The Long Weekend of Louis Riel

louis riel liked back bacon & eggs easy
over   nothing’s as easy as it seems
tho   when the wait­ress cracked the eggs
open louis came to his guns blaz­ing   like
dis­so­lu­tion like the fin­gers of his hand com­ing
apart as he squeezed the trig­ger
        this made break­fast the most
dif­fi­cult meal of the day   lunch was sim­pler
   two poached eggs & toast with a mug
of cof­fee   he never ate sup­per never ate
after four in the after­noon spent his time plan­ning
free­dom the tri­umph of the metis over the
white­man

sat­ur­day

louis felt depressed   when he got up he sat
down & wrote a let­ter to the eng­lish   there
was no use wait­ing for a reply 

  it came   hey gabriel look at this
shouted louis a let­ter from those crazy eng­lish   
they both laughed & went off to have
break­fast

            that morn­ing there
was no bacon to fry   its those damn
eng­lish­ers said gabriel those damn white­men
theyre sit­ting up in all night din­ers stag­ing a
food block­ade

   louis was watch­ing the waitress’s hands as
she flipped the pan­cakes spun the pizza dough
kneaded the ris­ing bread & didnt hear him
   its as cana­dian as geno­cide thot gabriel

sun­day

the white boys were hang­ing around the local
bar feel­ing guilty look­ing for some­one to put it
on   man its the blacks said bil­lie its what
weve done to the blacks   hell said george
what about the japan­ese   but johnny said
naw its what weve done to the indians

                out­side in the
rain louis was dying   its always these damn
white boys writ­ing my story these same stu­pid
fuck­ers that put me down try to make a myth
out of me   they sit at coun­ters scrib­bling
their plays on nap­kins their poems on their
sleeves & never see me

             hell said george its
the per­fect image the per­fect metaphor   he’s
a sym­bol said johnny   but he’s dead thot
bil­lie but didn’t say it out loud   theyre crazy
these white boys said louis riel

mon­day

they killed louis riel & by mon­day they were
feel­ing guilty

maybe we shouldn’t have done it said the moun­ties
as they sat down to break­fast    louis rolled
over in his grave & sighed    its not enough
they take your life away with a gun they have to
take it away with their pens    in the dis­tance
he could hear the writ­ers scratch­ing louder &
louder    I’m get­ting sick of being dished up
again & again like so many slabs of back
bacon he said    i don’t think we should’ve
done it said the moun­ties again reach­ing for the
toast & mar­malade    louis clawed his way
thru the rot­ting wood of his cof­fin & strug­gled up
thru the damp clay onto the ground    they
can write down all they want now he said they’ll
never find me    the moun­ties were eat­ing
with their mouths open & couldn’t hear him
louis dusted the dirt off his rot­ting flesh & began walking

when he came to gabriel’s grave he tapped on the
tomb­stone & said come on gabriel its time we
were leav­ing & the two of them walked off into
the sun­set like a kodachrome post­card from the
hud­son bay