La Carpa del FEO: Fandango en East Oakland

Hispanics.

2011-12-25T11:15:00.000-08:00

Hispanics
NOTES.
arnoldo garcía

When you do not know the U.S. racial history of words, U.S. racial history period, and continue using them uncritically, the danger is that you will reproduce racism at a higher level.

Recently, (see my twitter timeline for 140 character rants), I replied to an Occupy Oakland tweet that referenced an article about Bank of America ripping off African Americans and [sic] Hispanics. I replied: Decolonize occupy plus something to the effect that majority of us "Hispanics" are not "Hispanics" and majority are indigenous and Afro-descendents. There are Hispanics in the U.S. just like there are Mexicans, Salvadorans, Guaremalans, Cubans, Nicaraguans, Chileans, Brazilians, Colombians, etc.

So lumping us together as "Hispanics" is not accidental -- why not lump us as "Mexicans," the majority of "Hispanics" in the U.S.? I bet you the Hispanics would be up in arms -- which wouldn't be a bad idea; they have done that before and beautifully.

Don't get me wrong. I don't believe for one moment that the U.S. Southwest belongs to Mexico -- or the U.S.Here in Oakland, we are on Ohlone land. You can't erase the past. It might take a long time to retake it, relocate ourselves in the natural world. The triple conquest, the triple occupation of Indian lands and the colonializaion of many mentalities to make some believe they're white and others Hispanic, won't be overcome easily.

The history of anti-Mexican racism in the U.S. needs more action and discussion. In sum, why Hispanic and not Mexican, or Indian... to name us?

Before the 1960s came to a head, Texas and the rest of the U.S. used to count Mexicans as "white" during the Census. After the 1960s civil rights movements rocked the foundations of the U.S., we started being counted as Hispanics. Before the government christened us "Hispanics," to count Mexiicans would have been political suicide for Texas and other regions of the Southwest where we have been the "majority" for decades or what seems like forever.

When the U.S. government decided to name and lump us as Hispanic, the (internalized and not so internalized) racism we have all been subjected to made self-hatred and racism easier to maintain. Because Hispanic divided us racially and helped whiteify or bleach the mentality of the darker, indian and black Mexican and others who maybe did not want to be dark skinned, black in a white hierarchy of pain.Hispanic, now you're one of us, white, well almost white, if you can act like there's no Border Patrol and race police checkpoints....

My blindness, my body

2011-11-21T17:40:00.001-08:00

arnoldo garcía

My blindness
Has not
Slowed me down.

I take my time
Looking at you
Memorizing the times I made you laugh
To blur over the other times I made you cry
The curvatures
Of your face
Wrinkles
That are rivulets of life

I am a master at science fiction
I can portray myself
As defying time and space
Gravity has no pull
I am a natural human combustion
From the loins of a woman called
Guadalupe.

I am going deaf
Now only a B natural note
Whirs in my neurons
Bouncing around
An insatiable insect
The hum of electricity in my body
A note in the unending chain of the music of DNA

My blindness
Has not blinded me
to your termporal beauty
My deafness roars
With symphonies and corridos
My body
A grand canyon
A tempest
A purépecha temple
Overgrown with rainforest and serpent clouds
And other ancestral lusts

I have no other place to struggle
Than from this homeland this mother earth body of mine
You don’t lose your senses
For each one that fails
A new one is born in resistance in struggle
I have a body surrounding me
For each one of my senses
A hearing body
A feeling body
A smelling body
A touching body
A seeing body
A body of ears
A body of skin, pores, molecules that sponge up your skin
A body of noses for your sweet
human smell,
work sweat,
laughter sweat,
sex sweat,
the smell of freshly slightly tinged
burnt tortillas
Chiles verdes, tomates,
your freshly bathed body,
your shadow a cool face for the farmworker in me
A body
made of hands
that trace worlds and other senses
over your body
over the dust
through the wind,
that cover my eyes from the sunlight,
that cover my mouth when I gasp at you
under my hands
a body of sign languages and gang signals for peace
A body of irises
Light contact
stare-downs asking, begging for tenderness,
broken windows sleepless deprivation, dream worlding
A body of sounds
a body of sails and propellers
to catch the wind
transform sound into energy
sound into bodies tightly wrapped around a song
bodies made of tongues
that speak in my body to yours
asking for nothing in return for everything
A body made of
creaking beds,
rusty vowels,
defiant skeletons,
a vibration
a vibe
a vibratone
a viper of thunder
I surround myself
with you and my other bodies,
which in turn multiply into five bodies each
and those into five bodies each
An infinite
Human
sense
that doesn’t make a sound
unless a sound wants to mate
and my body is blindness deafness
where everything everyone everywhere
resides…

Solidarity with our sister Elizabeth Betita Martínez!

2011-11-18T17:18:00.000-08:00

Earlier this year civil rights, radical, revolutionary thinker and writer Elizabeth Betita Martínez was interned in a assisted living center in San Francisco, California. This was a dramatic change of Betita, an independent, self-determined woman and leader. I am joining in to support Betita!

Betita's life work has spanned several historic movements and organizing struggles that produced deep changes, uplifting social justice. Active in U.S.-based civil rights and anti-racist movements that erupted onto the national and international scene in the late 1950s and 1960s, then the Chicano justice movements and through radical political movements since the 1960s, Betita was a community-based organizer and activist-writer forerunner initiating crucial social justice ideas, projects and organizations. She started the renown Chicano newspaper, El Grito del Norte, after moving to New Mexico, where there were critical struggles for land rights and self-determination. Later she was the first Chicana to run for statewide public office in California. She published in 1976, exposing the history of the U.S. bicentennial, the classic "450 Years of Chicano History." She re-issued the book in 1992, to also tell our story the quincentennial of the Colombian disaster, re-titled "500 Years of Chicano History." Betita said in 1992 that 50 years hadn't passed since the first edition but that this was a critical moment for the Chicano community to remember and understand the significance of 1492 and Chicano struggles for justice and rights.

Betita's political writings have been compiled in "De Colores Means All of Us" and her most recent work, a monument ensuring our collective memory is set right, 500 Years of Chicana History, where she weaves hundreds of biographies of Chicana and Latina women who have been leaders, organizers and groundbreakers in our freedom struggles and movements.

Betita has lived her life in service to our communities and in service to liberation. Now she needs your support!

Please show your love and support for Elizabeth Betita Martínez, a courageous and working class internationalist thinker, activist and community fighter! She dedicated her life to community struggles of deep justice and human rights and now she needs your support.

Contribute as generously as possible. Make your checks payable to "Social Justice and write on the check memo "Elizabeth Martínez Project" and mail to:

Tony Platt
1607 Josephine Street
Berkeley, CA 94703

If you need a tax ID number email, Tony Platt at: amplatt27@gmail.com

--arnoldo garcía
c/s

2011-09-11T19:15:00.000-07:00

Arnoldo García

For all September 11s

la revolución emplumada | the revolution to be human

After the last sky,
the birds will fly in the sky of my lungs,
against the horizon of my heart,
crushing the barbed-wire of my veins,
entering into the great migration of my bones,
the human revolution,
the human revelation,
the human rebellion,
the last sky,
the only sky...

*

The Telephone Call
(fragments)

New York City alone has more telephones than all of Africa.

--Fidel Castro, closing plenary of the NGO Forum, World Conference against Racism, Durban South Africa

Rrrrringgg!

Hello, new York?
This is Jenin.

Hello, New York?
This is Baghdad.

Hello, New York?
This is Acteal.

Hello, New York?
This is Beirut.

Hello, New York?
This is Hiroshima.

Hello, New York?
This is Nagasaki.

Hello, New York?
This is Stalingrad.

Hello, New York?
This is Tenochtitlán.

Hello, New York?
We're calling long-distance,

You'll learn to rise from your own horror.

We're your sisters
We've been bombed,
Razed by empires,
Nazis,
occupation,
conquistadores.

You will be reborn
Only if your peoples are free
Only if you accept
The glass beads
That you used to steal us from our original paths

Hello, New York?
This is Toppenish, Matamoros, Tijuana, Oakland
you can receive all our calls
We look to you not as ground zero
But as the land which cannot be bought or sold
Trinkets and capital
Will change hands
But they will not change your destiny.

¡Hello, New York!

[From "Notes from South Africa: The Journey of September 11, 2001," while driving in the upheaval of NYC, September 11, 2001 and cross country.]

2011-09-11T16:07:00.000-07:00

Arnoldo García
Note: Click on links here, here and at end of these notes to read two short pieces I wrote in the weeks after 9/11.

For "Reflections and Resources for Justice on the Tenth Anniversary of 9/11" from the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, click here NNIRR.

Notes from South Africa:
The Journey of September 11, 2001

Days before 9/11, in Durban, South Africa, host city to the United Nations World Conference against Racism, Xenophobia & Other Forms of Intolerance (WCAR), I witnessed a massive march and demonstration where Dalits, Arabs, Muslims, Romanis, Africans, Latin Americans, Indigenous people from across the globe and every imaginable people of color, culture, gender, languages and rhythms marched together denouncing racism everywhere.

The main contingents of the march were headed by Arabs and Muslims carrying signs and banners vociferously denouncing the U.S. The Dalit contingents were beautiful, dancing in huge circles, twirling around, gracefully bending and swaying, raising their feet in the air to the cacophony of percussion and sing-song chanting. Tens of thousands marched towards the WCAR conference site, where the governments were meeting. The contingents at the front were met at the fenced gates of the conference with "Hippos," huge, armored personnel carriers, that carried each a platoon of soldiers. I had only seen photos of the Hippos from reports during the anti-apartheid struggle; Hippos rumbling through township dirt roads or soldiers shooting out of them at passer-by's or demonstrators.

The Hippos, metallic, military dark, in Durban looked menacing, with armed soldiers standing with weapons strapped to their shoulders next to unrolled barbed-wire to stop the march. That didn't matter.

The Hippos did not let the march proceed.

The march came to a halt but the celebration - the people walking, dancing, the chanting, the damn loud, rhythmic voices and drumming, the slogans sounding like everyone knew by heart the words to every chant, every call and response -- did not.

*
The WCAR ended on September 7, 2001. I had an airline ticket back to Johannesburg that evening but I decided to take a bus back to Johannesburg so I could see the country and spend a couple of days to see Johannesburg and visit a dear friend there, too.

I hopped on a very comfortable bus with other fellow migrant and human rights activists from the U.S. and Latin America on board along with a sprinkling of white and black South Africans. The bus took off in mid-morning and we would see unique landscape, reminiscent of the Southwest deserts I know.

A black South African woman sat across the aisle from me; we were both sitting alone. After the bus got on the road, "Selena" came on the TV monitor on the ceiling hanging at the front behind he driver in the middle of the aisle. About a third of the way through "Selena," she turns to me and asks me, "Is that the way it really is in the U.S.?" And I turn to her and ask her, "Is this the way it really is in South Africa?" We both cracked up in laughing and started exchanging stories. I answered no, not really. She replied, no this is not the way it has been in South Africa either. She told me that not all bus-lines were as comfortable or as nice as the one we were on, which under apartheid had been exclusively reserved for whites.

We talked about how different the world could be, after being in a week-long conference that brought together the world's anti-racist movement for the first time.

Somewhere on a stop between Durban and Johannesburg, she got off. Our bus drove into Johannesburg late in the night. A driver from the "bed-n-breakfast" I and a couple of others were staying at came to pick us up. Johannesburg was deserted as the driver drove rapidly back to the house were we were staying.

The next morning I got up and later got a ride to see Johannesburg. This was the second time I had been to Johannesburg. The first time was two and half weeks before, spending three days and nights before flying to Durban for the world conference against racism.

Johannesburg and Matamoros

The only other place I had lived in remotely similar to Johannesburg was in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, the Mexican border gulf state that abuts Texas. Except the inequalities I saw in Johannesburg were maybe 20, 30, 50 times deeper than Matamoros. One of my co-workers and I had stayed at the same place, arriving a week before the WCAR began to do both logistics preparation for our immigrant and refugee rights delegation and to do some sight-seeing.

We called a tour guide recommended by the same driver that picked us up that late night from our bus trip from Durban.

