joemallik

This poem is from Green Egg magazine, copyright Mabon, 1991. After that recent find
in Norway, I thought it would be appropriate.

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White Folks Was Wild Once, Too
by Whitman McGowan

Yeah, white folks was wild once, too
We'd get a wild tattoo and paint our faces blue
If we smelled some game we knew just what to do
And someone always dug where the medicine grew
We had our kind of music and our rituals, too
Yeah, white folks was wild once, too

Forget about the Mau-Mau, forget about the Sioux,
We was homesteaders back when the glaciers withdrew
And where our chiefs lay buried, everybody knew
We had a feel for nature, a sense of what was true
Yeah, white folks was wild once, too.

We put up lots of big rocks framing up the moon
'N pointing at the sun and the other stars, too
We did a whole damn lot of scary hoodoo
'N voodoo 'n mojo 'n sacrifices, too
Yeah, white folks was wild once, too.

We took starnge powders to improve our view
Before the Wright Brothers, I'm telling you we flew
Getting right with the Goddess was the mission of our crew
We danced around a fire chanting woo-woo-woo
Yeah, white folks was wild once, too.

Wacky doo, wacky doo, wacky doo, wacky doo
We used to like to drink and fight, used to like to ooh!
For all that I know, we still just maybe do
And we were really ready for the world to start anew
Yeah, white folks was wild once, too.

We had baskets to weave and a bone to chew
We got real funky on some homemade brew
We had a helluva time at a bar-be-que
If you saw us today you'd put us in a zoo
Yeah, white folks was wild once, too!
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From the author:
"This particular bit of whimsy comes from decades of feeling like I wasn't a native.
I mean, when the Mayans were building their temples and the Chinese had very advanced
observatories, and the Africans had great kingdoms with complex social structures, _my_
people, you know, white people, who were once natives too, were still running around
hitting each other with sticks and painting their faces blue. And now _we're_ supposed to
be the point men for civilization! We were the _last_ to be civilized. Just about anybody
is more qualified for the job than we are."
--Whitman Ott McGowan