"I don't want to get caught dead in Utah,"
Joseph Hillstrom,
Ellis Island American
Newborn, Coming to open arms
america where even you could be free.
You walked East to West
looking for an honest break.
In West Virginia you crawled
out of of the earth
lungs filled with coal,
You ate your meal
of dust for a day and a half’s wages.
In big brother Chicago you worked
16 hours a day in
slaughterhousebloodslums
for their slitthroatwages.
Oh for spacious sky America
You longed for Great Plains stars.
Trains moving
West
You got on.
In Kansas you heard songs
of May Day Martyrs and Socialist Saints
In Ludlow you saw
men mined for their sweat
By capitalists dressed as
undertakers
their caskets carved
by non-union shops,
because the cemetery was all Union.
In California you stood on the other
side of America and found her the same -
The “good” lived off of your sweat
and built their American dream on
The backs of the laboring man
the burden of America
Breaking backs
the backs
of fathers sweating on docks
of sons burning in steel mills
of daughters dying in company houses.
all in the name of
RockefellersGreatAmericanBoneGrinder!
September 27th, 2010 at 10:56 pm
Curious — the labor issues? the songwriter? the legal issues? which compells the poetry?
Is Troy Davis on your poetic agenda also?
Hmm, Supreme Court ‘denied’ him recently.