Themba and Jabu, very friendly and brotherly, come to pick us up and take us to downtown Johannesburg and then Soweto. As we hopped into the back seat of their small car, they began telling us that we are in what had been a whites-only district of Jo'burg. They point out to us where prominent anti-apartheid and ANC members live. We pass a house, that's where Joe Slovo lives (or lived?).

The houses are different, beautiful too; before this I had only seen them in documentaries on the anti-apartheid struggles or Hollywood movies, where Denzel Washington played Steven Biko or Danny Glover played Mandela. I had an address of a cultural center or gallery space someone had given to me. We drove there but the place looked boarded up. No artists or poets there.

I wrote in my journal:

Johannesburg is a mixture of abandoned center, holding on with sidewalk businesses in front of semi-closed buildings. There is nothing to do yet a whole world ready to listen or speak with. The languages are new, different, familiar faces, smiles, the seriousness of East Oakland, a different cultural turf with its metaphors and warnings of the consequences of inequalities tatooerd from the skin upwards. I am shy, I do not want to step out of my bounds. I am a passerby with unrecognizable accented skin. I am colored. I am an "anglo," I fit and don't fit, a mixtery, a mestizo in Africa. A mestizo from another land, uprooted roots, transplantable under any sun. Africa is Aztlan, it might might as well be utopia under the skin of ancestors and wounds.

Johannesburg goes on and on. Different time zones, different continents, different hemispheres, different lands and horizons, yet locked in the same battles to end the tyranny of pigmentation over humanity, the pigmentation of money, of riches, resources, goods, and goodies, jobs, police power, the pigmentation of poverty, of sounds, of freedom. There is no way out of this except redistribution:

The powerful less powerful, the weak stronger, the whites need to learn another language other than the language of their skin; they must learn to open their own doors, work for others, be less white. In the U.S. whiteness, imperial whiteness, showers us all: Redistribution across borders and across color-lines.

As we leave the formerly whites-only district, Themba and Jabu take me into familiar territory.

Johannesburg is East Oakland, is Brownsville-Matamoros -- the maquiladorized border, is the Yakama reservation of migrants, is abandoned Detroit, bombed out-defunded Detroit. Johannesburg is internationalist in spirit. We waste by nearby abandoned industrial lots and poisoned pigmentation, dark, darkening toxins. | --excerpt from my journal |

Themba and Jabu take us into the heart of Soweto. They drive us by Mandela's home, now semi-fenced off. There is a thick, tall concrete wall in front of the house. Themba said that this was built after a car-bombing attack took place. He parks the car, we hop off and walk inside Mandela's house. The house is small, narrow halls, small bedrooms; houses I've lived in all my life -- cramped.

Then he drives by Winnie Mandela's home; cordoned off by a tall fences with barbed-wire and cameras to monitor the area around her house. They show us the class stratification of Soweto, you can see it in the housing and the sparse services or lack thereof everywhere. Winnie Mandela lives in the upper middle class area, which looks more like the Matamoros I know. That is, poverty-stricken city abutting a militarized border run by the U.S.

He drives us a bit more and parks again. He wants us to see their local store. We walk along rows and rows of ramshackle homes constructed of tin, wires, cardboard and other materials. I have seen these houses before -- not in a movie but in Matamoros. The local store is what we call a tendajito, a hole in wall store; a room in a house barely stocked, almost empty shelves. Thema or Jabu point out the sparse items there are to buy, if people had money.

In my journal that day I wrote:

Soweto is Matamoros -- colonias and shanty homes with the stench of human waste and pulque, "Zulu beer," dice Themba. Jabu says he'll translate anything we don't understand of Themba who speaks border-English. I feel like an uninvited guest, a party-crasher, or maybe even a voyeur as I walk between their homes made of bits and pieces of wood, corrugated metal, old car parts. These are mosaics, the beautiful architecture of misery in creativity.

Themba says take pictures; but I do not have the heart to pull out my camera (until later) to take their pictures. It would be a violation of the nature of our visit, a drive through to break out of the isolation of a trip to participate in the World Conference against Racism.

We enter a grandmother's house. She offers a sip of the community brew bubbling slowly over a fire, a brew fermenting inside a 55 gallon barrel. She sits, almost waits for us to say something. Then we thank her for showing us her home and walk away back to the car where I take photos of Thema and Jabu. We drive away to the next place to visit in Soweto....

After the overthrow of apartheid, global apartheid rose up, came into full view. Then 9/11 brought us full circle to the on-going world war three.

*
September 10, 2001, evening, we're at the Johannesburg international airport. One of the sisters from Mujeres Unidas y Activas gets bumped up into business class; she's suffering a bad leg injury, can't or won't be able to sit for 18 hours. A doctor's letter says she must be able to lay down or she could suffer grave consequences during such a long air haul.

We hop in board the double-decker jet-plane. We take off and fly for eight, maybe nine hours and we're woken up to land somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic, a tiny island that belongs to a former Portuguese colony -- can't remember the name this moment. South Africa found out that their jetplanes couldn't reach the U.S. without refueling. This tiny island was the only place that allowed apartheid commercial liners to land and refuel to avoid falling into the Atlantic.

We are told that we may be able to get off the plane to stretch our legs. Everyone is excited, to say we touched the ground of another free African country. No such luck. Another jumbo jet had landed before us and its passengers had gotten off the plane already. The tiny island airport could not handle another plane load of people, not enough space.

We wait in our seats for at least an hour. The jumbo jet is refueled; we take off. Next stop is another island, New York City.

September 11, 2011 NYC

We land in NYC about 5:00 a.m. I have four bags and a couple of suitcases. The bags are filled with posters, documents and other conference paraphanellia. I have less than two hours to clear customs and check in for my non-stop United flight to San Francisco. I spend more than one hour in lines, get my bags through customs and rush onto the sidewalk where I have to catch a bus to United, somewhere else in the airport. I am sweating; the morning is already hot, humid, my shirt is soaked. I rush. I have trouble handling so many bags, including a nice conference bag filled with small gifts, including a fancy-looking silver corkscrew set.

I finally make it to the United counter, check-in get all the bags on and I rush to the gate, make sure I know where it's at. I go to a nearby shop, buy soap, underarm deodorant and toothbrush. I plan to wash up once the flight is underway.

Our gate calls us, we get on board; it's about 8:15 a.m. The jet-plane taxis onto the runway. The plane stops and the pilot makes a stunning announcement. The plane turns around; and the pilot makes another stunning announcement. Voices get loud, angry words are spoken, not just angry words, racist epithet after epithet are loosed. We deplane and are told to wait by the gate so that we'll know when we'll be boarding again. Then we are told the flights, all of them have been cancelled. All hell breaks loose. What does that mean? You have to get your bags. You have to get out of the airport. Thousands of us are being pushed by security teams to exit. I plug in my cell phone to charge it a bit and call home. I tell them: turn the television on.

Outside the airport, I run into other colleagues also returning from South Africa. We make a plan on the spot. Let's rent a car and go to the Bronx, where other members of our delegation live and have already arrived. We can crash with them. I collect more bags and sit on the front of the airport, the passenger drop-off area. I can see two large, dark plumes of smoke. Everyone is staring at the horror of the Twin Towers burning before our eyes. I cannot even imagine what the situation is like near the towers. I wait for what seems like hours. Then I notice the plumes of smoke turn from dark to grey; I imagine now the fire has become a chemical fire, explaining the change in color of the smoke. But that was not the case; the towers were collapsing.

At last my colleague arrives; she's driving a red TransAm. She said it was this car or a convertible top jeep. We pack all our bags and start the drive of our lives. We try to get to the Bronx following the signs out of La Guardia. Very quickly we run into gridlock; the radio says the bridge is being closed. She drives off and we are driving on a broad avenue and streets that take us all the way to what seems to be the Atlantic. We turn around and drive in circles. We stop at Radio Shop so I can buy a car charger for my cellphone. We continue driving in circles.As we drive through neighborhoods and shopping districts, lost, we run into police roadblocks and police or guards shooing away cars from a hospital. We keep going in circles and decide to drive all the way around the city, cross the Verrazano bridge and head north and cross on the George Washington Bridge and head into the Bronx.

When we finally get on the highway we cross the Verrazano, almost abandoned. We drive by aas men with rifles and guns drawn are forcing Latino-looking men off a white van. We continue on the Verrazano. Over our left we see a huge, ashy spewing hole, in the center of New York, where the twin towers stood. I did not have the heart to take photograph. We were devastated to finally see what we had only seen from afar or on TV.

We decided to drive home towards California instead. During those first few hours on the road west, we ran into caravans of ambulances and firetrucks heading towards NYC. we saw white field tents set up on the side of the highway, waiting for casualties? We drove and drove for the next five days across a transformed and traumatized United States, spewing hate across the airwaves and getting small but generous warnings here and there from whites who feared for our safety.

*

Here's two short pieces, an essay and an editorial I wrote in the weeks and days following our journey across the U.S. from 9/11 and an excellent resource kit on 9/11 from the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR):

Anti-Immigrant Racism and the Media

No Nation of Immigrants Would Treat Immigrants This Way

NNIRR's "On the Tenth Anniversary of 9/11: Reflections & Resources for Justice"

Photographs of NNIRR's mural-banner for her Immigrant and Refugee Rights Working Group, national delegation to the World Conference Against Racism. Painted by Daniel Camacho.

2011-09-04T11:44:00.000-07:00

arnoldo garcía

When words die.

My grandmother suffers a stroke
and the natural world receives a mortal blow.
The healer, la curandera, dies.
With her,
the plants that spoke through her hands
the plants that allowed us to ingest them
the plants that healed stomachs, bee stings,
fevers, rashes, upset emotions, made
conversations flow deep into the evenings
preceded by prayers and riddled
with laughter, healthy gossip, insights
the plants that illuminated stars and nights
died with her.
In the season that was to be winter for
my skin and autumn for my eyes.

Abuelita's nature, la naturaleza humana,
the crowbar of her tongue
prying open the language of leaves, roots, seeds
germinating words that rub, soothe, relax

Dirt under her fingernails
her palms smooth as her face
where leaves, roots, seeds rest
before ingestion,
before toasting them
on a griddle the size of her lungs,
her heart a molcajete firme

What lies behind my eyes?

Fields, horizons, hands,
humans rocking gently back and forth,
silhouettes harvesting the future

My grandmother kneeling between
two rows of green beans
picking
then suffering a heart attack

Behind my eyes
the sing of a frog
the whirlwind
a Yakama ancestor in our migrant camp
the broken horse of loneliness
who eats grass from my hand

I spend nights
ironing towels
until they are untouchably hot
and press them up against
my grandmother's breasts
her angina has flared up
and the heated towels ease the pain
and this is her final remedy
before getting up to make tortillas
and beans for tacos that we'll eat in eight hours for lunch
which she'll wrap in wax-paper

Everyone is at work
the harvest season
spares no time
spares no one

She is in pain (because she told me)
She cringes and leans left as if someone
has just punched her breast
and screeches out a syllable of hurt.
She leans up against the table
where there is a stack of testales
ready to be unrolled into tortillas
She momentarily rubs her left arm
and under her breast
with the right hand she quickly
pulls and flips the three tortillas
that are cooking on the comal...

She will die working in the fields.
We bury her as the harvest season is close to ending
Her casket is rained upon.
We celebrate, eat food, make music, laughter, families.
Tomorrow we return to work without her.

*

With her, mint, chile verde, pipian, enchiladas, jardines, rosas, lirios, unknown plants, their leaves and seeds, aceite de víbora de cascabel, her hands that coerced fevers and pain out of our bodies with gentle massages, her daily rituals, foodmaking, working in her gardens after work, loving her grandchildren, speaking with her sons and daughters every day and night. Her prayers and praying, her daily visits with neighbors, her footprints in the fields, her hands on the vegetables.

2011-08-27T18:39:00.000-07:00

arnoldo garcía

Serpiente ennubada

I am a ghost’s word

Not a post-colonial people or poet

I am pre-Colombian apparition

A skeleton dreaming her flesh, her songs her land

Her hurricane where I sleep

A jaguar carrying the cosmos on his back

My mouth drinks mud, imbibing the ancestor I am to be.

