My new poem: Who Were the Savages?

Yesterday I wrote a new poem entitled "Who Were the Savages?"

Who Were the Savages? is a long, free-verse poem addressing the fate of the Indians during invasion of the West.

The old warrior chief sits
atop his magnificent stallion
on a high hill overlooking
the green valley below
through which a wagon train
of many Conestoga wagons
is snaking its way slowly.

Anger fills his body, giving way
to dread and consuming despair.
Like a plague upon the land,
spreading their contempt
for both Nature and the Red Man,
in more and more increasing number
come the White Man with his hatred,
his lies, and his superior guns.

Once the buffalo herds roamed
in great number, flowing across
the land, providing his Native Peoples
with plentiful food and hides.
The buffalo were like the stars
high in the nighttime sky,
but then came the White Man
to slaughter the buffalo for
hides and for sport, shamefully
leaving the meat to rot in the sun.
Now Indian children hunger and die.

The White Man considers
Indian ancestral lands to be his
for the taking. The Native Peoples
tried to make peace with these invaders,
but the White Man has broken treaty
after treaty. They murder Indian women,
Indian children for fun and bounty.
They consider Indians an inferior
race of men, even though Indians
have lived for centuries in complete
harmony with the land. The White Man
doesn’t see the soul of Nature that resides
in everything they are destroying.

The old warrior knows his tribe
soon once again must fight gallantly
to attempt to preserve their heritage.
But he also knows deep in his heart
that they cannot stop the humiliation
of his people and the destruction
of their way of life. He understands
loss of their lands and confinement
to a reservation at the mercy of the
White Man will be their pitiful fate;
he also understands his proud people
will fight as long as they are able
against the passage of their culture.

As he turns his horse to ride away,
his heart breaking with sorrow,
he’s spotted by the wagon train.
He hears them shout as they point,
“Up there. It’s one of those savages.”
The old warrior gallops away peacefully
as shots ring out from the White Man.
All too soon the shameful decimation
of the Indian Nations was complete.


[Note: To read more about this shameful chapter
in American history, read the new book
“Conscience: Breaching Social Amnesia”
by vehoae. Look for the warrior on the cover.
http://consciencebreachingsocialamnesia.com/ ] ]

I was an editor at 4RV Publishing for vehoae's informative book. Her book should be read in every American history class. I highly recommend it to anyone wanting more information about treatment of the Indians during "settlement" of the West after the War Between the States (otherwise known as the War of Yankee Aggression).

Cheers!

Harry

Today's Shootout Inside the Crowded U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

I just returned home from a visit to Uncle Travis and lunch out in Ruston at Captain D's seafood to find where there was a shooting inside the crowded U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in which one security guard was killed before the gunman was shot himself by other officers. Law enforcement officials said James W. von Brunn, a virulently anti-Semitic white supremacist, was under investigation in the shooting. Von Brunn has a racist, anti-Semitic website and wrote a book titled "Kill the Best Gentiles," alleging a Jewish "conspiracy to destroy the white gene pool." von Brunn's website has long been listed as a hate site. von Brunn was 88-years-old. (Source: AP Internet article By NAFEESA SYEED and DAVID ESPO - Associated Press Writers) Isn't it amazing that humans are never too young or too old to hate others so passionately.

I wrote a poem that seems appropriate here:

Why Is It So Easy To Hate?

Throughout history, humans
have found it rather easy
to hate other humans.
Hatred excuses killing,
conquering, torturing, enslaving,
and making war against other humans.
It’s amazing how the mind
can justify grounds for hatred
deep enough to allow any atrocity.

One human may hate another human
simply and instantly because:

He is of a different race,
with the wrong skin color,
hair texture, or eye shape,
speaks another language, or
has strange cultural habits –
any of which makes him
inferior and unworthy of respect.

He has the wrong religion.
Untold millions have died during
crusades or jihads to convert or
render dead the nonbelievers.
How can zealots be so religious,
yet so misguided?
"I kill you in the name of God!"

He lives in a different nation.
Chinese versus Japanese versus Korean,
Irish versus English,
Indian versus Pakistani,
– I rest my case.

He doesn’t think or act
exactly the same way,
even a fellow American:
Republican versus Democrat,
conservative versus liberal,
Protestant versus Catholic,
heterosexual versus homosexual,
pro-life versus pro-choice,
Ohio State fan versus Michigan fan,
the rich co-worker with the Mercedes,
the neighbor who plays loud music…
No reason seemingly is too petty
to engender hatred in some people.

How tragic that humans as a species
do not love as readily as they hate.

© Copyright 2007 Harry Gilleland

Racism Flares Anew In U.S.

I've read recently where there has been an outpouring of racism and hatred toward Obama and toward blacks in numerous places around the U.S.-- things like one small store having a gambling pool for picking the date when Obama gets killed, with the wording "Let's hope we have a winner soon", nooses hanging from trees, hate words painted on houses, school children chanting "kill Obama", and the like. There reportedly has been more threats against Obama than ever before for a president-elect. The FBI and Secret Service are supposedly busy investigating numerous threats made against Obama. I had hoped the U.S. was better than this, had somehow outgrown our racist past, maybe had grown up more as a nation. But, instead, racism is making an open comeback. As a nation, we should all be ashamed of such behavior and speak out against such hatred whenever & wherever we hear or see it displayed. Won't we ever learn just how truly ignorant racism is?

I wrote an acrostic poem back in 2002 entitled "A Lingering Disease":

Rarely occurring in humans younger than age five,
Adults carry the disease, communicating it to each kid.
Constantly a threat to harm almost anyone alive,
It remains a malady from which Man needs be rid.
Sorry to say, even today, it continues to thrive,
Mind after mind learning to hate as their parents did.


Wouldn't it be great if a successful Obama presidency was the cure for America's chronic disease of racism? One can only hope...





Published 2008: "Poetic Musings of an Old, Fat Man". A collection of my poetry. Lulu Press.
See: http://www.gillelands.com/poetry/