How that poem should’ve gone…

2014-10-13
by Eleanor Goldfield

We’ve all heard it…”in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue…”

It sounds so adventurous, so innocently inquisitive –

like Indiana Jones minus the Nazis and doomed temples.

However, as almost all adults now know, Columbus was anything but an innocent explorer – he was in fact, a mass murdering genocidal rapist, thief and mad man who went the wrong way, “discovered” an entire continent already inhabited by millions of people and started a trend that would ultimately result in the killing off of almost an entire indigenous population.

So yeah, think it’s about time we #AbolishColumbusDay.

Here’s a little poem – how I think it should’ve gone back in elementary school…

In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue…

The wrong way, we now know –

’twas to India he was supposed to go –

But it’s not just bad direction –

that we celebrate with great affection –

but rape and pillage, torture, hey –

we couldn’t find a word to rhyme

with lunatic or genocide

so instead we made an idol

of yet another mad man –

and rewrote history with Indians and discovered lands –

proud legacies made from blood stained hands.

So, celebrate today –

by going to a house not yours.

kill the host who offers most

and claim it as your own.

And maybe next year,

we can get a day off

for Hitler’s birthday…