2011-07-09T15:19:00.000-07:00

Arnoldo García

Poetry is always in the Streets

Snap Review

Fuck Poetry: Bread Is The Politik of the Hungry

By Chaun Webster
Cover Art by Ricardo Levins Morales
Published by Free Poet's Press, 2010
ISBN 978-0-615-38653-9

In your face poetry is not for everyone. Especially, if the poet has freedom on her mind. Yet all poetry is in your face; you choose how close you want to get -- her intensity depends on how you accept or push back on the intimacy that forms in the space between your eyes, the inked page, your brain and the poet. Fuck Poetry: Bread is the Politik of the Hungry is no exception. Yet, Fuck Poetry's exceptionalism lies in how the author intentionally, no inseparably, links his class/race/gender working class-based full-color dream of revolution with no compromises.

Fuck Poetry takes aim at the real and pushes hard against commercialized culture, including poseurs and pimps that might breed off the contradictions of a racialized class society.

All poets who live and die by their words, or at least believe they would or could, share this impatience for the way the rotten world is. In poems, this poet knows what needs to be done to make things right, including how to make everyone human again. Love poets or class-struggle poets -- we're the same and accept rejection like a knife in the eye.

We Are All Poets, Really (except some are for and some are against liberation...*)

In the beginning, Chaun Webster slams poets who wordsmith and word-shine. He writes with the same honed wordsmithing except his is a radicalized vocabulary of political power and of the authentic self:

Fuck poetry that does not speak with actions
having verbs bouncin off papyrus
like ancient hieroglphic patterns
signalin change that matters
more than the currency
these currents be
comin from history-
the people are tired of mystery
in communication
going to coffee shops
hearin some nigga
with dreads
and a ratted beard
talkin about reality PG
when the shit is X rated
this shit is amazin...

He ends his introductory poem-chant by coming clean:

Fuck poetry if it is not loud
with more than the volume that
comes from the larynx
we need poems clothed
with bareness of reality
so don't be mad at me
cuz i'm in contradiction
cuz when I said in the beginnin
fuck poetry
i failed to mention
it's the only thing keep me livin

Webster provides his readers with a politik dictionary with poems on: Assata Shakur, political prisoner who escaped from a U.S. prison and now lives in exile in Cuba; the politics of radical's reaction to imperial events; a lot of out loud philosophical introspections, rants and inquiries into U.S. class and color realities.

Webster lays bare his frustrations at lack of revolutionary changes. Webster puts on paper his language challenge to the power of the State, exposing the normalized repression/oppressions, writing in places:

I swallow whole resistance histories
and spit people's justice
at the paper tiger...
i am not a poet
having temporarily traded
my pen
for the machine-gun
i am a guerrilla
i am angry
and i will never forget
the face of my enemy

Is this magical poetry? That is, those of who believe in the transformative power of our words, that by saying something, we unleash a consciousness-virus, a viral infection that challenges the reader, especially the cynic and apolitical to see reality through our political lense but who may not see anything but irreality and political fantasy in works like Webster's that are thoroughly political.

What's the use of poetry, especially poetry like Webster's? Paraphrasing the Old Man of working class revolution Karl Marx, who didn't understand the significance of race and racism in his time:

The poets have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.

Webster's launches from the first into trying to change the world, even if it's one word at a time in his chapbook...

(*This subtitle is a paraphrase of the wonderful red poet Walter Lowenfels poetry chapbook, "We Are All Poets, Really.")

2011-06-29T17:41:00.000-07:00

Arnoldo García

The segregation of bodies, the segregation of minds

When I started reading Words, Not Swords: Iranian Women Writers and the Freedom of Movement, by Farzaneh Milani, there were what seemed countless explosions in my imagination and brain and body about how we as writers of color, Xicanos/Xicanas, Mexicans, Purépechas, Latinas, even Hispanics, or whatever you want to call yourself, have been segregated -- to no avail. Yet we are the mainstream: our stories, musics, and other experiences expressed are just ours and those who have ignored them and continue ignoring them will not know what hit them when their country becomes also ours in word and in colors.

Take note U.S.A., this is what América sounds like too: On page 29, Farzaneh Milani writes, "Sex segregation has had a powerful impact on Iranian literature.... has shaped the language, the themes, the plots and the systems of literary representation used by men and women over the centuries." And the good words over the bad swords take off even deeper from here on end.

There have deep structural political, social, economic and their corresponding cultural devastations worldwide. The current Arab and Middle East Spring, the massive uprisings and movements toppling old regimes is linked to us in many and varied ways. The U.S. had a "Migrant Spring" that opened its new season in 2006. Millions of undocumented migrant workers, their families, communities and supporters took to the streets demanding a change -- that has yet to come. However, the massive movement that continues growing in dissendence and dissoance, changed the political landscape of the U.S. forever. Undocumented people are everywhere, including U.S. citizens whose rights and dreams are being foreclosed, unemployed, and privatized. The future of workers and poor people, communities of color looks more and more like the undocumented, the "illegal." Words can become destiny.

War, Not Swords has given me a new and unfolding understanding of the relationship and impacts and influence over those who've marginalized my writing and stories, acting as if there is no genre or branding is available, unless they make sense to their markets, er I mean readers. If Syracruse University Press can get their readers to pick up this exciting work, then they should be able to see our work as not just for colored people who've gestated and given birth to the rainbow, when suicide was never enough to ake anyone understadn our words aching to be heard by everyone.

A whole new world of understanding of what I as a writer of color, a bilingual, truly multinational/multicultural/multiracial, writer, communities-based organizer face every time I write:

The segregation of our bodies has leavened a stinking segregation of the mind. Words Not Swords can become another salvo in our struggle for equality in body and in language, in desire and in voice. I want to struggle for peace, justice, human rights, with non-violent, non-humiliation strategies and words.

How have women writers, and just plain women, under the veil, in explicit patriarchy-dominant systems, fared? How has beauty, gender, nationality, eros, sex, sexual identity, race, ethnicity, the land, the natural world, urban globs of humanity -- how have they been shaped, kneaded really, under sex segregation -- and racial segregation? And now, increasingly so, citizen/immigrant segregation?

This tome is a must read to have a better grasp of what's at stake in Iran and how we're in the U.S. linked to Iran. From the three hikers, two of which continue languishing in a Tehran prison, to the trauma of their wars against Iraq, the deepening threats of U.S. and Israeli attacks and the endless war in the Middle East that doesn't seem to let up.

Women in Iran have been a force for social transformations at their own speed. Chicanas, Chicanos, Latinos, undocumented migrants, queers, African Americans, Mexicans, Indigenous peoples' struggle to recover their lands -- we share or create similar spaces to those being described and sur-veiled in this new and exciting word venture. Uncannily, here in the U.S. one of the main obstacles we face as writers/organizers/people of color is increasingly less or even racialized freedom of movement: in body and in words. SB-1070 in Arizona, the anti-immigrant, racial profiling law, has made our bodies, our Mexican-Indian-Black-Brown-queer-non-white bodies, the target. Biopolitics at its worst; whenever countries have resorted to bio-politics, they have resorted to war: war on ideas, war on difference, and eventually war on those whose ideas, bodies and differences are the carriers.

The last 160 years worldwide have been the same: upheavals and reorganization, re-combinations of nation-states, who is the People, the chosen race, the master race. This war or struggle over land, resources, labor power, ideas, culture, industrialization leading to atomization and nuclearization, least since 1848, has been a disaster for the world. And the natural world is in upheaval too: the ice cap over the north pole has an opening; one of the largest "wildfires" is raging across Arizona, New Mexico and Texas -- growing by 20,000 acres over night. Restoring humanity to her place in the natural world has been at the center of this major, global shift. Women really will be the determining human force that will shift this battle in our favor, where possibly men with guns (one of the main problems!) will be a thing of the past -- although it will take several generations for this to happen.

So here read this new set of words, Words, Not Swords to sharpen our tongues and our steps for a different world tomorrow. Women of the world, unite! You only have men-chains to lose!

This is a preface to a book review to be done later after finishing reading Words, Not Swords; with the caveat and certainty that I will change my thinking and my body in the process.

2011-06-06T20:15:00.000-07:00

Chunks | Trozos

I went to the border where
women assemble the world
I saw my cousins laugh
through the poison, bring
home suiches, Magda said.
I make suiches all day. She
brought home the poison
in her veins and passed on
to her husband, his semen
was poisoned too, her womb
poisoned the fetus assembled
at the maquila, born deformed
flowing into the Río Bravo twisting
dumped into her waters
drowning herself. Madga places
her newborn in a barrel cut in
half and sets it afloat on the Rio Bravo disappearing
into the Gulf of Mexico: will this
deformed distorted baby return as
the new Moses

*

The sea
does not
tire
of being
the sea
yet I am tired
of being
me

She dances with
the moon
I dance with her
the moon objects
sends an earthquake
to tap me on the shoulder
cuts in on us
separates us with
a little tsunami.

*

There are tiny apparitions
on my tongue:
Guadalupe | Coatlicue,
soles,
whirlwinds of dust,
tongue-twisting huracanitos,
tempest
shells,
my body
its molecules
dispersed
in equal portions
for every nation
now
and in the future,
my semen,
swimming toward
the impatient sun,
maíz, bultos of
human rights movements,
orchards, her ruby
veins,
the explosion of volcanoes and earthquakes
the DNA of her thoughts and
curvatures,
the hum of bones,
the vibrato of desire

*

We are dilemma:
no one
is
without
ancestors.
You may have lost them
because you lost their way.
When you don't know
where you're from
who your ancestors are
where your bones are buried
where your seed explodes
what season
what time
what color
your past is
it is because you
are both descendant
and ancestor
an elder before your time
you pluck yourself from your ribs
you engender new dust
your bones are sperm for the future.

*
Palabras descalzas
lengua pelada
ojos pelones
corazón zurco abierto
la naturaleza se viste de humana.

*
cada
palabra
es
un acto
una acción
un pensar
un pensa-
miento
con piernas
con sangre
con vida
en movi-
miento
práctica
y practicable:
Ah palabras
benditas
que no son bombas
ni guerras
Abren senderos
en las venas
de tu sonrisa
el horizonte
los zurcos
semilla maciza
viento suave
lluvia madre
agua dulce
sobre la tierra
de mi lengua
lanzadora de reinos

*
Quién me despierta?
Quién me hace soñar?
Tu ternura
tu cuerpo
tus sonidos
(que no hacen ruido)
tus palabras
que derrocan reinos
y lenguajes duros.

*
Ella
estudia
enfermería
medicina
Yo escribo
curandería
hierbas, hojas, semillas
Ella cuida enfermos
Yo infecto imaginaciones

*
Castilla
nos
envió
tres
galetas
llenas de
avaricios
sus velas
esclavizando al viento
para llegar
a nuestro mundo
Yo envío
tres
palabras
a
Europa:
revolución
humana
naturaleza

*
I will make
love
to you
in Baghdad
when the U.S. flees
stops the bombing
ends the occupation
Baghdad will once again
be the cradle of a new
world civilization
with no WMDs
with no occupation
with no torture prisons
with no enemies and no
combatants
The Euphrates will flow free, clean
we will drink form her waters
baptize our love
From Ho CHi Minh City
to New York City
no more America holocaust
will threaten Indians or
immigrants
Tortillas de maíz will be globalized
everyone will aspire to be a
land worker, a tiller of fields
a keeper of seeds
with dirt underneath the fingernails
a mark of humanity
Aztlán will finally accept the sun's sperm
and gestate
the sixth grandfather
the seventh grandmother
when we can become a people again
with a place in the cosmos
in your arms or in mine
all the space we'll ever need.

*
I don't want to leave
any space open to
interpretation
I want
overlapping
mixtures
shared
memories
intersections
conflated
words
collapsing
into
each other
exhaustion
renders
dreams
freedom
we unleash
what
we do not
want to keep to ourselves...

2011-04-30T03:15:00.000-07:00

Lucia Veronica Carmona

Vivir entre dos naciones

En el trajín de la madrugada,

como todos los días del año

pero cada uno diferente

como diferente es la inspiración,

casi arrancada del sueño

y la tibieza de la almohada,

aún con la memoria de tu piel

en mi boca…

Me levanto en la penumbra

con la idea de cumplir,

el frío me estremece

pero sé que no estoy sola,

en medio de la sombra

desprovista de sol

me acompaña el Lucero

Venus siempre fiel,

en este amanecer de Octubre radiante

cuando el verano se despide, dándole la bienvenida

a la luz del otoño.

