A Long Hard Road Part IV

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: TRUE HISTORY

 

A Long Hard Road Part IV

 

They came to California on a promise of jobs

Where there was fruit on the vine and peaches

on trees just ripe for the picking

But there was way more refugees than

there was jobs

 

And there was a whole lot of people with skin

a shade darker working those fields of plenty

long before the dust bowl migration

 

They gathered together in sprawling camps of

makeshift shelters and worked like slaves of labor

 

Long hard hours for little pay

Kicked and spit at like stray dogs

 

When the boss man came up short on his payroll

Or got a little greedier than he usually was

He’d call the immigration bulls

 

The Mexicanos would go a running

Those who weren’t fast enough or were

Just too tired to run would be rounded up

Like cattle and took down to the border

 

Sometimes they took em in planes

A man name of Woody sang about it:

 

  The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting

  The oranges piled in the creosote dumps

  They’re flying em back to the Mexican border

  To pay all their money to wade back again

 

  Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita

  Adios mes amigos, Jesus y Maria

  You won’t have your names when you ride

  the big airplane

  and all they will call you will be deportee

 

You might wonder how the poor white folk

couldn’t see that what happened to them back

in Oklahoma is what happened to the

Mexicans here in California

 

Cheated out of their homes and pushed off

their land

 

You might wonder how they couldn’t see that

What happened to them happened to the

Cherokee a way back in Tennessee

 

It ain’t about the color of your skin

It’s about how much you have in your pocket

It ain’t about how you talk or where you’re from

It’s about greed

It’s about never being satisfied with what you

have but always wanting more

It’s about not caring who you have to cheat or

abuse to get what you want

 

It’s all connected

One long hard road

It’s all the same thing

And we’re all in it together

 

  This land is your land

  This land is my land

  From California to the New York island

  From the redwood forest

  to the Gulf Stream waters

  This land was made for me and you

 

(for Alan Arnopole and Woody Guthrie)

 

 

A Long Hard Road Part III

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: TRUE HISTORY

 

A Long Hard Road Part III

 

A dust storm came and it never left

It stretched out half a continent

High as any man could see

(of course you couldn’t see a thing)

 

Those were the Dust Bowl days

Hard times multiplied a hundred times over

Ain’t nothing you could do about it

Some say it was the farming ways

Swept out the natural brush, dried out the

land and made it ripe for the taking

Some say it was the revenge of the Cherokee

Payback is a punch in the gut

(but the Cherokee are not vengeful people)

A dust storm the size of Texas picked

up the land and blowed it all away

 

A man named Guthrie grew up in those

times and put it down in a song:

 

So long, been good to know ya

So long, it’s been good to know ya

So long, it’s been good to know ya

This dusty old dust is a gettin my home

And I’ve gotta be drifting along

 

He joined the army of the great migration

Thousands of poor folks with all their belongings

stacked up like hotcakes on an iron skillet

heading down the highway of the lost and

misguided looking for the land of plenty

 

When you think about it (and I do) it

sounds a lot like the Trail of Tears

Only there weren’t no people lined up to

watch the long loathsome trail of hardship

It came a way too close to home

 

Busted down and nearly broke

They came west to California

Where they hoped things would be better

For some maybe it was

For many it just weren’t

And that’s another story

 

A Long Hard Road (Part II)

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: TRUE HISTORY

 

A Long Hard Road Part II

 

The great war between the states

The war of the whites over black slaves

was a blessing to the Cherokee and

all other native tribes

The whites with their weapons and their

endless thirst for land and treasure

left them in peace

The Cherokee thrived

against all odds and all manner of adversity

the Cherokee survived

 

But when the great war ended and the slaves

were freed the whites remembered

They saw what the Cherokee did

That their tribal ways and culture endured

They saw and didn’t like what they saw

Injuns were supposed to learn the white ways

They weren’t supposed to live in tribes

The were supposed to live in homes

with fenced yards and small farms

 

