Oh Canada - 24" x 48", Acrylic on Oak, $3,700

My heart is bent inside

In a silent shock it breaks for you

In what we do in far away places

And then my mind is bent inward

Trying to hear into the hushed up world

Of what was said and what was meant

And when and why depending on the time

And what went by and what is remembered

And the silence is too loud

And the silence is too

Disorderly And

All that’s heard Are the lists and the done’s

And the

Manifests of their destiny

But the entertainment is what shuffles you all around

The mindlessness is what silences

All that was said and decided in the name of democracy

Was not mine

I want no part of this war, I’m climbing down

My voice is not heard and out of 

All the Four Races of White and Black and Yellow and Red

The red voice is missing

There is an imbalance to this multi cultural land that represents the world

Fear is the conduit to numbed down silence

And democracy is the peaceful opposite to war not the reason for it

Cause no one really needs to die in that far away place

The truth is shifting inside

As you feel Autumn and your leaf falling

It’s like the white clouds that morph and take over the blue

I’ve sat on this white background for forty two years

I’ve been the spirit and the blood and the red earth that went into this red leaf

I sprang from the standing ones

But it was never acknowledged that I was the spirit of this red on this fabric

The Red has been like a decoration but never lived like one

And has been accused of dying but we are still living while suicides and poverty mock us

Yet as much as the past hurts and as much as the present burns

There is more which makes me want off this fabric

The fish are dying and the land is being drilled and the North is melting

As the sky leaks out harmful rays

The winds are roaring and the waters are overflowing

The ground is parched and forests clear cut at the same time they are burning

I do not want to watch this earth writhe in pain

When all the choices were made without my say

Now we are at war in a country thousands of miles away

For the same purpose our blood splattered over 500 years ago today

I’m climbing down, I’m climbing down, I’m climbing down.