Por fin se adivinan

los primeros rayos,

astro rey tan necesario,

compañero apacible y cálido,

que nos despierta su luz,

mientras a la espera

de cruzar el umbral

de la subsistencia

por un dólar más

para comer

para vivir…

…Vivir entre dos naciones,

un puente que nos separa

para cruzarlo a diario,

como un río de agua viva incontenible

que se revela a mantenerse quieto,

y quiere romper los cauces

que le ha impuesto el imperio.

Límites imaginarios,

diques construidos por sus miedos.

Ya no ven al río de agua que los nutre

a diario con su fuerza de trabajo,

sudor y sangre que se queda

en sus restaurantes, en los campos de chile,

en sus hoteles cinco-estrellas,

sus letrinas,

sus oficinas

que no quedan quietas.

Tac, tac, tac,

del teclado de una máquina

de escribir anuncia que llegaron,

ya se enciende el neón,

“Yes, we are open”

Ciudadanos de segunda

que cumplen tareas dignamente,

pilares del consumo,

para que no se consuman pronto

en sus contradicciones,

ni se derrumben…

III

Ellos ven un enemigo en cada uno,

ya no confían en miradas inocentes,

ya no pueden encubrir la maldad

esparcida por sus mandos,

desde un pentágono

hacia cinco direcciones,

cinco continentes

que pretenden gobernar,

saben que tienen enemigos a muerte.

Ellos ya no ven al río ni a la gente.

El miedo les señala la verdad,

porque la verdad es que la gente

es como una serpiente,

que a diario entra y sale,

que espera paciente

deslizarse por entre sus trampas,

derrumbando límites

y construyendo nuevos puentes

de unidad entre hermanos

de raza ancestral,

antes separados

hoy vueltos a encontrar.

Despiertan lentamente

caminando juntos,

en un nuevo amanecer,

en medio de la madrugada

y el sueño, sin desayunar.

Es la serpiente de Aztlán

la de la profecía,

la de mil cabezas que se expande

por todo el territorio.

La que avanza desde el Sur

huyendo de sequías y miseria

desafiando discriminación.

Entra y sale para nutrirse

de valor y dignidad de un pueblo,

que tan sólo espera

recuperar lo que es suyo.

La armonía que antes

habitaba en estos

Valles y Desiertos,

la Madre Naturaleza en paz,

sin basura radioactiva,

con agua buena para beber.

Madrugada del 22 de Septiembre 2001

Con espera de 4 horas para cruzar el Puente Córdova Juárez, Chihuahua/El Paso, TX

Lucía Veronica Carmona es una organizadora comunitaria por los derechos humanos , poeta y cantautora. Ella es descendiente del pueblo original Raramuris y la hija de una costurera y lavendera. Lucía Veronica trabaja como líder organizadora en el Consejo de Desarrollo de Colonias en la franja fronteriza de Nuevo México y Tejas, donde ha organizado por los derechos del campesino.

2011-04-26T16:36:00.000-07:00

arnoldo garcía

pueblo de nubes serpientes

Mi abuelito

contaba

que habían

unas nubes-serpientes

que aparecían en el cielo

y descendían a las lagunas

tocando y levantando mucha agua

y de nuevo las nubes-serpientes ascendían al cielo

donde repartían el agua en lluvias.

Mi viejito

me enseñaba

que las nubes

eran la fuerza más poderosa de la tierra.

¿Por qué?

El era del pueblo de las nubes-serpientes

2011-04-12T12:52:00.000-07:00

Arnoldo García
April 10-15

NOTES

Reading poetry: an act of self-determination, self-emancipation

Mini-reviews of
A River Dies of Thirst and Absence Presence by Mahmoud Darwish
A life of reinvention: Malcolm X by Manning Marable

We are all Palestine.

Mahmoud Darwish is one of Palestine's most preeminent poets. Starting out as a national liberation poet, Darwish came under Israeli security surveillance before he was even ten years old. Darwish's writings transformed Paletine's national liberation movement and struggle into a natural human liberation movement, a universal call for humanity wherever she is found and for a place to be Palestinian, for Palestine. Palestine and her people's freedom cause transformed Mahmoud Darwish, from a child-poet to a consciousness, a word-producer, an image instigator, a revolution in human consciousness, to becoming an elder of humanity -- because he spoke out, lived, wrote, imagined, protested, organized in poetry and in action, for the Palestinian cause.

Mahmoud Darwish passed away in 2008 after a heart operation in Texas. Born in 1941, his family and community lived through the "great catastrophe," the "Nakba." His family snuck back into their country and became "present absent," i.e. strangers in their own lands. For a mexicano-chicano with purépecha roots, this is the condition of all Indigenous people -- strangers in our own lands.

The conditions & life of Palestinians parallels that of Indigenous people and so-called "immigrants" (people of color and Indigenous peoples born outside the " U.S.") in the U.S. Undocumented workers and other peoples, derogatorily called "illegals," are "present absent." We have been treated as strangers in our lands. Immigrants, Indigenous peoples and Palestinians, literally, need a world revolution so that we can retake our rightful places on earth.

Darwish writes with a deep passion and multiple senses of beauty and peoplehood. In ten years, in a hundred years, Darwish's oeuvre will be mistaken as testament for the human condition. I fear that given the neo-liberal jaggernaut -- the ongoing attempt to privatize everything: rights, services, air, water, soil, DNA ... -- eventually all workers, people of color, queer, women, Indigenous people and other humans who don't speak English, humans without property, wealth, assets or the right birth certificate or passport will become strangers in their own world: present but not recognized, the illegals of the world.

Mahmoud Darwish writes the life of Palestine and her people's struggles for self-determination and land the life of anyone who has ever experienced displacement, invisibility, dehumanization. How can a "river die of thirst"?

Yet capitalist-drive consumption is driving humanity into the grave as the privatization of air, water, soil -- and even culture, identity, voice, human-ness -- literally dries up rivers and places eco-systems, species and human communities on the endangered and extinct lists.

Darwish draws out many contradictions of the human class and land battles for self-determination and people-hood in "A River Dies of Thirst." Like Absence Presence, his last work, this book of his journal entries is a canto and a letter to humanity, that human survival should not be based or result in the destruction of other humans; that human community cannot be made by destroying other human communities; that the destiny and survival of many nations and peoples across the world is intimately linked to Palestine's survival and return.

"A River Dies of Thirst" like Darwish's "Memory for Forgetfulness" needs to be read and re-read many times. Each time I pick up either of these two books a new insight a new voice a new book new words, new poems appears in his pages. A river dies of thirst, a poet dies for lack of land and his people dispersed across the globe, strangers in their lands, un-human in other countries. How will this story end?

That's the challenge we must take on -- to determine how the story of neoliberalism will end and how our story will begin. In the meantime, read Darwish, then organize and dream for the revolution to be human.

*

We are all Malcolm X.
The subtitle of Manning Marable's Malcolm X biography, A life of reinvention: Malcolm X, fits all our communities. Like Malcolm and because Malcolm is part of our communities, our communities have had to self-transform in the face of crushing exploitation and dispersions. We have had to re-invent ourselves to survive and thrive; yet, we cannot and will not forget who we are, where we came from, how we got here and where we need to go.

Malcolm X was first Malcolm Little, petty criminal, drug pusher and user, who didn't take kindly to work and women. By the time he becomes an adult he is imprisoned. Their he undergoes a spiritual transformation and becomes a member of the Nation of Islam, who eventually becomes the leading voice and messenger of the Honorable Elijah Mohammed -- a phrase he coined for showing respect and follow-ship for Mr. Mohammed -- to someone who is outcast again by the NOI and eventually pays the price with his life. This sounds easy enough, but once you read A life of reinvention: Malcolm X , this was never a foregone conclusion. Malcolm X lived and developed a new way of being principled, austere, ascetic, dedicated to the emancipation of his people. Every community and people has many examples of Malcolm X's in their midst: Emiliano Zapata, Indigenous revolutionary leader of Mexico, who through their vision and work foresaw a different outcome, a different people coming together, to make deep changes and a new history. Zapata like Malcolm X were killed in their prime.

Malcolm X changed because the people, his people, he saw as his base, his leadership, his force change. If Malcolm X had lived to old-age, we would have seen his people include African Americans and all the outcasts, the working class, the under-class, the undocumented, the Indigenous people robbed of their lands, women, LGBTQ. But this is just my speculation, my envisioning of the land he opened up for those who followed to cultivate and till.

Manning presents Malcolm X's chronology as one where in successive periods and turning points, forks in the road, Malcolm X made choices with a self-determined, iron will that makes him stand out. Malcolm became a new man, a new human, as a result of unforeseen ordeals. People of African descent in the U.S. have had to re-invent themselves from slavery to freedom, from racial segregation to racial integration, from underground spiritual struggles to overt organizing from the pulpit, for racial justice and communal liberation to self-determination. The struggle for freedom is also a struggle for identity. All politics -- whether it's Democrats, Republicans, Committees of Correspondence, Tea partiers, Indigenous, Hispanic, Xicano, Black, LGTBQ -- have identity

Malcom X's life and words model the best way to become the change you want to be. I have just begun reading, about 100 pages into the tome (4-12-11) and what comes through is that he was human, specifically a Black man in the U.S. growing up under harsh conditions created by racial segregation and a nascent movements for civil rights and Black self-determination.

Malcom X's story isn't over and keeps getting retold everyday: 60% of all prisoners in the U.S. are African American and Latinos. If Malcolm Little overcame the criminalization and branding and became Malcolm X then all our brothers and sisters can transform themselves too, re-invent themselves and our country, by bringing about new relationships between peoples, genders and classes based on mutuality, justice and human rights."

2011-04-09T10:56:00.000-07:00

arnoldo garcía

April 8-9.

My skin

has become

a trend

a battlefield

a war front

each pore

a bomb crater

a bullet wound

a warring cry

in the longest war

for human-ness.

Every struggle has to have

her or his own language,

adjectives of freedom

nouns and pseudonyms

of beauty

new words new liberation networks

that link us to the best

utopias and disasters of the past that created

victories and revolutions

our own lives our own suffering

our own labors

our own words

to make us free forever...

...

2011-04-07T05:15:00.000-07:00

arnoldo garcía

April 7.

palabra-alas

haces habitar

todos mis cuerpos

y tu lengua

el lenguaje

del paraíso

sobre mis sentidos

No revolution

repents,

No revolutionary

forgets.

inter-indio-net

geopolitics

geopoetics

nepantla or toppenish

Michoacán or Michigan

Purépecha or mexicano

Chicano or Xicana

Latino or hispanic

Hispanic or African

African or Indio

Indian América

indoamaraca

soy nepantlateco

soy de la tierra del medio

la tierra del miedo subyuga mi tierra del medio.

Nadie sabe que es una frontera

abierta

es una herida

una revolución

un abrazo

un zipper

un cementerio de la seguridad nacional

el uúnico lugar donde los indios

sob bienvenidos

el reino de la frontera?

No hay lenguaje todavía

para mis pueblos desaparcidos.

the snake cloud people

the serpent cloud people

revered the sky

because the sky was home

of their creator, their goddess, their power

their horizon, their land, their laughter

the serpent cloud

the snake cloud

the most powerful force of the natural world

that also threatened or embraced

struck down or gestated

humanity.

I am trying to make you my sky-land too.

2011-04-06T20:43:00.000-07:00

arno!do garcía

April 6.

[another excerpt from guerra poemas

from La revolución emplumada]

Anwar Balousha mourns

his five daughters

killed by an Israeli flying an Apache [sic]

helicopter who fired missiles

at a mosque in Jabiliya

Anwar's house was destroyed

by the blasts

Four of his children escaped.

