Terence Smith Poet Blank verse

Pale Riders

Pale Riders
(Not for the under-eighteen crowd, or the faint-hearted.)


Stars and Stripes waved in such bright glory,

                over bleeding children's corpses.

the braves were far away
 
                there was no resistance against the Hotchkiss Guns.

The women screamed and cried as,

                Soldiers rode so, so brave, to the strains of  "Gary Owen".

I know today what that stripe of yellow on your pant still stands,

                as you rode away.

Strips of flesh cut from dying mothers,

                You displayed their sex upon your hats of blue.

That day at Wounded Knee you should have struck your spangled banner,

                a swastika will do.

A nation hides its living genocide in the corridors of time,

                but God remembers still.
Based on historical events that occurred at Wounded Knee Creek on Dec. 29th, 1890. This poem was created as a result oy my reading of the book "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" by Historian Dee Brown. For full details of the massacre please read the book. © Mar 2014, Terence Cummings Smith

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