So they passed laws that broke up the land

into small lots that couldn’t survive hard times

 

So they passed a law that paved a highway

over the red road of days past

 

They called it the Oklahoma Land Rush

 

So the Cherokee and others were pushed

out of their homes once again

They became tenant farmers working the land

alongside poor white farmers for next to

nothing just to put food on the table

 

The Cherokee found a way

The poor white farmers not so much

But that’s another story

 

 

A Long Hard Road (Part I)

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: TRUE HISTORY

 

A Long Hard Road Part I

 

This is a story about how things go together

Told in the language of the common folk

A language meant for talking

For telling stories in a crowded barroom

For speaking out loud in a circle of friends

It’s the language of Faulkner, McCarthy,

Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie

(but that’s another story)

 

This story begins in the green valleys,

endless forests, rugged mountains and

winding rivers of rural Tennessee

It may be the story rightly begins long

before Tennessee was even a name on a map

when the seven tribes of the Natchez Trace

lived and prospered on the mother of all rivers

before the great white invasion

 

But this story begins with the Cherokee

Known by the whites as the civilized tribe

(Tecumseh and Crazy Horse might disagree

but that too is another story)

 

The Cherokee invented their own syllabary

so they could write and read in their own language

They wrote their own constitution

They formed their own democracy

They elected their own representatives

 

The Supreme Court of the United States of

America (an audacious name but there it is)

recognized their lawful sovereignty but at that

time a man from Tennessee who grew up with

the Cherokee and led many of them into the Battle

of New Orleans was elected president of the

white man’s nation

 

His name was Andrew Jackson and he didn’t

think much of the Supreme Court’s decision

In fact he tossed it out with the daily trash

He ordered the Cherokee, Choctaw, the Creek

and Chickasaw herded up like cattle and

moved a thousand miles away to a desolate

land no white man wanted (until they did

but that is another story)

 

It came to be known as the Trail of Tears

but it was not just Indian tears on the path

to the setting sun where all things go to die

 

The poor white folk and black folk and other

folk lined up along the trail to watch a proud

people humbled by hardship and pushed to

the edge of their limits

 

They watched and their tears became a river

flowing, a path of sorrow, and a tribute to

the human spirit

 

Thousands of folks native to the land packed

what belongings they could and marched the

long hard road to Indian Territory

 

Some died, some escaped and many endured

It would come to be called Oklahoma

(but that is another story)

 

Son of Nixon

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: DEMOCRACY

 

Son of Nixon

 

I am not a crook he said

Yet it ended in disgrace

Take another look he said

My time was out of place

 

Had I the votes today he says

The courts would bow before me

I’d always get my way he says

The senate would restore me

 

I worked with Chairman Mao

I worked with Brezhnev too

If I was president now

I’ll tell you what I’d do

 

I’d take control of everything

All branches at my call

Declare myself the people’s king

My house would never fall

 

As for the curse of Watergate

It would not have come to light

The false news and the deep state

It’s all a pack of lies

White Genocide in South Africa

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: GLOBAL POLITICS

 

White Genocide

 

The white genocide is a myth

In lieu of calling it a lie

The mythmakers take the fifth

Well, we’re on the good guys’ side

 

But the “good guys” in South Africa

Were on the side of apartheid

The truth is some still are

They will tell you it’s “white pride”

 

They won their nation back again

They won their independence

Freedom was on track again

The oppressor’s time was spent

 

It’s really not a mystery

You want to rewrite history

But the truth will have its day

And right will have its way

The Day Saigon Fell

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: GLOBAL POLITICS

 

The Day Saigon Fell

 

The day that Saigon fell *

Ended fifty years of hell **

Fifty years since that day

We’ve learned there’s a price to pay

 

For fighting endless wars

That wound us to our core

Wars in other people’s lands

Iraq and Afghanistan

 

Wars that leave a lasting stain

Yemen and Ukraine

I wonder if we’ve learned at all

Fifty years since the fall

 

We’ve pledged to end all war

We’ve sworn to fight no more

But then the bugle sounds

And another war goes down

 

Soldiers by the thousands die

As mothers wonder why

Their children are deceased

When will we live in peace?