Not

Samar, six years old

Dina, seven years old

Jawaher, eight years old

Akrav, 14

Tahrir, 17

all crushed to death

where they slept

Five missiles

one for each daughter

Five daughters

one for each missile

Five girls

Five centuries

Five Malinches

in the refugee camps

in the migrant camps

Israeli drones in the dark night

looking for their targets

Using infrared television cameras

the Israeli found the five sleeping beauties

five dreaming peace or love

or family or just asleep resting

getting ready for the next day

But how do you get ready

for the next day of bombardments

atrocities. F-16 jet bomber pilots

destroying mosques,

homes, schools, universities,

markets, killing and maiming

Palestinians?

Palestine becomes modern ruins

My daily to-do list

1. Build a new country: only humans & the natural world allowed

2. Create, speak a new language, call her: human

3. Be loved & love

4. Accept tenderness

in all her shapes,

forms & powers

5. Organize a

guerrilla, a little war,

of poetry

6. Visit my family,

my neighbors, adopt them.

7. Eradicate sadness, suffering,

abandonment, all inhumane forms of being human.

8. Draw a map of

the desired world,

superimpose the new world over

the known world.

Now throw away the map

of the one that's easier

to live and struggle in.

9. Tag your dreams on walls,

make graffiti in your bed

10. Celebrate, honor your ancestors-to-be

Build altars to them before they die

not after they've been shot, killed, disappeared

and never knew they were living gods

11. Surprise myself,

be happy with my worldly life, dream again and again.

2011-04-05T20:27:00.000-07:00

April 5

arnoldo garcía

[excerpt from drafts of guerra poemas in La revolución emplumada]

the comfort zone

where are

the comfort women?

where are the comfort artists?

where are the comfort words

so that soldiers can forget their brutality

to take it out on women

ridicule art

and mangle human tongues

for at least one night

or even just for a few hours?

where is the comfort President tonight?

Where is the comfort Senator and the comfort Congressman?

will they sleep

with the mutilated widow,

with the traumatized soldier,

wit the wounded in a deep coma,

with the human remains of the soldier?

where is the comfort citizen,

the comfort peace,

so we can vote one more time?

where is the comfort march

so that we can protest one more time

the comfort war

so that we can bring democracy and freedom

wherever our bombs explode

wherever our armies occupy?

where is

my comfort woman

my comfort man

my comfortable war?

Send them comfort-bombs

comfort-occupation

comfort mercenaries

U.S. kills day and night

and you expect comfort in the end

The U.S. War:

World War I

World War II

the Cold War

the Korean

the Vietnam

the Dominican

the Cuban

the Panamá

the Grenada

the Haitian

the Nicaraguan

the El Salvador

the Narco

the Bosnian

the Afghanistan

the Sudanese

the Israeli

the Palestinian

the Iraq

the Iranian

the Afghanistan

the Mexico border

the Libya

the U.S. war....

when will I live

in an ordinary

country

no wars

no invasion

no fly-zone

not even a threat

no drive-bys

no hunger

no greed

to drive us

to coercion

to veiled

and unveiled

violence

no armed men

no hating men

no sexual harassment

no demonstrations

or marches

other than to show poetry

display art and affection

when will I wake up

this ordinary

my ordinary

country

disarmed

not disabled by violence

differently placed

in the kingdom of laughter

an ordinary country?

2011-04-04T22:13:00.000-07:00

arnoldo garcía

broadcasting scribbles from my notebooks

April 4

freedom sounds

my music

is noise

was satanic

to the wooden crossed ears of the conquistadores

One people's language is another's

cultural maelstorm

a tempest of terrorisms

Our gods incomprehensible

worthy of being toppled

yet they still built their religions,

their highways, their vacation spots

on ours.

One people's music is

noise to the oppressor.

Our freedom sounds

are an upside down world

to those who hold the keys to the chains

Our freedom sounds

are an offering to the ears and tongues

to hear each other voices

to sing, to holler, to cry

to live for a cause or a song

Noise, our noise, deafens the greedy one's counting games

Our voices, my voice, our words, our music

cannot be erased, cannot be silenced, cannot be dubbed over,

cannot will not be left on the cutting room floor.

Someone hears us, we memorize our sounds of freedom, of land

On paper I leave an ink trail

a path of scribbles for others

to think and go forward

beyond where my bones will finally

rest as scaffolding

In the wind, my voice is a trail

of particles and waves which ride on the moon's machete

or course down crooked migrant smiles.

The voices of our ancestors

as well as our destroyers

still fight it out in the cosmic waves

the quarks of liberation

continue pounding on our skin, our eyes, our sweat,

our voices.

Eventually we'll all get it right. Harmonic convergence

harmony & sickle, harmonic dissent, harmonic uprisings,

harmonic organizations, harmonic community, harmonic equality,

harmonic democracy, harmonic borders,

harmonic languages

where everything means the same in any language, almost anywhere,

harmonic conservation (leave the rainforest and the rainpeople alone)

don't leave home until you're free

Harmonic bones, harmonic DNA, harmonic genome project,

harmonic jimi hendrixes,

the harmonic restoration of

guadalupe|coatlicue

crazy horse

manuela

paha sapa (leave the earth's power alone!)

ana mae aquash

7,000 migrants' bones

five million braceros

50 million russians

two million rwandans, bosnians

all the disappeared indians of the world,

every ecosystem, every species, every man woman child elders youth worked to death, slaughtered by progress and economic development

harmonic liberation convergence...

Funny how I can write that

memory does not reside

in machines, computers, bytes, bits,

or even history books. Memory

resides, lives in

memory herself

on flesh, on skin, on bones, on skulls, in the dust, in the water, in the air, in the soil,

in the vibrations of my throat, tongue, lungs, in the way we create the sounds of words,

on how we generate waves across the air to vibrate against your ears or eyes or finger-tips, on our fingernails and hands

just as our ancestors reside growing all the time in our hair...

transmusic

transmission

transgender

translingual

transpose

trancegnder

trancemusis

trancelate

trancepose

trancenational

trancehuman

trancefusion

tranceplant

trancejazz

trancelucid

transsmile

trancemission

trancesister

trancerevolutions

translands

trancegress

trancegressor

trancelocated

tanceplanted

transperm

trancegestate

transtongue

trancelung

transdance

trancerhythm

tranceborder

tranceblood

trancecultural

translocura

transtorno

transgest

transgod

transword

transtongue

translanguage

transborders

trancecolors

transcribbles

transeyes

transvision

translaughter

transbound

tranceband

tranceport

transkin

transspace

transblues

transgods

tranceshell

trancesex

tranceorgasm

transart

transulpture

trancepoetry

trancehuman

trans-

trance

trancescribbles

transas

transgarabateos

trancegenic

trancestorms

transhuracán

transehumano

trancenature

transnaturaleza

En el reino

de tus abrazos

la utopía

de tus labios, tus besos

una dictadura

de la ternura

la comuna

de tu sonrisa

tus palabras

anidándose en mis oídos

la liberación

tu voz

una cobija

para mis sentidos

todo

el reino

tus abrazos

from time to time

remember the wounds

remember the agony

of being abandoned

when you smile

laugh

roll around

in pleasure

remember

it was not always

like this.

my memory

a small creature

tiny hands

playing

with a collective toy

of cousins

a small meeting

to study

revolution

a piece of paper

with a few lines of poetry

an endless field

we have to clean of weeds,

my grandmother cooking.

making tortillas

my memory

has

no history

no chronicle

unknown by all

except me my family

laughter

food

work

dreams

burials

weddings

baptisms

laughter

crying

mourning

food

remembering everything everyone

migrant camps

indian reservations

canals

fields

planting

thinning

harvesting

winters

no theories

just drumming,

music,

dances spinning in communal circles.

Someone dies we come together

Someone is born we come together

Someone falls in love we come together

Someone falls out of love we come together

Someone reaches a birthday we come together

Someone cooks food we come together

Someone dreams we come together

My memory

a small creature

a baby

we breast feed all our lives...

2011-04-03T21:33:00.000-07:00

arnoldo garcía

April 3 [transmitiendo desde mis cuadernos de garabateos]

I have stopped
fighting my English
garbling my Spanish
denouncing the Aztecs
ignoring my Purépecha tongue
on which war rages
and rage cries unbroken.

I am a polygamist
faithful to all my languages
married to all my words
in any language in any land
on any body
on every trembling tongue

My people invented french kissing
we stuck our tongue in your mouths
so that you could taste and desire every dictionary
lust after translators
interpreters
of the same dream
in so many dusts
in so many mouths
our lips the shock troops
our desire to subjugate your tongues, verbs unsheathed bayonets
and your body will follow
and your imagination hobbled
speak in liberation tongues but don't mumble
vomit doves and poison syllables

I speak out, denounce and debate against myself
I am split in three and my tongue binds my wounds
my tongue heals my bones and laps up the water from your body
my tongue drills endlessly into your ears
wawanko on the shell of your being
a human vibe to turn you against yourself that garbles our ways
mimics and makes a mockery
of the root of a different world sound

*

Yo hablo a través de cuerpos
mi lenguaje es un cuerpo
que anda, maronea, sufre
y padece
enfermedades y visiones
que la envejecen y la rejuvenecen

Tu cuerpo es mi ventana
Tu cuerpo es mi lenguaje
cristalino de sudores
Tu cuerpo odisea y utopía

La guerra es el cuerpo de mis
lágrimas y rabia, el puño
que florece contra ráfagas
que gruñen sus colmillas
canta y minimiza el vocabulario
de la paz y la cultura del no.

*

no necesito guardaespaldas
necesito guardalenguajes
necesito guardavoces
necesito tu cuerpo
para que me cargues
a donde vayas o estés
quiero gestar en ti
nacer nuevo entre tu cuerpo
ser un nido de palabras
ametralladoras
que con sus ráfagas
hacen los cuerpos correr
lenguaje sobre la historia
gacelas ligeras silvestres
quiero más
tengo muchos temas
como cuerpos multitudes
de garabateos que tienen miedo
no puedo decirlo ni escribirlo todo
por eso necesito tu cuerpo
convertirnos en móviles
bibliotecas y espectáculos
donde bailan los que somos
los que decimos y hacemos
todo porque somos obreras
campesinas trabajadoras
pueblos indios
es decir multitud
que no tiene nada que decirle
a este mundo
porque en este mundo
somos invisibles
somos la creación
que nos habita

*

[1992]

Poética sin policías

What would culture, poetry become
if we didn't have to worry about the police?
What would you and I be like
if we never had to worry or think about the police, La migra,
unemployment, homelessness, poverty, illness,
any of the other problems
that only exist
on this side of the planet
on this side of the line
on this side of the language, the skin, the tracks, the pollution
the politics? without corporate
power, corporate jails, corporate copyright, corporate control of the airwaves, digital bandwidth, original colors and paper?
To not worry about the police
might be an art all its own.

*

Our freedom has been hibernating long.
Their winter is long
They confuse the seasons with our hope.
Five-hundred years of patience
of wintering hibernation
will overcome hypernation
DNA will topple DSL
Our languages scramble their signals
Unscramble their prisons
open doors and closed hearts

*

qué es la historia de mi poesía?
hablo español
invento inglés
vivo en el campao
trabajo en las labores
pisco algodón, hago bultitos de algodón
pisco fesas, manazanas, uvas, peras
albericoques, cerezas, durazno
frambuesas, papas, frijol verde, mucho
descuate, espárrago, menta, mucha menta
mostaza, zanahorias, tomates
lo hago todo
al lado de mi abuelito y abuelita
aprendo a trabajar sain quejarme
escucho sus palabras, su ejemplo
vivo a sus lados
crezco a sus ladso
entre toda la música:
hay tríos, coros de iglesia, mariachis,
corridos, canciones revolucionarias y del movimiento chicano, hay calmecac
hay bailes, conjuntos, orquestras, rock n roll,
blues, jazz y todos los tríos
invento sueños y sueño descalzo
donde las plantas son olas verdes de mares verdes
donde los zurcos son montañas polvorientas
y mi lengua florece en
palabras descalzas
lengua pelada
ojos pelones
corazón remolino de polvo
la naturaleza se viste de humana
y nos viste de naturaleza

*

cada
palabra
es
un acto
una acción
un pensar
un pensa-
miento
con piernas
con vida
en movi-
miento
préactica
y practicable:
Ah palabra
bendita
que no es bomba
ni guerra
abre senderos
en las venas
de tu sonrisa
el horizonte
los zurcos
semilla maciza
viento suave
agua dulce
sobre la tierra
de mi lengua
lanzadora de reinos y utopías

...

