection to their world. This desire to express themselves creates a direct connection to us as descendants of ancestors.
The third piece titled “Road Trip” is a personal piece about how children are treated as though they don’t understand or have ideas about the world. It pieces together the theme of responsibility that is forced on to every person the moment they are born. The idea of “being responsible” implies that there is a standard that each person must live up to, and if they don’t, they are a failure. This prepares children to be overly-critical of themselves and their feelings. I have observed this within my family, as well as with children I have worked with at my university while assisting in research. I firmly believe that nobody deserves to live shackled to an idea of what will please others.
A recurring theme in these pieces is the idea we are told our entire lives that you have to do things in one specific way. As humans, we have been feeling a desire to express ourselves, from our farthest ancestors to our most recently born relatives. Our cultures should feel like freedom. The idea that the legacy and accounts of the lives of people in the past were descriptive rather than prescriptive is the key.
