Lyla June: Time Traveler
DailyGood
BY LYLA JUNE
Syndicated from emergencemagazine.org, Sep 23, 2018


 

Time traveler running faster.

Warrior is born.

Battle to be won.

Past trauma, future hurt.

I’m a child of the dirt and

I'm ready to give birth.

Planting a dream.

Panting, I breathe.

Running towards the future

with a handful of seeds.

Stronger than greed.

I am stronger than hate.

I stand under the shade

of trees planted so long ago.

A product of ancestral love,

I’m here because my elders

danced in the sun.

They would give it all up for us

and from day one it was

practiced like religion

to prepare for the ones

to come.

We are here

to give all our love

to the ones unborn.

But this is insane.

Living for fame.

Living for the next quarter,

profits and gains.

You forgot love.

You forgot truth.

You forgot how to live for a time

beyond you.

It’s not about you.

It’s not about you.

It’s about the song that is

traveling through.

It travels through time.

Singers will die

but the song lives on

through matrilineal lines.

We are here

to give all our love

to the ones unborn.

Open your eyes.

Open your heart.

Draining aquifers before

they can recharge.

We’re not in charge.

Nature’s in charge.

Look to the stars

remember who you are.

Stay humble or fall.

We don’t know it all.

And we are not exempt from

natural law.

Live selfishly

and the structure will fall.

But if we live for those unborn

then the song will go on.

So before you take a book off the shelf,

take a look inside yourself.

Answers come to you at light speed.

I’m searching for knowledge

I can’t find on a newsfeed.

Knowledge found through intuition.

Knowledge found through fasting and dancing.

This ain’t superstition.

It’s ancestral tradition.

Throw me the spear of wisdom—

sharpened and sunlit.

I’m giving my life to the oneness.

I’m a warrior. I’m sun-kissed.

I’m armed but I’m harmless.

Protecting cycles of rain and cycles of snow.

Fighting for children whose names I will never know.

I look up and read the messages written all across the sky.

Messages telling us that it’s time to evolve or die.

It’s time to live this life right.

So that when our children look back,

they look back with pride.

 

Emergence Magazine is a quarterly online publication featuring innovative stories that explore the threads connecting ecology, culture, and spiritualityLyla June is a poet, musician, human ecologist, public speaker, and community organizer of Dine (Navajo), Tsretsehestahese (Cheyenne), and European lineages. Her messages—shared through hip-hop, poetry, acoustic song, and speech—focus on Indigenous rights, supporting youth, inter-cultural healing, and traditional land stewardship practices. 

1 Past Reflections