White Man

My burden has gone underground, as if
I were a jackass, upside down, and all
my gold, with pots and pans, my maps,
binoculars, with all that upright stands -
my Bible, my gun, my grinning ancestry in photograph -
is falling, falling, falling. My wealth unpacked,
my heart uncanned, I'm scattered in
unchartered lands, where indigenous men
(their women too) are stamping, stamping,
stamping. I thought gin would undo me,
or the curse of Cain, not a forced excursion
into a Land of Shame, with my guilty
shadow, with the middle fingers of spirit hands,
making horns on my crown above me.
I am haunted by Ecclesiastes, and the Book of Job,
as my ironies go with me to the end of my globe,
where my children go cannibal, and eat me.