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JOE HILL
Joe Hill and a Coffin Filled With Roses
In the Beginning
Joseph Hillstrom, Ellis Island American Newborn,
Coming to open arms America where
Even you could be president.
You walked East to West looking for an honest break.
In West Virginia you crawled out of the earth lungs filled with coal,
You ate your meal of dust for a day and a half 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 suns burning in steel mills
Of daughters dying in company houses.
All in the name of
RockefellersGreatAmericanBoneGrinder!
Joe Hill
Newborn American slave of industry
Brother of Haymarket
Blood spilt money murdered masses!
Brother of Ludlow mine blood and bone
And Joe Hill stood on the mountain
And picked up his guitar and joined the IWW
He took the wobbly red
Wrote songs for men without a voice
Standing up to the devouring men of America
Who count their wealth by the
Husks of other mens lives.
Were Men in Need of a Voice?
Who were you Joe Hill?
What was your little red book and its songs
I never saw your blue eyes and their
Norwegian snow
But I sing your songs
"you will eat by and by in that glorious land
above the sky (way up high)
work and pray, live on hay and you you will get
by in the sky when you die."
Few remember you anymore
Your memory lost on your unstrung guitar.
Joe, what are you doing in Utah?
Were their men in need of a voice?
Were bones being ground down in Zion?
Did Mammon run free in the mountains of the Wasatch?
Joe, why did you have to die?
Tripping Justice
A gun fired in a grocery store
A man dead and a son
The echo going south cutting
Through the valley
Joe shot also, but
20 miles away arguing over a woman
held quiet in shadows
In Salt Lake City a father and a son lie dead,
Someone would have to pay.
Joe went to the doctor.
The doctor called the Sheriff
The law came for Joe.
Now Joe told them about the fight 20 miles away
But no one believed him
Because he would not name names.
While in the rich man's prison
Joe was found to have been with the IWW
The men of Copper and of Zion feared
The poet of the Wobblies.
The money masters tripped the blind folded goddess of Justice
Mammon knelt and picked up her scales
Filled one side with copper and the
Other side he left empty
Confess
They dragged him
They dragged him to their judgement
Tongues wagging in parched mouths lying.
"Confess, confess confess!" the policemen scream,
"and we will treat you white!"
His silence made them angry
There were no eyewitnesses
No motivation
For you to be accused
But there was a higher law in Zion.
Wobblies red is all they saw
Your words threatened the moneymasters.
Their hymns turned to fight songs,
Made them glow red
Red the color of war
Red the color of blood
And Joe,
you were
Undesirable
Homeless
Friendless
Agitator.
And Jesus shall come as a thief in the night
And the police shall arrest him.
Important men without honor
Sit in the courtroom
They check their pockets and find
Judge Ritche smiling up at them.
A jury of ear-less men grin
Guilty
The Supreme Court of Utah Laughs
A cry went out
And a thousand voices answered
And that which was secret was made known.
Men rose from the wheat with golden beards
Blackened men climbed out of the earth
Women came out from the bowels of factories
And they cried with one voice
"Justice for Joe Hill!"
The Supreme Court of Utah laughed
"Give law to the lawless, give justice to a man who is silent?"
Jesus stood before Justice Mc Carty and said not a word
And Justice Mc Carty sent Jesus away,
"He must have something to hide?"
Fear of Wobblies Gone Amok
No pardons in Utah
Letters and telegrams
Petitions and prayers
Sat on desks ignored
Fear of wobblies run amok.
Bloody Pinkertons
Haymarket detectives of fear
Dark angels of Capital
Standing guard at the House of the Lord.
But
No wobbly war
No violence
Except Salt Lake Officer Major Myton
Shooting Wobbly Horton for throwing insults
At him.
Sticks and stones may break my bones
But words will get you
Dead.
Joe
Anarchist
Wobbly poet
Boomer
Nothing could change what was to come.
Caught Dead In Utah
"See that I am buried some where else, I do not want to be caught dead in Utah."
Joe Hill 1915
There were no leaves on the tree in the prison yard.
Your cell was cold
They took you and walked under a gray sky
Feet shackled
They sat you down on a chair
strapped you in
cinched leather against your waist chest and arms.
"do not move too much," said the guard, "you do not want them to miss."
He pins a paper heart to your chest.
The captain of the guard opens his pocket watch
7:34
7:35
a crow flies overhead
7:36
thousands from sea to sea are singing your songs
7:40
7:41
""Aim commanded the captain of the guard.
"Yes aim, let her go, fire!" you screamed.
Those were your last words
6 bullets tore away the paper heart.
A Thousand Roses
Joe Hill,
Wobbly American
Martyred saint of labor
your coffin lay quit
Thousands came to his side,
each bringing a red rose.
His coffin was filled with a thousand red roses.
Wobbly red roses that still bloom
on window sills
against fence posts
and in jails
His ghost forever riding the rails
Looking for those without a voice
May Day 2001
Salt Lake City, Utah
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