Christopher Columbus, Crawl Back in Your Hole!
POETRY FORMAT, 17 Oct 2016
Gary Corseri – TRANSCEND Media Service
Christopher Columbus, crawl back in your hole!
Take you Nina, Pinta and Santa Magreedier!
We know what you did in Hispaniola!
We watched silver helmets glint in the sun.
We saw you claim our island for Spain!
Idiot!
Look what you’ve done!
How many millions of lives lost,
How many holocasusts
Would burn up the centuries
So you could fill your coffers with gold?
Christopher Columbus
Take them all with you–
Lincoln and Washington, and Jefferson, too.
None of them gave a damn about us!
They said we were “savages,”
They killed us for sport.
Ever read about Lincoln and the Black Hawk War?
If Lincoln wanted to “free the slaves,”
How come he didn’t give a damn
About their red brothers?
Jefferson pimped for “democracy”
But signed the Removal Act to defraud the Cherokees.
And Washington—“Father” of his country?
Please! You’re killing me! Don’t make me laugh!
Christopher Columbus—Genoa scum!
Take Ferdinand and Isabel—bane of the Jews!
Bane of the Moors, too, who gave Spain a culture!
You can leave Jesus behind.
If you want to leave the sandaled carpenter behind,
We’ve got work for him, work with honor.
We’ve got to undo 500 years of your damned interfering:
We’ll re-plant forests and heal the sky.
We don’t know if we can do it.
You took the last kernel of our hopes and crushed it.
You took our hope away and gave us fear.
You took our hope—but not our courage.
Courage to resist you, even after 500 years!
We’re all under your boots now, your jackhammer boots!
Take your bloody history
Forward and backward and what have you got?
The Spaniards came and rode us like lamas—literally!
They climbed on our backs and whipped us till we dropped.
The French came looking for pelts.
They took more than they needed so they made
Beaver-fur hats—a Parisian fashion statement!
The Anglos came and never stopped coming.
They slaughtered each other over our land.
They never stopped slaughtering.
They made great speeches about freedom and liberty
While their vampirish mouths ran with our blood.
Christopher Columbus, crawl back in your hole!
Take your economy and your progress and
All the appurtenances of “civilization.”
Take your death culture and your sordid manias.
We’re sick of you and your hypocrisies.
And we’re gathering!
We’re singing the Ghost Song and dancing the Ghost Dance,
Gathering on the hills when you shut your eyes;
Whispering in your dreams
And crying in your nightmares.
And howling as your towers fall,
Your bridges buckle,
Your levees are breached,
Your schools implode,
And your children grasp you with their bloody claws.
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Gary Corseri is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment. He has published and posted articles, fiction and poems at hundreds of venues, including, TMS (Transcend Media Service), The New York Times, Village Voice, Redbook Magazine and Counterpunch. He has published 2 novels and 2 collections of poetry, and his dramas have been produced on PBS-Atlanta and elsewhere. He has performed his poems at the Carter Presidential Library and Museum and has taught in universities in the US and Japan, and in US public schools and prisons. Contact: Gary_Corseri@comcast.net.
An earlier version of this poem appeared at Dissident Voice in 2007.
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 17 Oct 2016.
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