By: Chuck Orloski

Unthinkable that aged Looking Glass
would be banished onto a reservation
where, upon grim encounter,
Colonel John Campbell promised him,
“You will mercifully die of old age
instead of musket rounds to the head!”

Medicine Man never wrote “Old Age”
upon a painted warrior’s “death certificate,”
and his tongue had nothing jagged
and base like “Collateral Damage”
to say about frozen Civil War veterans
(left behind) while their all white brothers
marched on to Hollywood Hills.

In October’s grip,
the frosty CIA issues orders to
“Kill and scalp Douglas County trespassers!”
The Military Engineer Division of The Levant
obstructs Looking Glass’s escape from Occupation,
and V.A. Hospitals are running out of room.

A buffalo robe and tobacco tried to comfort
Medicine Man’s pneumonia –
Coyote howls, and Willie the faraway fiddler
plays God Bless America.
“Ayy, yii, payee, yii… I’m back in the saddle again!”
At least a chief’s loved ones would not
perish in Triangle Shirtwaist Factory flames?

Blood Moon on Bozeman Trail,
and Medicine Man had to die.
Feeding tube probes, questions, and autopsy –
How long until my deportation, Mr. Jobs?
What’s a “No Fly Zone” for crows?
What’s a “Green Zone” for the starving?
Answer:
Savages must adapt to white man’s way,
or get behind barbed wire picket fences!

Missiles pound Doctors Without Borders tipis, as
I show my birth certificate to Chief Obama…
Can anyone tell me what age is this?
Fabled Injun Sniper, Taliban on horseback,
I await Looking Glass’s “house calls,’
the afterlife of Affordable Sioux Health Care.