Lets take a step back
and examine what we’ve got.
Columbus came in and
let the Indians rot.
Did he have the right to do so?
Heh, who cares about rights?
He had the dinero and power in this case,
and oh, he was also white.
So of course he’d be the one,
the one to win.
Ignore the fact that he was a sociopath
and that he felt no chagrin.
He was like “YAY. Go England”
“We’re just making them civilized”
But today, he is the reason that
today, their whole population has been paralyzed.
Did he not think
when he raped those young girls?
When he killed those innocent children,
in greed for that gold and for those pearls?
Those poor Tainos,
he came and basically them wiped out.
What a fate they were destined to?
No one paid attention to their screams and shouts.
Why, then, do we
celebrate this stigma of a man?
He was the one the one that took lives
and threw them in the trash can.
Did he feel remorse?
Nah! Why would he?
He had the support of King Ferdinand
and of Spain’s Queen Bee.
He was getting dem riches,
which were the only things that seemed to matter.
Not those Taino old folk he killed,
or those children whose lives he slaughtered.
So tell me why on Columbus day,
we do not mourn?
Mourn for all those Indian lives
that were killed and those yet to be born?
How do we, as humans,
find it justified to dwell
in a house that’s been made
on top of their yells?
Why do we never
never acknowledge the fact
that the blood of the Indians
is the reason our shelter is intact?
So does that not make us
just as bad as that sociopath
Cuz we basically sleep in beds
placed on dead people’s wrath?
Illustration Theodor de Bry, 1594http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbus_Letter_on_the_First_Voyage
We Are All Historians 
This is really well put together and even though we talk about how Columbus was not a good guy this really shows how terrible he is.
Ever hear of the saying “You’re not angry enough to not drive your car.”? Well, it was a common saying not long ago when the BP oil spill and all its madness was all the rage. It basically meant, regardless of your anger and contempt towards Bob Dudley for his atrociously disregarding disposition towards his enormous ecological goof-up, you weren’t going to stop using oil in your car to drive. In the same way, yes Columbus was as you said a rapist and a murderer, and an abomination to sanctity of humanness, but you’re not mad enough, or willing enough, to move out of the country or give it all back to the natives; are you?
Shazia, I get what you’re saying, but if everyone began to think like that, people would be afraid to criticize or even create an opinion about something. If we think about that, we’re always going to look at the negative side. No one would speak out against anything because then, everyone would question them back say “how come you aren’t leaving it?” So if someone promotes green ways, it would be unreasonable to say “how come your house and your car isn’t powered by solar energy?” Like, maybe we should be happy that people are actually thinking about something and taking it into consideration in the first place. Like when the BP spill happened, awareness about the biodiversity in the ocean and about oil and global warming did spread. After that, more green ways were adopted and what not. Yes, you are right when you say that no one stopped driving their cars. But, don’t you think thats a bit too much to ask? Awareness was spread and change was made, even if it wasn’t too drastic. Its a start. Just like how speaking out against something doesn’t require complete abandonment. Otherwise, if someone didn’t like the content of a movie, they’d stop watching movies at once. That doesn’t happen. Just like that, when we say that Columbus is bad and that that we live in belongs to the Indians, at least we’re acknowledging the fact that they were wronged. Its sort of a start. Does that make us hypocrites? Yes, but its sorta the way of life. And like even if one person left the country, the other hundreds of thousands will still stay here. So yeah. I sorta ranted, but yeah.
“Why, then, do we
celebrate this stigma of a man?”
“So tell me why on Columbus day,
we do not mourn?”
“How do we, as humans,
find it justified to dwell
in a house that’s been made
on top of their yells?”
These three parts of your poem really stayed with me. They encompass the truth of Columbus’s actions. I agree with you, I do not think that we should celebrate a man who destroyed and tortured masses of people. But, I do agree with Shazia, although Columbus brought terror upon the Native people and essentially destroyed a race, many of us would not be here today and the world would be an incredibly different place.
You have a really good point about Columbus day. I guess we considered him as the one that started connecting the New World and the Old World the most, so that’s who we chose to celebrate him. We often overlook everything bad that he did for the sake of the holiday and because often we aren’t exposed to his bad side so much. If you look around you on Columbus Day, it’s more about the founding of a new country, not the celebration of Columbus. It sadly happened that we took on his name for it.