the working class
did not rise up today
the non-profits
mobilized
the professionals
were disappointed
the working class
did not rise up today
the day laborers
the domestic workers
the immigration policy advocates
the union bureaucrats
the working moms
the unemployed
the anarchists
the lobbyists
the civil rights activists
the retired and semi-retired labor aristocrats
the hipsters with class consciousness
the ilegales
they marched today
together yes
the Chicago martyrs
must be happy
even with these small numbers
the fire is still aflame
the revolution
is still possible
the dictatorship of the working class?
even if the march and rally
lasted three hours
that's three hours out of 2000+ work hours in a year
where workers became workers for herself,
which is not necessarily good.
No necesitamos
papeles
documentos
visas
permisos
ciudadanías
para
ser humanos
para vivir y sobrevivir
para trabajar y ser explotados
para gozarnos sin temores estatales
No te ofrezco nada
No haré nada por tí
te ofrezco
acompañarte
te acompaño
si tu me acompañas
Juntos desbarataremos los sistemas
no nos puede clasificar ni descalificar
Te ofrezco sí
plumas
plumajes
plumerías
para ser humanos
libres
jornaleros
jornaleras
migrantes
de la vida y nada más, que es mucho
no necesitamos nada
tenemos que ser humanos
emplumados
porque somos
explotados
somos
comunidades
de
viento y polvo
cielo y tierra
lodo ancestral
semilla solar
luna oleadora
la comunidad emplumada
disperso mis lágrimas
contra los números y los vocales y los consonantes y los lenguajes serviles
del imperio virtual-no-virtual
una ráfaga de tierra
una emboscada de sílabas libres
una campaña de primaveras
una oleada de mártires que no se cansan de morir por la causa
una mirada serena que nos ve y
ve que somos diferentes
que porque nuestras lágrimas se transforman en semilla
Somos, soy, eres
corazón emplumado
inmigrante emplumado
fronteras emplumadas
puños emplumados
orgasmos emplumados
sonrisas, besos, labios
palabras voladoras
De cada poro florecen plumas
bayonetas
que cortan
y parten
al viento
las contradicciones
en dos, tres, en tí, en mí
lenguas emplumadas
lenguajes de lodo
lenguajes emancipadores
sueños emplumados
pueblos emplumados
íntimos, íntimas
emplumados
no empleados
the singing wires
are no match for our humming hearts
the electromagnetic fields
are no match for the
elote fields
I can send my messages
at the speed of digital DNA
spinning out of control
disembodied into bytes
dismembered
dislocated
displaced
twirling through electronic space
wireless through wires everywhere
dissed
in time and space
and land
reconstituted
reformed
remembered
in your eyes
in your digital screens
whole
yet I destroyed
insects
electrons
eros
and I will disappear
vanish
turn into another quark and quasar
bursting on a future radar
on the other side of the border
a meaningless signal from a lost civilization
what are roads and highways for?
they go nowhere except the marketplace, the mall, the factory, the shanty barrios
you cannot even get lost on the u.s. highways
the department of transportation should be renamed
the department of physical control
walk, drive, get on a bus:
you can only go to work, to shop, to consume, to waste your life
making useless objects, pushing paper (instead of poems)
disposable diapers, disposable babies, disposable, deportable people
Turn your palms up
there is your human answer
you were born squeezing feathers
the earth's minerals, the earth's stones
hold up your flesh, blood and dreams
you were born on the plumed path
that leads to other worlds
your plumed hands are
the human-long journey, an explosion, a steep horizon
a path that ends and starts at your feet
the imagination of the working class?
smokestacks and rust-belts
cranes and world trade centers
beaches and vacations
pensions and retirement homes
the endgame liberators?
the imagination of the human revolution
is volcanoes and mountains
wetlands and aquifers
seeds and plantings
fresh air and fresh water,
fresh
soil
fresh
souls
of families, elders and ancestors that care for you
the imagination of the working class
is to abolish work, capitalist work, capitalist exploitation
is to abolish industrial man
abolish the contaminated man
the poisoned man
the deadly, toxic, radiation-spill man
the imagination of the human revolution
is a tsunami that connects and reconnects
moves movements of energy from one field to the next
a farmworker tsunami
a human tsunami
a tsunami
that destroys to rebuild
that connects us across the oceans
in drownings
in nuclear spills
in cars, neighborhoods, people
swept away
uprooted
into the longest night of the human cosmos
the human revolution cannot be commercialized
you and i cannot sell the land upon which humanity dreams
you and i cannot cut and paste relationships
you and i will learn again to plant our feet
grow roots
germinate
flowering maize
rattling leaves
laughter in the dust and dirt-clods of childhood
prepare to become mineral again,
stones for the next foundation of humanity
becoming ancestor
becoming fresh humans
who take care of the dust
who take care to notice how fragile
we really are
to bullets
to cars
to fists
to tenderness
to hurricanes
to irrigation canals
to solitude
to abandonment
to the utopia of your caresses
I do not want to bury you
I will not be able to keep my sanity
without you alive
without you at my side
I will not bury you
I will love another woman
before I have to bury you
because I will not bury you
the first kiss of humanity
the first lover to bury her lover
because I do not want to bury you
the first lover lays on my shoulders,
my humpbacked words
this is a long trek of grief, forsaken gods,
accumulated cries drowning in my eyes
the dust of graves choking in my throat
I will not bury you.
lines connect and divide us
borderlines
bloodlines
crossed lines
frontlines
hairlines
lined paper
lined soldiers
lines connect and divide us
Gilberto
taught me to hunt horizons and wild horses
that would guide us into other realms
where we would observe ourselves
freed from the constraints of time
we would spend years walking
a journey of suns and sweetgrass
in the rolling hills
horse heaven became ours
coyote dens and
the rivers with their choruses of light
became our kin
we never left those sepia mirages
we are still walking there
Gilberto waits there for the next dream
john trudell
would say
this ferris wheel
is an illusion
of power
of journey
of vision.
this
power
this
journey
this
vision
of dominant
industrial
society
goes
nowhere
round and round
Our work makes us human
Their work makes us unhuman
the capitalists don't just squeeze us
they work us to death
until the virus of middle classism kills our body
then we become working class zombies
the lowest strata rising from the dead 24/7
we hold up all the sky
and get crumbs from the pie
We have no work that is ours
Our work is to become free
become dream foragers
cultivate the land and the mind
plant, tend and harvest the maize
We will become human again
Don't mistake your humanness now for humanness
Humanity was never this cruel to humanity
Humans were never meant to stop humans from being humans
life did not make greed, greed does not make life
Our work is to become human again.
