A Coffin Filled With Roses
Dedicated to Joe Hill IWW organizer executed by the state of Utah 1915

(1)

Joseph Hilstrom, Ellis Island American Newborn.
Open arms America.
They say even you could be president,
And you walked east to west looking for an honest break.
In Kansas the ground wet from your sweat, staking wheat for a loaf of bread.
Sleeping under great plains starts, no roof for your head.
In California you stood on the other side of America and found her the same.
No one cared and the “Good” lived on your sweat and built their American dream
On the back of the laboring man.

The burden of America breaking backs,
the backs of fathers sweating on docks,
Sons burning in steel mills,
Daughters dying in company houses.

Joe Hill,
Newborn American slave of industry
Brother of Haymarket
Blood spilt money murdered masses!
Brother of Ludlow and mine blood -
 

RockefellerTheGreatAmericanBoneGrinder!

And Rockefeller would rather see men dead than in a union,
All because of a few loaves of bread.
Joe Hill stood on a mountain and felt the strength in his arms
And picked up the hammer and found the IWW and took the Wobblies red
He wrote songs for men without a voice
Standing up to the hungry men of America,

 who count their wealth by
The husks of other men’s lives.
 

Industrial Workers of the World seal

(2)

Who were you Joe Hill?
What was the little red book and it’s 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’ll get by in the sky when you die.”
Few remember you anymore Joe, your memory lost on your unstrung guitar.
And Joe, what were 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?

(3)
A gun fired in a grocery store, a man dead and a son.
The echo going south cutting through the valley,
And Joe 20 miles away arguing over a woman held quite in shadows,
Was shot.
And in Salt Lake City a father and son lie died, someone would have to pay.
Joe went to the doctor, and the doctor called the Sheriff and the law came for Joe.
Now Joe told them about the fight 20 miles from the crime, but the law didn’t believe Joe because he wouldn’t name names.
While in the rich man's prison Joe was found to be with the IWW,
And the men of Copper and of Zion feared the poet of the Wobblies,
And mammon roared from the mount
And Justice fell in Utah,
And they tripped the blindfolded woman and she fell an shattered.
Mammon knelt and picked up her scales and filled one side
with copper and the
other side empty.

IWW POSTER 1905

(4)

They dragged you Joe, They dragged you to their judgment tongues wagging in parched mouths lying.
“Confess, confess confess!” the policemen scream.. “and we will treat you white.”
Your silence made them so 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, threatening the money masters.
Your hymns turned to fight songs, made them glow red.
Red the color of War, Red the color of Blood.
And you were
And undesirable,
Homeless,
Friendless,
Agitator.
And Jesus shall come as a thief in the night,
And the police shall arrest him.
Hidden men in Courtrooms check their pockets and find Judge Ritche smiling up
At them

and a Jury or ear-less men smile,

Guilty.

Letter from Helen Keller asking for intervention
 

(5)
The cry went out and a thousand voices answered,
And that which was secret was made known.
A cry went out,

 and men rose from the wheat with golden beards,

 and blackened men climbed out of the earth,

 and women came from the bowels of factories and

 cried with one voice, “JUSTICE!”

The Supreme Court of Utah laughed,
"Give law to the lawless, give justice to a man who is silent?"
And Jesus stood before Justice McCarty and said not a word and Justice McCarty sent Jesus away.
“He must have something to hide.” And the thread was cut from the constitution.
 
 

(6)

No pardons in Utah.
Fear of Wobblies run amok
Bloody Pinkertons of Haymarket, detectives of fear standing guard at the gates of the House of the Lord.
But no wobblie war,
No violence,
Except officer Major Myton shooting wobblie Horton for
Throwing insults at him.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will get you dead.
Joe, anarchist, wobblie poet, agitator, boomer nothing could change what was to come.
 
 

(7)

“ See that I’m buried some where else, I don’t want to be caught dead in Utah”   Joe Hill

November 19, 1915 they took you from your cell, strapped you into a chair and placed a small paper heart on your chest.
7:34
7:36
and thousands from sea to sea were singing your songs.
7:40
7:41
“Aim,” commanded the Sheriff
“Yes aim, let her go, fire!” you screamed.
Those were your last words.
Four bullets tore away the paper heart.
Joe Hill was pronounced dead at 7:42

(8)
Your coffin laid quite
A thousand came Joe
Each bringing a red rose
A coffin filled with a thousand red roses,
And I give to you a red rose Joe, a Wobblie red rose
And your voice will never be forgotten,
The rocks of the mountains remember you,
and cry out....ORGANIZE!.

   “I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night
     Alive as you and me;
Says I, “But Joe, your ten years dead”
“I never died.”  says he.
                                    Alfred Hayes
 
 

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