 

* April 28, 1975

** British, French and American wars

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

The Crusader

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: AMERICAN POLITICS

The Crusader (Pete Hegseth)

 

Those who do not know their history

Are most often condemned to repeat

They very worst of our worst atrocities

The Crusades ended in defeat

 

The Crusaders killed with utter pleasure

Annihilation was their only plan

They led massacres at their leisure

Killing children, woman and man

 

They believed their sword was blessed

Because they wore the Crusader’s cross

All sins forgiven when confessed

They never thought about the cost

 

In innocent lives and human suffering

In generations sworn to hate

All to grasp that illusive ring

To stake claim to their eternal fate

 

Now some would like a new Crusade

For another century of blood

Exchange the bullet for the blade

Watch the stream become a flood

 

(Trump’s choice for Defense Secretary

is a champion of the crusades.)

 

The Strange Case (Julian Assange)

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: HISTORY

The Strange Case

 

The strange case of Julian Assange

Will be an anecdote in history

He exposed the dirty lies of war

But his motives were a mystery

When he aided by omission

The campaign of a pretender

He went after one candidate

But he spared the worst offender

Who ever landed on the stage

With the help of Brother Vlad

In defiance of his age

We went from good to bad

 

Those who were offended

By the consequence of his actions

Will not accept or forgive him

Or his strained loyal faction

We hold him much to blame

For the threat to our nation

He should hide his head in shame

He should forego the celebration

For his reasoning was lame

When he served the Russian station

Did he really go insane

Or did he just enjoy sensation?

 

America Found

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

America Found (the Awakening)

 

We have lost our way before

We are not a perfect nation

We regarded the protectors of the land

As something less than human

As beasts to be exterminated

Or tamed and put in cages

It took centuries to awaken

To know the error of our ways

But we have awakened

To set forth a better day

 

We enslaved generations of blacks

We denied their basic humanity

We put them in chains

When they demanded their freedom

We hunted them down like rabid dogs

We whipped and hobbled them

We killed and raped them

It took centuries to awaken

To accept the truth that we betrayed

But we have awakened

To a more enlightened way

 

We have fought unprovoked wars

Unjust wars of mass destruction

We have followed poor leaders

We have embraced corporate greed

We have turned the clock backwards

We have stripped away rights

We have sanctioned child labor

We have done evil things

In our God’s holy name

But we have always awakened

In the spirit of righteous shame

 

The Coup

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

The Coup

 

Maybe we’re all to blame

Maybe a change was overdue

Now we hang our heads in shame

We’ve legitimized the coup

 

We all witnessed an act of treason

Every one of us knows it’s true

Have we abandoned our sense of reason?

We have legitimized the coup

 

You might say nothing has changed

Days of old become the new

All the pieces are rearranged

We’ve legitimized the coup

 

Who’s to say when it will end?

Let’s give the other side its due

Will it break or will it bend?

We have legitimized the coup

 

This will live beyond tomorrow

They will wonder what we knew

We will hide our heads in sorrow

We legitimized the coup

 

Worse than Buchanan

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

Worse than Buchanan

 

Worse than Buchanan

Worse than Franklin Pierce

His defenders were none

His opposition remained fierce

 

Buchanan, Pierce and Fillmore

Paved the road to Civil War

As colossal failures to the union

You could hardly ask for more

 

Historians know the value

Of a president’s true worth

They chose our number 45

As the nation’s very worst

 

He betrayed our democracy

He failed to build his wall

He divided all Americans

As he fulfilled treason’s call

 

His followers stand by him

Despite his fatal flaws

His ego and his ignorance

His defiance of the law

 

No one could be worse than him

He’s as bad as it gets

Will the nation have him back again?

Who knows? Place your bets