Sioux Time Poetry by Rick Beck Click on the picture for a larger view Poetry Native Americans  Rated for General Audiences Proudly presented by You can translate this page. Choose your language.

The air is filled with gunfire
Garbage spread along the ground
One hand raised in frozen defiance
The clothing forms human mounds

Run to ground like hunter's game
Surrounded and shot for fun
A final chapter on the plains
When soldiers used their guns

Red men sick and dying
Cold and nothing left to eat
The army watched them grow sicker
From the rotten rancid meat

Even while their children froze
They were told they couldn't dance
Even when the spirits told
This is your final chance

Putting on the magic shirts
becoming warriors one last time
They broke out for freedom
It's what they thought they'd find

Freedom tastes like stinging wind
And looks much like frozen grass
The ones that had the strength to run
Didn't know that freedom doesn't last

With armies tracking sickened men
But one way left to go
They put their heads down
Driving forward through the snow

At first light the hills were filled
With soldiers guns and threats
Warriors don't just bent to wind
They were not finished yet

A few hundred ragged people
Surrounded by their countries might
They went to bed still hungry
Awakened for one last fight

A thousand men came forward
Making them look quite small
The army had their pray
They would kill them all

Snow colored red with native blood
One frozen fist raised high
Corpses tossed in wagoned heaps
Some things refuse to die

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Sioux Time Copyright © 2 August 1998 OLYMPIA50. All rights reserved.
This work may not be duplicated in any form (physical, electronic, audio, or otherwise) without the
author's written permission. All applicable copyright laws apply. All individuals depicted are fictional
with any resemblance to real persons being purely coincidental.