2011-04-02T21:46:00.000-07:00

arnoldo garcía

April 2

manifesto ternura

tomorrow soon I will wake up

in your arms, homeland.

I will go towards you

You become a shadow of water

and here I am searching for a well,

a cenote, a fountain, dust, words,

hugs, conversation,

unconditional tenderness

to renew

to restore

to be reborn

with tiny, imperceptible wings

scars like borders

to show that I've loved

to show that I have lived

struggled to the fullest extent

to make us free

Time is different now

so I have to be different

I go to sleep to be with you

even if there is this pain

I live to love you

even if I need more courage

to be brave

to be complete

to be at your side

spinning through space

tumbling without no other purpose

than to gestate, flower, seed, sprout, unfurl

the tender roots of an explosion

in your earth, my land, my love, my darkness

2011-04-01T22:54:00.000-07:00

Arnoldo García

April poem journal (a draft poem every day this month)

Abril cuaderno de poesía (un poema en borrador cada día de este mes)

¿qué es la causa hoy?

organizar las palabras en una insurrección

sembrarlas. cosecharlas como esperanza, canto y justicias

compartirlas, saborearlas juntos

germinarlas como madres rebeldes

Cada quien sueña solo

Hoy tenemos que aprender a soñar juntos

Navegar la vida despierta y dormida en su otra vida

donde todo es posible

Si juntos podemos soñar lo imposible

juntos podemos arrullar al mundo y ponerlo a soñar a otro mundo

La pesadilla es estar despierto sin

un sueño,

una causa,

una visión,

un horizonte de tu abrazo

Algunos despiertan de sus peores pesadillas y están entre dos espacios indeseables llenos de cansancio

Es ese cansancio que tenemos que deshacer soñando juntos

La vida es un relámpago en su despertar

Los sueños son eternos, plasman al cósmos con su suave estructura molecular

su desgreñada manera de ordenar la ternura a su causa favorita

La locura necesita juntar

camas y caminos

soñar colores y banderas ancestrales

La noche es la mejor forma, el espacio necesario,

para soñar

En el sueño todo es posible

Soñar despiertos

Soñar juntos

y soñar el mismo sueño

cada quien de su lado

podremos hacer un mundo diferente

donde todo lo bueno (el amor, el amar, el hacer el amor, el ser amado, el amante...)

es la realidad concreta (con su dolor, trabajo, preocupaciones, desvelos, mortificaciones, su grito cotidiano que todo acaba en la ternura de la noche)

donde

todo el mal

es imposible

porque soñamos juntos

Estas palabras desdoblando lenguajes, gruñidos, llantos, ritmos

Lenguajes de mis manos sobre tu cuerpo

lenguajes de tus manos sobre mi cuerpo

La topografía de la ternura

Lenguajes de ojos que parten hijas e hijos la profunda raíz del futuro

Mis ojos son cebollas transparentes

Lenguajes

los colores de nuestras pieles

que nuestras pieles hablan

y nuestras lenguas enmudecen

lenguajes de ternura ahorcando rabias

lenguajes sólo para escuchar

lenguajes para borrar el tiempo

y quedar con vida para vivir con la amada y la familia

lenguajes sólo para la despedida eterna

para nunca separarnos

lenguajes para conocer el viento

lenguajes para aliarse con el sol

lenguajes para liberarnos de la inhumanidad

toda.

Lenguajes para trenzar cabellos y caballos galopados por el viento

De qué color es César Vallejo?

indio?

comunista?

deslenguajista

bronce

rohjo

piedra sobre piedra

ángulo de ondas

y vibraciones?

un color del futuro

germinando telarañas

desde su tumba al Perú?

un silvestre pulmón

una tristeza tiburónica

que retraga a Vallejo

por dentro

hasta fallecer en la lluvia gris de mi sonrisa

donde el sí de repente es no

el blanco negro

al verbo mudo

los ojos ;inros

los tatuajes verdes

y el tartamudo poeta?

De quién es el sol

a quién le toca sus colores

quién merece ver todas las atardeceres

donde el sol hunde su hacha roja

en la panza de la tierra?

Por qué no morimos cada noche

por qué no despertamos cansados

Será porque la sangre circula en mí

es la que ha circulado

en las venas de mi mamá

y mi abuelita y las mamás de mi abuelita?

Mis palabras se hacen palabras

al tocar tu piel

al montar tus labios

al anidarse en tus sentudos

al germinarse en tu lengua con mis besos

Mis palabras se hacen palabras

cuando pronuncias

viento

sobre mi cuerpo

Mis palabras se hacen palabras

en tu saliva, en tu sudor

en los cinco sentidos del sol

que gestas cada nueve meses

hinchándonos de sonidos caóticos

la anarquía de nuestra ternura

de pujidas palabras

que saltan y bailan cada vez que chocamos

en el cosmos de nuestra cama

nuestras lenguas y lenguajes se frotan de lluvia

Our language can be anywhere

and be at home. Our feet

touch the ground and you

instantaneously become the earth

Our land our language our

place is

everywhere and nowhere

We are only strangers to those

who are strangers to our lands.

In our language

we are all perfect

only in our imperfections.

In my language my grandfather

refuses his death, walks out of

his fancy coffin (which cost more

than all of his belongings and house

together). My grandmother never

even allowed anyone to put her

in a coffin. She just walked away

to complete her life over and

over till she finally was happy.

In my language there is no

death, no end, no words for

separation, oblivion. There are

shadows under my words

because there are suns in

every direction, full moons

in all my senses, in all my seasons

in which spring is

the mother and guide

and winter dream-

time, seed time, fires and stories,

chocolate and ancestors, when

everyone, every time and space

converge for a pow-wow, a

pachanga, a gathering of maizes

and mystics.

In my language

we live

not forever

but for each other.

Raíces desdobladas

raíces subyugadas

raíces olvidadas

raíces negadas

raíces abandonadas

raíces distorsionadas

a pesar de todo

siguen siendo raíces

nuestras raíces

morotonadas, sentidas,

vergonzantes, orgullosas

claras indias nuestras

No nos da pena ser raíces

raíces en tierra

raíces en oceános

raíces en vientos

No importa donde, siempre son raíces

en mis manos

en mi boca

en los cinco sentidos

en las borracheras

en el amor

en el dolor

en la traición

en la tradición

raíces.

raíces azules

raíces verdes

raíces cielo

raíces tierra

raíces polvo de las voces ancestrales

raíces roncas

raíces portátiles

raíces escarvadoras

raíces regeneración

raíces armas del viento

raíces tu cabellera de mis visiones

raíces cabellos trenzados con antepasados

y puente a los del porvenir

raíces mapa de mi corazón

mi corazón el planeta clandestino

del sexto sol

raíces relámpagos

raíces terremotos

raíces embarazadas

raíces abrazadoras

raíces tenues semillas

raíces torcidas alrededor de mis pueblos

raíces infinitas

raíces desafinadas

raíces las lenguas de la tierra

que se tragan al lodo para florecer en maizales

raíces la vía láctea de tu cuerpo negro...

azules

verdes

caféces

raíces del arcoiris indomable....

2011-03-02T19:36:00.000-08:00

Tiempo (la revolución humana)

tochtli

luna
rasguñada
raza nada
la tierra
anda sangrando
por nuestro
ombligo
luna
maya
lluvienta
luna
mestiza
india
olvidada
peregrina
astral
migrante
terrenal
en la gira
más larga
de los indios
tocamos
tu tambor
sagrado

atl

me emborracho
con tus sílabas
pulque
me transformo
con tus labios
agua
me convierto en dios
contigo pulque
me convierto en polvo
contigo agua
pulque más agua
suman humano
trastornan soles
ombligan pueblos
rasguñan lunas
destapan coyotes
en mi lengua
en mis ojos
en mí

itzcuintli

Escuincle
mordilón
se pasa las tardes
soñando en el sol
las noches
las llena de ladridos
avisándonos
de las sombras
aún ambulantes
hormiguitas

ozomatli

mis hijos
mis hijas
son moléculos
rebotando
bailando
saltando
corriendo
dentro
su propio paraíso
el jugar
es destino
colgamos los columpios
en el árbol
en los soles
escuincles

malinalli

pusimos
todas
nuestras
lenguas
en
fila
haciendo
un
sendero
torcido
alrededor
de
nuestro
corazón
protegiéndolo
de
las espadas
crueles
de sus palabras
incendiarias
tumbando
templos
diosas
desastre
que
acabaremos
o
nos acabarán

acatl

mi abuelito
mi abuelita
eran verdes
plantaban
semillas
cosechaban
comunidades
cultivaban
pueblos
verdes
zacates
yerbas
sanadoras
sobando
tierras
espaldas
adoloridas
vientres
explotando
sazones

ocelotl

mi abuelito
mi abuelita
me enseñaron
a cargar
soles y estrellas
sobre mi espalda
sobre mis hombros
pueblos y amores
sobre mi cabeza
años nuevos
llenos
de
primaveras
veranos
otoños
inviernos
diosas
dioses
sacrificios
serpientes
ternura...

sobre mi espalda
nacen soles
espacios
tus abrazos
tus semillas
el movimiento

cuauhtli

águila
hechicera
descansa
sueña
coma
mi corazón
nopalero
deshilacha
mis venas
que de tu boca
nazca
otra
Aztlán
nuevo
no-gabacho
donde
somos
hijas
e
hijos
obedecientes
de la tormenta
del mundo natural

cozcacuauhtli

aprendo
a bailar
en el cielo
en la tierra
el viento de pies
el polvo de ritmo
bailar
danzante
descabellar
al tiempo
desbaratar
al espacio
compacto
auroras
con
levantamientos
y
mi única
arma
será
el sol
que llevo sobre mi espalda
(nadie me lo quitará)

ollin

para llegar al tiempo
para nacer al espacio
para entrar de nuevo
retorno
en comuna
retorno
al mundo
natural
a sus polvos
a sus cenotes
a sus ombligos obligatorios...

En la distancia
la tierra
tiembla
no son temblores
no son terremotos
no son movimientos
hacia el sol
son
tanques
de guerra
son
bombardeos
hacen crujir
a los desiertos
de Kuwait
hunden un cuchillo
sucio
gurgujea el petroleo
sangre de antepasados
en llamaradas
que son señales
que
el tiempo
viejo
se acaba
que
el tiempo
nuevo
espacios
vientres
pujan...

quiahuitl

mi abuelito
era
del
pueblo
de las nubes

decía que
las nubes
eran la fuerza
más potente
en la tierra
cargaban agua
serpientes de viento
acobijaban
campesinos e indios
impregnaban
semillas
germinaban
pueblos de maíz
pueblos de polvo
pueblos anublados

xochitl

mi abuelita
sembraba
jardines
en
todos
los campamentos
migrantes:
chiles
tomates
cebollas
cilantro
orégano
frijol
y
flores
y
flores
dalias
tulipanes
rosas
bugambílias
alcatraces
zempansuchil
en donde quiera
que vivíamos
inviernos
primaveras
ella
cargaba
su jardín

cipactli

sus ojos
sus mentes
sus cuerpos
se vieron
y me vieron
a mí
se enamoraron
porque amaban
a un niño
un soldado
un poeta
que nació
de sus cuerpos
y sólo ella
me amamantó
de sus pechos
leche terrenal
amor mortal,
materno

tecpatl

los prisioneros
de guerra
los desaparecidos
los caídos
los despedazados
son un cuchillo
en
nuestras lágrimas
nuestras bocas
escupen humo
lleno de sangre
los soldados
entran a nuestras casas
a punta de bayometa
caen bombas
la tierra se estremece
el miedo anda suelto
dominando pulmones
y sueños
buscan armas
hallan familias

quiahuitl

la lluvia llueve
contra el diluvio
guerrerista
la ocupación
la conquista
la destrucción
nubla a la tierra
soldados
camuflagados
de verde
esconden el desierto
el pueblo
se esconde
de las bombas
los tanques
aplastan casas
y cultivos
la lluvia
caerá
lodo de sangre.

