But up in the Colorado Rockies
There is no person that cares
For there is no one here anymore.

The town that once was
Is no more,
No more people living here.
The gold and the whisky
Has long ago run out.

The elk and also the deer
Are the residents now,
Who dwell at peace
Free from the fear of the town people.

The wind blows gently
From the one end to the other end
Of the formerly vibrant streets
That is now forever only animated
With the phantasms of long-ago past
And the once upon a time flourishing stores.

The long ago memories are over
And done with for all time,
Never to return
To living consciousness again,
Forgotten by time.

They are like the ghosts
That is whirling after a gust
Of wind in the dusty streets
Or stay behind buried
In the cemetery plots.

Ghost town

The look on his face was precious,
So many of us that he could not conceive
When we came out from our hiding places.
We circled him quickly and they could not escape.
They grow smaller and smaller
As we continue on through the day.

Strange,
Do not the other pony soldiers
in the area hear all the gun fire?
Yet they do not respond,
Do they want to get rid of Yellow Hair too?

The whites say that revenge is sweet,
But as for me, there is bitterness in my mouth.
It makes me want to vomit,
So much death for nothing.

We could have taught them so much about
How to live in harmony with Mother Earth,
But instead they have us die all the day long.
Instead of living in peace with Mother Earth,
They rape the land, destroying so much.
Eventually Mother Earth will spew them
Out one day and with her own revenge
and revive herself without them.

As we continue on they are now gone,
All of them, to each last man.
For Yellow Hair and his men,
The one white men call Custer,
This was his last stand,
And as for us?
I know that it is
Our last great Hurray.

"Custer's Last Fight," painted by W.H. Leigh, 1939.

Thunder rolled through the valley town.
“So it’s going to rain,”
Growled the old man,
“How I hate rain.”
Pushing the covers back he
Arose from the bed as if
He was rising from the dead.
“How I hate mornings,”
He grumbled as he slowly
Made his way kitchen bound.
Pouring water into a kettle
And setting it on a stove,
He goes to pick up his paper
In his unkempt yard.
The smell of coming rain
Permeated the air.
“No rain wrap on the paper?
How I hate that paperboy.”
Glancing into town,
He could see the blossoms of the trees,
“How I hate spring.”
The kettle whistle sounds,
“How I hate that whistle.”
He pours himself a cup of stout coffee.
Taking a good sip, “How I hate coffee.”
Opening his paper, “How I hate newspapers,”
He reads the local news.
“So old George finally died, did he?
How I hated him anyway.”
Then he pauses his reading,
Lays the paper down carefully
On the kitchen table.
He gazes out the grimy kitchen window
For what seemed like an eternity
At the looming rain clouds.

“How I hate death.”
Thunder rolled through the valley town

A man came along one time
And saw a group of people.
What a bunch of bums
These worthless people are he said.
Nothing but poverty stricken irrelevant
Unemployed scums these people.
Nobody wants people like that.
They will always be like that.
They should get a job, but no,
They are just too lazy to go to work.
I am so glad that I am not like those imbeciles.
We should make some sort of law to stop
These people being helped so they
Will not be out loafing like this.
If they should die,
Then let them do it quickly
And reduce the surplus population.

Another man came along one time
And saw a group of people.
Oh my, he exclaimed,
How absolutely awful for this to happen
In such a great and powerful
And rich country as this.
With the unemployment being so high
How much like them would I have been
If I lived in their overcrowding conditions?
What if I was educated in such a horrible
Poor education system like that school
Over there that is falling down around the students?
How could I ever have tried to get ahead when being
Ignored and treated so differently because prejudices?
We should do everything that we can to help these
People get an even chance to succeed in life.

One man saw lazy bums who refused to work.
Another man saw humbled and
Humiliated people being deprived.
Compassion or scorn?
What do you see when you look?

And Congress fought each other
Over politics and ignored the people.

I heard the sound of the
Chopper fly by overhead.
It must have been the one
We jumped out of in some
God forsaken location in the jungle.

Go and kill the Yellow man.
That was my first orders after
Boot Camp once I graduated
From High School.
Why?
He had done nothing to me.
I did not ask for our government
To get involved in someone’s war.
It was not my war.
But they drafted me
And put me right in the middle of it.
I honestly do not know how
I have survived it this long.
I was forced into killing people
That did not do anything to me.
Even after the battle, the smell,
The corpses with gaping holes
And missing body parts,
Flies that covered them, us,
The Vietnamese, and the
Vietcong dead remained with me.
Even when I tried to sleep they
Are still there with me.
It is all in my dreams.
Haunting faces of humans
That did not deserve this.
I wanted so badly to go back home,
To be with my wife that I
Married before I left.
I try to imagine holding our new
Baby that she had after I left.

