THREE HANGINGS -- GUEST POEM BY TOM KARLSON

THREE HANGINGS~~ GUEST POEM BY TOM KARLSON

Three Hangings

Ireland emptied, tenant farmer vagabonded
Feudal dreams interrupted by
Capitalism enjoined by famine and the homeless
Irish farms slaves of sheep (no more insurrection)
Men and women move west by sail steam and dream
Ending 1000 feet underground-hard rock miners
Coal for iron steel and power
Anthracite for war-Pennsylvania home

The Molly Maguires, Irish mold for resistance
Eight hour day, company store theft
Union, blood struggle, death, twenty-thousand strikers
Big hole in the ground, the Avondale mining disaster

The scaffold holds twenty Eds and Toms and Johns
show trial-- informers agents no evidence
June 21 1877 twenty men swinging

Dreams of L’Ovature, of former slaves ruling, of French defeats
Of democracy, of freedom in this life of broken chains
Drives Denmark Vesey
To dream, to conspire: Insurrection
Informers and police bring the rope
July 1822 thirty-seven men swinging

Game gone, reservation as abu grave

Treaty signed treaty broken
Game gone, reservation as abu grave

Wormed flour, maggoted beef, starving families
Young braves rising
Small victory, devastating defeat
Three-hundred-three to hang
Two-hundred-sixty-five set free by Lincoln
Thirty-eight swing December 1862
Lakota nation weeps again


(Ben Heine © Cartoons)