coatl

la sabiduría
está en el polvo
las bombas
aplastan
los palacios del dictador
la sabiduría
parte de los escombros
un coronel Bill Bennett
declara: Tengo 30
cañones, los disparo
todos. Nunca he
disparado tantos
en toda mi vida.
Necesito más
proyectiles
Habían asesinado al
dictador?
La sabiduría
está en las semillas
en el vuelo de pájaros
en camino al paraíso
de la primavera
la sabiduría
no comparte
polvos ni escombros
con presidentes ni dictadores.

miquiztli

el ciclo de guerras nuevas
hace la muerte muerte
cuándo será
la muerte
una siembra
una cosecha
irregada
con lágrimas
y esperanza
cuándo será la muerte
un altar a la vida
no los escombros
ofrecidos al sol
no la basura
ofrecida a las bocas
no el miedo
encajado en los pulmones
cuándo será la muerte
clausura que abre
primaveras
en las casas
ahora
llenas
de humo
de polvo
de muerte
guerrerista?

cuetzpallin

es el nombre de horizontes
es la palabra de óleo
es el arcoiris
encajado en miseria
si Cuauhtemoc y
Motecuhzoma
la hubieran
pronunciado
hoy estuviéramos
hablando
en náhuatl
en purépecha
en maya
y no
español
e
inglés
ella es el terremoto
único
que derroca
a mi corazón

2011-01-27T08:47:00.001-08:00

Photographic memory

I was in Mississippi
meeting
with
my ancestors.

the most recent middle passage
called katrina
the beautiful woman
who drowned us in her sleep

katrina, marina's sister
malinalli
who loved us so
who spoke in tongues
and has been gestating a new dream
giving us birth for the last five hundred years. katrina

we are ghosts, hardly a breath in cosmic time, space

here we are stepping into space, expanding without end

collapsing in on all the evil,

all the maladies,

all the suffering we took

poof, everything, everyone, gone,

disappeared,

not even dust to show for our pain.

My eyes are a bridge of DNA

genetic code for the sixth sun

so no one will be forgotten

so no one will become

a tear of oblivion

either we are all living

or we are all walking into the light

the dark matter of our resistance.

The headlights blind the police,

thinking,

believing

they have power.

What is power?

The State,

his armies,

his dungeons,

his death sentences,

his working class,

his nuclear weaponry,

nuclear energy?

A tsunami

will make us forget

everything.

The sun bats her eyelashes

in a flash

only she remains

staring into the space

an earthquake, a seaquake, a moon stops over swallows the sun?

[All photographs copyrights: arnoldo garcía; taken during a community solidarity delegation meetings with their counterparts in Louisiana and Mississippi, November 2005, in the aftermath of the Katrina hurricane.]

2010-12-06T14:36:00.000-08:00

Excerpts from/Extractos de
La revolucion emplumada
the revolution to be human

Arnoldo Garcia

my ancestors

have not yet

invented the wheel

they will never run over

innocent animals

possum

deer

buffalo

wolves

raccoon

birds

butterflies

insects

they will never pave over

acquifers

dam or divert water

never stop the flow

of rivers, creeks, streams

to the cosmic ocean of the natural world

my ancestors

will never invent

the wheel

the bomb

will never fiddle with DNA

will never fertilize in vitro anything

they will walk

where humans can walk

they will love

where humans can love

they will pray

where humans can pray

they will be human

where humans can be human

they will never be gabachos

that step on plants and other ancestors

recklessly

they will never

defecate or urinate

in the soul of the earth

in the water

[2]

Our revolution

has no martyrs

our martyrs

have no revolution.

we have no revolution

yet we have martyrs

young men and boys

who kill each other

because we have no revolution

police who shoot black young men in the back or in the front

The border brothers

make north and south

the north is nothing without the south

the south cannot exist without the north

yet young men and boys

kill each other

for lack of the four directions

the border brothers are both

north and south

North is a border

South of the border

North borders South

they are lost in their venganza

we are lost without a plumed revolution

[...]

2010-10-24T18:05:00.000-07:00

Oakland Has Disappeared: Record Deportations

On September 30, 2010, Oakland, California closed its doors; the elections were canceled; property tax notices stopped being served, street sweepers stayed motionless, teachers and students, families all gone.

The power was turned off and what remains of the city government, elected officials are claiming that Oakland crime is no more. Gentrification is now the good word, the savior. But there's a problem, Houston.

Oakland is off the grid.

Oakland decimated by deportations! A total of 392,862 residents were deported during the last twelve months.

Through an assortment of immigration-police programs, employer sanctions and E-verify programs that allow the employers and the government to check if a worker is authorized to work in the United States, through ICE carrying out illegal street sweeps targeting day laborers, mothers with children in tow on their way to school; at community health clinics, at church services, at funerals, in houses and apartment homes, at "DUI" check-points where anyone without a license was arrested, ICE picked up an average of 1076 residents per day. hauling them away to Mexico, Haiti, El Salvador, Guatemala, the Philippines, China, South Korea, Ecuador, Burma, Nigeria, Poland, and at least one family from Bosnia.

Oakland Now Belongs to the "Secure Communities" Family

Former Oakland Mayor, now California Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate, Jerry Brown was a big player in Oakland's demise.

As Attorney General, Brown signed an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security that allowed the Oakland police to send the fingerprints of all persons they arrested directly to DHS to check their immigration status. This turned out to be a gold mine.

Called "Secure Communities," Oakland police was able to get tens of thousands of Oakland residents who are legal permanent residents fingerprinted. Because of the 1996 immigration and welfare reform laws, the police were able to entrap many residents because they had committed an "aggravated felony" some time in their lives and got them automatically deported.

This is a nightmare.

The Fruitvale District, once a thriving neighborhood struggling with crime, first saw street vendors and their customers disappear.

Then ICE and Oakland police agents starting going into grocery and clothes stores: clerks, customers, owners feet first.

When the Fruitvale went kaput, ICE and local police began picking up anybody who looked like an "immigrant" somebody: passer-bys including hipsters claiming to be from the Hills, transit village voyeurs, wanna-be artists living in warehouses from West Oakland to Jingle Town, late night taco truck and Meso-American vegan burrito connoisseurs all rounded up indiscriminately.

A policeman was overheard telling one of the persons being handcuffed, "If you're in Oakland, you must be illegal," -- this according to one lucky hipster who happened to be carrying his passport and spoke impeccable English.

ICE and Oakland Police also scoured quineceñeras, weddings, funerals and rosary services, and Buddhist temples. ICE found a mother-lode at St. Elizabeth Church that has three Spanish Masses on Saturdays and nine masses on Sunday, starting at 6:00 a.m. and ending with the last Spanish mass at 7:30 p.m.

The Evangelicals went flying into the DHS buses; norteños, border-brothers and sureños shared aisles.

Refugees were easy targets. After ICE deported their fellow churchmembers, legal services providers, neighborhood health clinic workers, refugees stood out like a sore-ass thumb.

ICE and company hit high schools, the charter schools, elementary schools, childcare centers and arrested anyone remotely suspected of being a gang-member or didn't look white.

Chinatown is a ghost town, too. Korea-town, Little Saigon, Old Oakland, even Piedmont restaurants, where all the food and service workers were immigrants, are closed down.

A few U.S. citizens and quite a few legal permanent residents were picked up and deported. No more morning lattes, no more cheap Vietnamese sandwiches, no more Oakland the most diverse city in the universe. Even former California Governor and immigrant Arnold Schwarzennegger was stopped at the Oakland Airport. Lucky for him that Jerry Brown vouched for him.

Oakland Police Department is largely intact; the overwhelming majority of Oakland police do not live in Oakland. They were right. It's not safe to live in Oakland, unless you're a cop with a gun patrolling the 'hood.

There are only 4,205 residents left, wandering the streets like nuclear war or zombie virus survivors.

They are not lucky; all of them do not know how to plant seeds, wouldn't know a planting season if it hit them in the stomach. None have ever tended or grown a vegetable or even a flower garden.

Most have not cooked in years -- and there's no children among them. The youngest one is almost 40. Their maids and other domestic workers were all rounded up.

They will die off one by one.

Does anyone think we can get some French or British to migrate to Oakland?

2010-10-02T17:11:00.000-07:00

Che means the people | Che significa el pueblo

Liberation poems, theater, music, art, hip hop

Friday, October 8, 2010
Doors open at 7:30 pm
Program starts at 8:00 pm

This is a benefit to support Zapatista communities.

$10 donation requested at the door!

Show your support in many ways, just give, speak out, get together!

Sponsored by the East Side Arts Alliance Cultural Center with the Chiapas Support Committee

http://www.eastsideartsalliance.com/

At 2277 International Blvd * Oakland, CA 94606-5003
Call (510) 533-6629

Liberation poems, theater, music, art, hip hop with:

Poemas, teatro, música, arte, hip hop liberación con

Avotcja
Francisco X. Alarcón
Gina Madrid
Muteado
MamaCoátl
headRush
Nina Serrano
Lisa Gray-Garcia
Howard Wiley
Andrew Kong Knight
Arnoldo García
Daniel Camacho
Pancho Pescador
"El tractorista" video poem by Rubén Rangel
Alejandro Murguía

Son Jarocho Music Group and Fandango Jam sessions to close!
& others!

*

What does Che mean in 2010 and beyond?

Recently the semi-retired elder Cuban revolutionary and leader Fidel Castro said that the Cuban model does not even work for Cuba anymore. What does liberation mean in the era of neoliberal capitalism, the international "war on terror," global climatic change, Indigenous peoples' liberation movements and governments, and small islands and movements of difference?

In this time, what does Che mean, if anything at all?

Tonight we will try to imagine and re-imagine not only Che's significance, but the meaning of our lives dedicated to progressive social change for racial justice, immigrant rights, human rights, poetry, cultural, music, clean air, water, soil, and what we can do to ensure that the revolution is to be human, like Che.

The world economic crisis has meant a re-evaluation of everything sacred and mundane in the capitalist worlds and the remaining socialist utopias amidst the harsh conditions reigning in South countries and the Third World. How does the working class survive, how are Indigenous people organizing their communities and defending the natural world, what is happening to our countries with the migrant upheavals marking the developed world? What do our words mean to do?

In this contradictory time and threatening developments, Zapatista communities and Che still remaining shining figures and examples of human dignity and struggle for a better deal and a better world for all. Tonight we will celebrate with our own words and actions Che Guevara and collectively raise some solidarity for the Zapatistas in Chiapas.

Come celebrate Che & the Zapatistas!

CHE

Ernesto Che Guevara was born in Argentina, became a revolutionary on several motorcycle road-trips across Latin America, where he saw first hand the problems of impoverished and landless Indigenous peoples, exploited workers and the devastation resulting from hundreds of years of colonialism and empire. After being expelled from Guatemala, when the CIA overthrew the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz, Che met up with leaders of the Cuban July 26 national liberation movement led by the Castro brothers in Mexico and joined their cause. He rode aboard the famed Granma (yacht) to Cuba as the nascent Rebel Army launched its war of liberation, which culminated in victory on New Years Day 1961.

In the revolutionary war to overthrow the U.S.-backed Bautista dictatorship, Che eventually reached the rank of Comandante in Cuba's Rebel Army. He led a column of guerrilla fighters across Cuba in the final march and assault that caused the final defeat and overthrow of the dictatorship.

Che became a leader and creator of revolutionary guerrilla theory and practice, Although he was a medical doctor by training, Che was also a talented writer by vocation and became a noted chronicler of his youthful escapades and of the Cuban revolution, becoming an internationalist practitioner of what he preached.

Ernesto Che Guevara was a multifaceted and selfless individual in the revolutionary world movements. In Cuba, Che became an economist, helping lead a socialist re-organization of the Cuban economy, participated and lead in the development of volunteer workers the sugarcane fields and other sectors to become and shape, as part of a shared vision, the "new man and woman." As a representative of the Cuban revolution, he traveled to Third World countries developing both economic and political relationships to ensure the success of the Cuban revolution and national liberation movements worldwide.

In these new travels, Che reinvigorated his commitment to international solidarity and revolutionary movement-building. he helped organize Cuban internationalist support and eventually spent almost one year leading a guerrilla war with an African liberation movement in the Congo.

