Go Home...

Source: Grand Forks Herald

© 4 July 2020, the Griot Poet

They were told to “go home”...
Which is ironic, you understand?
Mount Rushmore is stolen land
From the First Nation Lakota Sioux,

In the treaty of 1868,
Three years into Civil War reconstruction,
The U.S. government treacherously
Stole land promised to them in perpetuity

Because of the old
Reason for the colony: gold
Discovered as resource
Ignited one of the myriad gold rushes

Across the western expansion of wanton greed
Mythologized in the racist “Manifest Destiny,”
Coded language clouds the history
Of kleptomaniac shopping sprees

Resulting in the near annihilation
Of First Nation tribes
Scribing sculpture of slaveholders and grudging emancipator in sacred rock
Over their fathers Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse

Leading defense against the U.S. Calvary,
Following the defeat of George Armstrong Custer
At the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876
Led to vengeance seethed

For the Army’s defeat
At the nation’s centennial
Some of the lands recolonized and culturally appropriated
As Custer State Park,

The story arc by Dee Brown
“Buried My Heart at Wounded Knee,”
Hundreds of unarmed women, children, and men
All summarily executed by the U.S. Army.

A divisive carnival barker on July Third,
Risked Forest Fire lighting Roman candles, never heard of
Packing cult-like sardines for another
Spreader event DURING a pandemic!

He is “the Abomination of Desolation.”
On sacred Earth driving carnage, disorder, and division
New Caligula before the fall of a New Rome,
As his cult shouts hellishly to First Nation peoples: “go home.”