POETRY PAGES

Tashunkewitko

by Jerry Sisson

copyright August 2004

   

They Said His Horse Was Crazy 

 

The white man said his path was unclear

A crooked and hazy course

But his spirit guide was showing the way to Crazy Horse

 

Bullets couldn’t hurt him

He knew no fear

The abundance of the land fed him

The fish the buffalo and deer

 

This was his way of life

Freedom his birth right

He had no need for the yellow gold

But for his way of life he did fight

 

He rode head long into a wall of smoking guns

Protector of his people

He led their mothers’ sons

 

He was thunder and lightening

He was the riveting hail

He was a one-man hurricane

A hashing thrashing gale

 

Crazy Horse, a symbol of freedom

He had to be shown

That freedom to the white man

Means their way not his own

 

They fought him at the Rose Bud

He bloodied their nose and built his glory

But it was at the Little Big Horn

He wrote the final chapter in Custer’s story

 


Then the buffalo began to disappear

The little children were hungry and needy

The winters were long and cold

And the white man was brutal and greedy

 

Crazy Horse gave himself up

And here’s the reason why

He couldn’t stand to see his people

Starve, suffer and die

 

The white man made a promise

They swore to honor their word

But the white man has never kept a promise

And the cries of his children were never heard

 

So Crazy Horse told himself one day

It would be better to die trying to live

Than to live dying this way

 

He tried for his freedom

The soldiers say

And he was stabbed by a native

Who was guarding him that day

 

Protector of his people

Brother to the wind

Freedom was in his spirit

Until the very end.

 

 

 

 

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