Featured Poems By Phoenix Lara

203 Issue

Who We Are

How do you want to live? What do you want to create?

All life around you listens and awaits you.

Remember the past is a way to acknowledge it.

Forgive yourself and allow yourself to be alive.

Every time you feel discouraged, think back to when you were a child. Now visit that child and go back and fight for yourself.

You can go back and rescue that little one. You know how it felt. You can let that little one know the hurt is over.

It’s been over for a long time.

By Phoenix Lara

One Bounldless Self

How boundless is the self?

Awakening each moment with an energy of joy.

Resting in the darkness of inner vastness

while rejoicing at the immenseness of our inner light,

that sparkles through our outward eyes.

Sounds surround the listener as words are released.

A key to the secret called Life.

By Phoenix Lara

Journey to the Drum

Today is Sunday

I pick up my drumstick and put on

The Original Founding Fathers" shirt

that honors our forefathers

I look at my “Indian” hat and think

Do I want to be stared at today?

Wearing my hat, carrying my drumstick

I board the train from the City to another event

that our Native women’s drum has been invited to sing and drum

I walk into the luxury hotel with plush furniture

holding on to my drumstick and fixing my hat

My Native sisters arrive, we smile and hug

Our voices are strong, and our song fills the room

Each beat reminds us why we sing

I see others who look like us, and we nod

They are a reminder of why we drum and sing

and keep the heartbeat going for generations to come

by Phoenix Lara

To My Grandmother

She looks into the distance, recalling events as if they occurred the other day.

She speaks for hours, reliving each moment through her hands and eyes.

She touches you as each word comes alive.

A glimpse of a tear slowly moves down her face as we watch in silence.

Silence fills the air, and the only sound we hear the crackling of the ice.

We pretend as if these stories are new, for they are the memories that live throughout the ages and touch each of our lives.

Flour Tortilla

Tis the season to relive the childhood memories

I recall spending time in our kitchen

The smells of home cooking my mother prepared each day

I come home from school and fresh homemade tortillas awaited

My mother would make fresh flour tortillas each day

I would be playing outside and she would yell for me to come in

I would run into the kitchen and she would hand me her first tortilla.

I would spread butter and enjoy the taste fresh off the stove

Ah the joy and memory that I long for on these cold winter days.

Each time I bit into a flour tortilla I remember the fresh hot flour tortilla

My Mother yelling for me to come and taste the first one and I would savor each one with the taste of butter..

Being Two Spirit

What does it mean to be Two Spirit?

Walking in the land of my ancestors

Walking with our hearts

Walking close to the earht

Yet hiding who we are

I go to the powow

wishing in my heart to be a switch dancer

eating fry bread and laughing

Deep in my heart

I want to walk hand in hand with my love

As we play and sing on the powwow trail

I want my love sitting behind me

as we sing and drum to honor our relatives

Two Spirit is who I am

I pick and choose which of my people to tell

My love holds me at night as I cry over comments made about who I am

I dare to put my arm around the woman who loves me

As I watch the people start

and hear the whispers in the air.

By Phoenix Lara

The Birth of a Dream

by @ Phoenix Lara

The sounds of the sea

Joyously sing touched by the sand to continue again.

A restless breeze aggressively leads a restless soul longing to breathe;

Miles away a robin sings A love of life always bring one larger seed on which to release a silent dream.

Like the sounds of the sea, I search for a freeing key.

Your body expresses a new birth; Your lips speak in new words Releasing the gifts you long for 

Touching the Ground

by @ Phoenix Lara

For centuries we survived

attempts by many

to scatter us like leaves;

Leaves may fall but gather strength

as the season change.

Our feet still touch the ground;

Surviving removal of our children;

Relocation to unknow lands,

Destruction and appropriation of our ways;

Rooted to the womb of our mother,

We remember;

We live and listen to the voices of our ancestors;

For we are the fire that will never die,

Words and Reflections Poem Book

By Phoenix Lara