We were out in the jungle
Only a little ways from some village.
The foliage had just been sprayed
With Agent Orange as we walked by them;
Handling the soaking wet leaves
To see what they were doing.
Then we stopped and rested behind
Some bushes in front of the village.

Jack was always the funny man.
He helped save my sanity.
I think I would have lost it long
Ago without his sense of humor.
He was just standing there
With his back to the village.
He started to say something
When a shot rang out from the
Village and Jack’s face disappeared
As he was shot in the back of the
Head by some sniper.
I screamed out at the top of my lungs
NO!
Then I noticed everyone on the street
stopped and turned and stared at me
as the helicopter flew above the town.
My body had made it back home,
Unfortunately my mind stayed behind in the jungle.

I stand here in front of a severe storm
Frozen in fear as the tornado sirens sound
And the sky explodes in lighting
Because of what I see coming.
I remember the warnings
Of what was going to happen.
The politicians scoffed so much.
So the corporations keep on churning,
Churning out their dirt into the air.
For no one at all cared.
Why would no one listen?
Why did no one care?
All for the sake of their money.
And now their gold is worthless,
Worthless since it is to late
To stop what they started.
It is too late, too late for us now.
So here I stand watching another
Severe storm coming in yet again
Tonight into my hometown.
As the tornado sirens sound
And the lightning erupts all around,
Frozen in fear I watch because
Dropping to the ground was a never
Known before F7 tornado.

The soldiers came one day and said no more,
No more dance, for you scare everyone.
We were on our own land,
We had hurt no one, we kept to ourselves.
Just four days after the King of Peace’s Birthday
In that mourning of 1890,
They took their Hotchkiss guns and shot us down,
To make sure that we dance no more.
Chief Big Foot was one of the first to die,
Already dying with tuberculosis.
There was no mercy, no kindness,
Neither for the women or children.

My people,
My people,
Now they are no more.
They lay spread across the bloodstained snow.

They have now gone to their ancestral home
Just like the great ones that have gone on before.
So now, please, just lay my lifeless body down
With my people in the mass grave
Here at Wounded Knee.

Mass grave at Wounded Knee

Additional information:
The Army awarded twenty Medals of Honor, its highest award, for the action.
Almost all of the troops on the battlefield were victims of friendly fire from their own Hotchkiss guns.

What's left of Big Foot's band

So, boldly we set sail from the bay,
Despite a storm starting to brew in the sea.
Just the seventy of us in the great mystery ship,
We rode with the captain and his crew
To make our new home in our new land.

Epilog:
I think often about our great journey
With the captain and his ship to our new land.
Sometimes I still think about those left behind,
But not as often now as I use to.
Those that refused to leave their land.
Do they even exist anymore or did their
Technology finally destroy them?
Hail Atlantis!

I walk alone on a deserted county
Back road deep in my own thoughts.
The trees limbs are bare of green
As an evening fog starts to form.

I arrived at the scene,
the scene that I dread.
I see the girl playing on
The Hollow Creek Bridge.
I recognize her at once
For it is my daughter
Standing on the railing.
I hear the railing cracking,
splintering, starting to give way.
I do not cry out to her? No.
For I know about apparitions,
Illusions and phantasms of the night
That happen since then.
For it is the one year anniversary.

The only thing I am confident about
Is that the future holds absolutely nothing for me.
Every night I cry myself to sleep.
Anguish is my way of life forevermore.
Suffering will be my children’s
Way of life likewise.
All of us are condemned to this horrible world,
Where I abhor every wakening moment
Of my wretched life.
It all becomes so vibrant to me
Whenever I close my eyes,
My horrifying future and that of my children.
My nightmares are nothing more than the
Destruction,
Bodies floating,
Decay,
Death.

New Orleans after Katrina

Do you sit in judgment of me?
My home has been devastated.
All of my belongings are vanished.
My family, friends and my neighbors
Are now gone forever, never ever to return.
I am transported between one run down shelter
To another run down shelter.
I have given up all hope,
The neighborhood will never be rebuilt,
It will never return to normal again.
Never again.

17th Street Canal New Orleans after Katrina