History Lie 225

To the white American men that rejoice

on the day of righteous Columbus,

who trespassed into this sacred land

some five centuries ago, five the Devil’s number,

and spilled the pure, smokey earth-bound blood

of the natives, who had roamed these lands

for millennia, prospering and soaking

in the righteous rapids that cleansed the dirt,

Do not tell me that this day is deserving.

The day Columbus stumbled onto these shores,

an entire race was decimated,

the land ached with the burning and the rot,

corpses that lay without heads or hands,

a punishment for not finding the gold

that white men have lusted after for eternity,

the broken bones and sick disease pooling

in their bodies and in roaming hogs,

No way out but death, the only relief from the onslaught.

Do not tell me that Columbus was a pure man,

for history has been promoting the sins

of rich white men with black tar smiles,

vindictive and horror-wrought, these men,

the ugly and evil, are the ones celebrated.

You have been soothed by the stories of defeat,

the blood they soaked themselves in,

of the natives decapitated of themselves and the earth,

of the slaves dragged from Africa and thrusted upon,

of the women shushed and suppressed, silent

in the face of beatings and carnage.

You, who have read about these acts,

You have been silent and gleaming,

like a satisfied monster by its havoc,

Greedy to hear more tales,

more wrongs set by the ancestors of this nation.

Do not tell me that this nation,

the Great United States of America, flawless,

is anything but borne of blood and scars

on the backs of the captured, the ignored.

When you preach to me in my fourth grade classroom

of the history of my country and you skim

over the colonization--the desolation--of natives,

do not dare to praise Good Sir Columbus

Or Pizarro, Cortez, and De Soto--do not pretend

that what those European men did to innocents

was anything but horrendous.

When you whisper those acts into my head,

as a young and foolish child,

do not conjure images of glory and kindness,

for they were anything but.

No, you explain with the sternness of a mother

how nothing those men ever did was right,

that they were cruel and carnivorous.

Explain to them the history of our nation,

how you live in a land spurned by cruelty,

Oppression, malice, and greed,

For only you, the privileged supported by your institution,

and you, those wronged by the injustices and corruption,

can lead your children into betterment,

to not be like our forefathers, the ones who held slaves,

or the founders of this land, the ones who massacred thousands,

but to see the differences in people for something good,

something to be held close to our chests for comfort.

Do not tell me that there is anything better than tolerance.