She Had Some Horses

I am not a perfect person, in fact, my flaws continue to groove deeply into my being despite a nearly lifelong attempt to smooth the edges, soften the edge of the blade.

My life story is only mildly interesting to me, and I live it.  There is no way I will attempt to sum up who or why I am such a prickly character, despite a ready quip and grin.  I survive, like we all do; half-in-consciousness, half-out-of-consciousness. I stumble, I fall, I wake up… late.

I have played a major role in the events on this blog these past few months.  In the process, I have wounded people.

I am sorry for the very real pain and annoyance I have caused by being a giant pain in the ass, by being a prickly character, for not shutting up when the good sense angels suggested a breather.

The poem below is posted without permission from the author.  I would hope someone, maybe two people, would purchase either a book from the author or the cd to offset my thievery of the artist’s work.  The poem is written by an ageless woman poet who is alive in our time.  She has long been an inspiration and her words a goalpost for my own work.  And this poem, well, it’s me.

She Had Some Horses

She had some horses.

She had horses who were bodies of sand.

She had horses who were maps drawn of blood.

She had horses who were skins of ocean water.

She had horses who were the blue air of sky.

She had horses who were fur and teeth.

She had horses who were clay and would break.

She had horses who were splintered red cliff.

She had some horses.

She had horses with long, pointed breasts.

She had horses with full, brown thighs.

She had horses who laughed too much.

She had horses who threw rocks at glass houses.

She had horses who licked razor blades.

She had some horses.

She had horses who danced in their mothers’ arms.

She had horses who thought they were the sun and their bodies shone and burned like stars.

She had horses who waltzed nightly on the moon.

She had horses who were much too shy, and kept quiet in stalls of their own making.

She had some horses.

She had horses who liked Creek Stomp Dance songs.

She had horses who cried in their beer.

She had horses who spit at male queens who made them afraid of themselves.

She had horses who said they weren’t afraid.

She had horses who lied.

She had horses who told the truth, who were stripped bare of their tongues.

She had some horses.

She had horses who called themselves, “horse.”

She had horses who called themselves, “spirit.” and kept their voices secret and to themselves.

She had horses who had no names.

She had horses who had books of names.

She had some horses.

She had horses who whispered in the dark, who were afraid to speak.

She had horses who screamed out of fear of the silence, who carried knives to protect themselves from ghosts.

She had horses who waited for destruction.

She had horses who waited for resurrection.

She had some horses.

She had horses who got down on their knees for any savior.

She had horses who thought their high price had saved them.

She had horses who tried to save her, who climbed in her bed at night and prayed as they raped her.

She had some horses.

She had some horses she loved.

She had some horses she hated.

These were the same horses.

1983 Joy Harjo. She Had Some Horses, Thunder’s Mouth Press.

Joy Harjo’s Poetry Store

Harjo’s classic She Had Some Horses is now on CD as spoken word. Three bonus tracks of songs included.

   “Thirty years ago my journey as a poet was raw and fresh. I liked nothing more than dancing half the night, then staying up and writing in the transition hours between dark and dawn. Like dancing, I didn’t think about poetry; I was poetry. Poetry was the wild spin of rhythm and spirit, decked out in cowboy boots and drenched with sweat. I just had to get out of the way and hammer it out until shine emerged out of fear. I was accompanied by bravado, desire and contradiction. Some nights I failed; some nights a poem rose up from the darkness and began to speak on its own. That’s how it worked in the post Horseshoe Bend/Wounded Knee era, and like everyone else I was trying to figure out a strategy for vision and integrity, how to form it from the ashes of the takeover, with two young children on my back. The length of poems was dictated by the sleep patterns of children.  If I were to have stopped to think about it; it would have all fallen apart.

And it did all fall apart, those long nights of stalking myself as I fought, fell in love, questioned and failed in yet one more age of struggle for indigenous and women’s rights.

~~Joy Harjo