Cloud Serpents, Cloud Ocean
I have discovered
the cloud ocean
where my grandfather's people live
wave after wave
of cloud
of clouds
I am
their commodore
their stevedore
their day laborer
their migrant campesino sun
the eleventh comandante
of the open cloud sea.
My grandfather
belonged to the serpent cloud people
the clouds,
he always smiled as he proclaimed his roots,
are the most powerful of all gods
and goddesses
natural deities
and forces, animals and
creatures, human
and inhuman,
he said.
The cloud ocean
dominates
the blue and the brown,
the cosmos
and the molecules
Yes, you can fly
right through them
because nothing can harm, destroy or burst
them
wave after wave of cloud
relentless colorless
now retreating, now attacking
now nowhere to be seen
suddenly they ambush the sky
and flood the land
with their transparent blood,
which regroups
shape shifts
are resurrected
reincarnated
reclaiming the liquid light
front and rises again
and again and again
complete hegemony without end
or beginning
The clouds will
blind you
extinguish the sun
make you crash or slow down
they make you forget
which way is up, which way is down
the clouds take your north, your south, your west, your east
make you lose your place
they make you forget where you are
where they sky is
where the earth used to be.
Flying instruments, compasses and sextants are usless
in the cloud ocean
She is a deadly quilt
or a serpent whose skin
wraps around the whole horizon,
asphixiating the sun
till you freeze and sunburn.
The cloud ocean is no shield
a stampede that fools you
because she just floats by.
The cloud ocean lulls you
into believing in rain,
a rain-goddess,
into believing in planting
into treading mountains
into precarious ceremony
into believing you can
channel her
claim her
drown her in fields of maize
devour her in revolutionary theory and hunger
bath in her
cloud ocean is humanity's
complete passage
She is snow-peaked mountain
She is reservoir
She is snowline
She is transparency of winds
the turbulence of human migrancy
tornado, whirlwind, hurricane, tempest
lightning, thunder,
bed, springboard
air current-serpent
whirling slithering deity of complete flight
She is faithful
to her people
and eternal blindness
to those who do not recognize
her world as the real
that decides the faith
of the unbelievers
She translates light
She is the biggest living organism
in the earth cloud ocean
nothing no one can
stop her
resist her
Submit, submission
is the all
She takes her time
because she created time
She defines space
because she is space
She has carved grand canyons
and birthed grandfather
She is ancient riverbed
She is Mississippi on her curved hips and back
the place we we worship pray
become human cloud
She is ancestor seabed
lashing out forever
to the meteor wall
the unforgiving wound
She resists, plays with us
makes us stumble
The plane slashes her skin, her flesh
she heals as fast, faster than our flight
That's what my grandfather,
son of the cloud serpents,
told me
to remember
to live
to become
a cloud
as he exhaled smoky clouds
from his cigarette...
*
Human Morning
I am suffering
from a deep sadness
rooted in the Atlantic salt
of chains dogs
the corpse of our lands
and police fields,
the honor of separation.
I remember everything, everyone
this deep sadness
of sunsets in strange lands
that
slap me
work me
into the oblivion of winter.
Right now
Only
your tenderness
your unconditional embrace
your mouth over mine
only you could heal me
no one else
not I alone,
two or more to build
an endless embrace
an infinite tenderness
to counter the bleak horizon
of those I've lost
of those who have lost me
in the dust of migrant implosions
only tenderness
your body against and over mine
to protect me
to save me
from the hole
they've dug
in my body
emptying me
of myself
emptying you
from me
and
filling me
filling us
with their despair
with their rage
against us
who ignore their destruction
An embrace
gestating an inheritance of a new land, a new house, a new
home, a different horizon
from the splinters of our skin
from the shadows of our revolutions
from the iris of our smile
Put your arms around me
Put yourself in my arms
We become a weapon
a human bomb
a human bond
a human fault-line
the geology of our veins
that topples walls
that lacerates dictatorships
with the callousness of a new human tenderness
to rise up a new morning...
*
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