I used to think
that I was unqualified
to say such things.

But then,
a professor of mine
encouraged the seething hum
within me
to boil to a roar
and so-

These are the facts
I’ve uncovered.

Our country’s countrymen
were not from the West.

They were here,
on this patch of land,
making their own.

When the others arrived,
led by the witchery
they seized what they could find,
butchered,
murdered,
brought the land to its knees with war
and feasted on its flesh.

Our big ol’ U.S. of A stands on the bones and weary shoulders
of an indigenous people
we have been made to ignore
or mislabel as “savage”
almost unwittingly-

Prey, all of us
in the jaws of a Capitalist agenda