Clemency (for Leonard Peltier)

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: AMERICAN JUSTICE

Clemency (for Leonard Peltier)

 

Half a century behind bars

For crimes he did not commit

Fifty years proclaiming injustice

Five decades of taking the hit

For the crime of not being sorry

That the FBI agents were dead

For surviving the deadly shootout

That the FBI agents led

 

Way back in the year of seventy-three

On the Pine Ridge Reservation

At a place called Wounded Knee

In the heart of the Oglala nation

The American Indian Movement

Planted a staff and laid their claim

To justice the Indian way

 

For seventy* days they held their ground

Seventy days to the nation’s shame

Two warriors of AIM lost their lives

Though few can remember their names**

They remember the name of Leonard Peltier

For he alone took the blame

For the shooting of agents Coler and Williams

For the killing of both the same

 

Peltier was not at Wounded Knee

But he was chosen to pay the price

A person of native bloodline

Had to make that sacrifice

 

There is no justice in America

As long as Leonard Peltier is held

For the crimes of someone unknown

Half a century spent in hell

 

* seventy-one

** Frank Clearwater & Buddy Lamont