In Africa, he continued developing the vision and the members of what would become Che's most well-known and final initiative of creating an internationalist liberation army and movement in Bolivia in 1966. Che lead a small column of guerrillas in the mountains of Bolivia, engaged in several skirmishes and battles but eventually would be surrounded and captured one October 8, 1967. He was executed shortly after capture and the rest is Che history.

Si Che viviera, con los Zapatistas estuviera

If Che were alive, he'd be at the Zapatistas side.

2010-09-30T21:29:00.000-07:00

Unveil Me!

On October 10, Arnoldo García, el FEO, will be reading at:

THE MUSIC OF THE WORD

(LA PALABRA MUSICAL)

still in English, Spanish, Spanglish y Lo Que Sea

3:30 – 5:30PM No Cover

hosted by Avotcja

(Donations for flyers accepted & don’t forget to bring your Congas, Guiros, Maracas, Panderetas etc.)

Always the word festival to remember!

@ THE OTHER CHANGE OF HOBBIT

(a Science Fiction & Fantasy bookstore)

3264 Adeline Street

wheel chair accessible

(½ block North of Alcatraz & 2 short blocks South of Ashby BART)

Berkeley, CA 94703 (510)848-0413

or (510) OK HOBBIT

Sunday October 10th

ARNOLDO GARCIA (Poeta del Pueblo) & “TINY” LISA GRAY-GARCIA/TONY ROBLES (of Poor Magazine)

ochobbit@oytherchangeofhobbit.com or www.otherchangeofhobbit.com

www.Avotcja.com or LaVerdadMusical@yahoo.com

2010-09-24T14:23:00.000-07:00

Come on Baby, Let Me Light Your Fire!

In August, Matchbook Story published my short story "Day Laborer Love." The catch? My short story had to be 300 characters long. So, literally, your story has to fit on the inside of a matchbook.

Now, creating, writing and then editing are always tough.

As a writer you do not want to cut up your baby; but when editing becomes akin to flesh offerings, spiritual gateways to deeper understanding and transformations of consciousness, then editing is easy, not necessarily painless, an art-form. And even more so when I am talking about a short story that is 300 characters long, including spaces; yes, 300 characters!

Kyle Peterson, who publishes Matchbook Story, provided wonderful, insightful feedback and editing suggestions helping me craft a neutron-like compact story with many layers and meanings. He has struck a different kind of matchbook and has created a permanent, eternal-like, bonfire out of my story.

OK, try this at home or at a cafe, or at a laundrymat, or on the bus. write your matchbook story. Then check out Kyle Peterson's blog, where he posts a "pick of the week" matchbook short stories. Then send him your 300 character blast and keep the fires burning -- or as KP states, Matchbook Story (is on fire)!

2010-09-02T10:05:00.000-07:00

Record Year of Repression

For those claiming that the immigration system is "broken" and needs "CIR," comprehensive immigration reform, think again and ask someone who has had a loved one, a co-worker or a family member taken away by the police, jailed and deported. Short of any reform, relief can be provided by taking a few commonsense and humanitarian steps. For example, the U.S. must fully restore civil rights and due process for all persons, regardless of their immigration or citizenship status. The abuses immigrants are subjected to in detention and deportation have to be investigated and prosecute those accountable.

This has been a signature year for the U.S. government, notable for the runaway repression of immigrant families, workers and communities. This is nothing to brag about:

The U.S. is reporting that the number of people coming in without authorization, or who may have overstayed a visa and have also become "undocumented," has decreased.

At the same time the U.S. is deporting record numbers of immigrants,; expected to surpass 400,000 by the end of the fiscal year ending in September.

And, worse for immigrant families, workers and communities, a record number of migrant dead have been recovered on the U.S. side of the Mexico border.

These are the results of U.S. laws, practices, measures and policies that have criminalized immigration status, militarized immigration control and border communities, and that do not address the root causes of migration that forces a person to risk their life to survive. On top of all this, immigrant workers face additional hurdles to employment with living wages -- and immigrant workers are scapegoated for the other record, record unemployment. Nothing or little is said about protecting labor rights, ensuring an income or a job and other remedies. U.S. immigration laws and policies fuel the banner year of scapegoating and anti-immigrant hate violence, another record this year.

Are more coming with authorization? Nope. The U.S. could drastically reduce the number of unauthorized entrants by decriminalizing status, issuing sufficient visas for family reunification and ending the backlog. And by regularizing the status of those already here.

Is repression the hallmark of "21st century law enforcement," as the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) touts itself? The U.S. continues investing billions in expanding immigration controls, extending immigration-police collaboration programs, building jail bed space exclusively for immigrants and continuing the deadly strategy of militarizing the U.S.-Mexico border. The U.S. border security deliberately funnels migrants into the desert and mountains of Arizona and parts of New Mexico and Texas where thousands have perished or disappeared since this strategy, called "prevention through deterrence," was implemented in 1994.

System of Repression

The U.S. economy is still in a tailspin; unemployment is deep and jobs are shriveling up. Instead of protecting the labor rights of ALL workers, native and foreign-born, the U.S. has increased immigration policing in the workplace by creating a new generation of employer sanctions using E-verify. The GAO studied and found that employer sanctions cause new forms of racial discrimination in employment, housing and services. While this is old news, employer sanctions continues being expanded and in all its forms gives almost warlord status and power to employers. With E-verify and employer sanction in hand workers, employers believe they can and fire workers who assert their rights or organize unions. Employers violate wage laws and safety protections with impunity because they believe that the immigration status of an employee determines if they have to obey labor and other laws.

The old adage of "When the U.S. gets a cold, Mexico gets pneumonia" is more true than ever. When U.S. workers, especially white workers, face such dire times, immigrant workers, whether Mexican, South Asian, African, Haitian or of any nationality that does not pass as white, are literally thrown onto the street corners and are at the mercy of the the wolves of exploitation.

The U.S. government's treatment of immigrants is nothing to be proud about. Official policies have unleashed waves of scapegoating along with a proliferation of repressive legislation by state, county and local officials targeting immigrants -- or anyone perceived to be born outside the country. SB1070, the controversial Arizona law that gives local law enforcement additional powers to check a person's immigration status, is the tip of the iceberg of anti-immigrant repression.

Over twenty states are considering SB1070 copycat laws. The Obama Administration has implemented "Secure Communities" and other federal immigration-police collaboration programs in over 500 jurisdictions; final the goal is to extend Secure Communities to every county by 2012.

Get ready for more record years of repression.

We will need to all "Dream, Rise, Organize" with fierce human determination to rollback and reverse the climate, much less get socially just immigration reforms any time soon.

2010-08-30T18:30:00.000-07:00

>
música humana

música humana
música de polvo
música de tierra
música esqueletal
música de piel
música de huesos
música flota en olas
de tus labios a mis ojos
tu lengua transforma sílabas
en luz, partículas que danza
a tu alrededor
música soverna
echa raíces en el espacio
florece en el viento
no desparaece
es indesaparecible
espera el oído cósmico para escucharse
espero el ojo de las diosas para ser visto
música humana

2010-08-12T12:25:00.000-07:00

El hogar/la casa o las estructuras donde residen las relaciones sociales

Una casa, un hogar, un edificio, un rasca-cielo, una oficina, un apartamento, una fábrica, una calle, un callejón, una carpa son las estructuras donde residen y reflejan las relaciones sociales, económicas, raciales, de clase, de género.

Son marcadores de tiempos y espacios pasados de relaciones humanas antiguas y que ahora son hospedaje de lo que vivimos y lo que soñamos, como un campamento de campesinos migrantes que antes era un alcazar o fuerte o una misión y ahora en lugar de encarcelar indios, alojan migrantes que también son indios.

Quizás una hetero-mujer sueñe con casarse con un hombre, tener una casa, un hogar y criar familia. Y esto es una fotografía del pasado. ¿Qué sueñan los desempleados, las prostitutas (trabajadoras del sexo), los jornaleros, los poetas? Con un lugar, cuando no tienen lugar, con estabilidad, cuando no tienen estabilidad, con abrazos cuando no hay ternura, con un cuarto limpio y con calefacción cuando están tirados en la calle desahuciados, con un futuro optimista cuando el presente es opresivo, pesimista. ¿Podremos retomar espacios viejos, abandonados por la fuga de inversiones capitalistas y las de-estructuraciones gubernamentales y del Estado? Sin capital?

Renunciamos y denunciamos las estructuras explotadoras y las queremos retomar con nuevas relaciones sociales, solidarias, abrigadoras, comunitarias, familiares, íntimas, diferentes pero de todos modos ligadas a lo caduco o tratando de rebasar y deshacerse de la caducidad. Remover, destruir, superar lo caduco que pesa contra nuestras resistencias y sobre nuestros ideales. Convierte nuestro solidario servicio para cubrir los agujeros de su falta de responsabilidad social, su extracción económica, su poder político que nos descuenta, nos deshace, nos agota, nos agacha.

2010-08-08T14:28:00.000-07:00

Philosophical Materialism

I have gone mad, lost my mind in a mall.

I have gone from nothingness to everythingism:

I need to buy everything

CDs, shoes, blouses, shirts, underwear, designer jeans

earrings, perfumes, lotions, vacation homes, maids

I have gone from idealism to materialism

turned the world into a store

turned my ideas into a thrift shop

turned my heart into an auction

turned my body into an wishful-thinking six-figure salary

I am what I own

I am worth something because I own, I buy, I shop for the very best

What is primary?

My idea of a sale; can I buy it; can I own it; can I take it home; can I make it mine

What is secondary?

Whether I can beat out the other shopper.

What is tertiary?

whether i need it or not, i have it.

The thing determines my being

my being is a reflection of the things I can buy

the thing has become a thing-for-my-self

What is primary?

Materialism, own, own, own, property, things, people in my service

Matter determines ideas

Ideas are in the stores, I look for sales, I shop therefore I am.

2010-06-09T08:17:00.001-07:00

Update on community mural in east Oakland

Desi along with Leo, Pancho Pescador, Jane and others are creating a new work of community art almost in my backyard. Part of a citywide initiative called, "Community Rejuvenation Project," which includes neighborhood participation in the mural design and painting and growing community gardens, Desi explained that they went to the store owner and asked permission to paint this historical mural on the outside wall of the store facing Seminary, close to MacArthur Boulevard.

From left to right on the mural, the artists depict ancient history starting with African and Mesoamerican roots. The you have two historical figures a black woman who led a slave revolt and Cuauhtemoc, the last leader of the Aztecs who fought the first Indigenous battles against the incipient European invasion of the Americas.

In the background is the "Black Eagle" of the farmworker movement. Cesar E. Chavez, founder and leader of the United Farm Workers union, designed the logo associated with the UFW. He explained that the "Balck Eagle" was a reminder of the long and deep history of farmworkers and agriculture in the Americas, dating back to the Aztecs and beyond.

On each wing of the farmworker eagle you have Elaine Brown, Black Panther leader, and Inez Garcia, who was raped and in her cause celebre was represented by a Black Panther lawyer in Oakland. Desi explained that the Black Panthers had a historic meeting at Mills College back in their hey-day, which is a few blocks around the corner from the actual mural.

In the center of the mural you have a pre-Colombian Mesoamerican symbol for movement right above the Black Panther party symbol. Then you have images expressing voices being raised for justice and community members expressing their power.

A large image of a woman, acting with fist raised high and exclaiming words, comes from

another photograph that turns out to be that of a Iranian in protest. Behind her you can see images from Alcatraz and Angel Islands, where Asian immigrants were jailed awaiting entry or deportation.

2010-05-23T21:42:00.000-07:00

New Mural Rising in east Oakland

I drove right by it and did a double take. I turned around, taking some photos with my

cellphone camera and then decided to return later with my camera.

Here's a few photographs of a new mural in progress. I will go visit the painters when I see them out there and find out more about this exciting mural and community garden project they are developing.

2010-05-20T09:22:00.000-07:00

arnoldo garcía

Eye Contact | Contacto Visual

Mis palabras

hacen

el amor

con

tus ojos

My words

make

love

with

your eyes

2010-05-08T17:13:00.001-07:00

Next stop for the Earth and what are you gonna do about it?

The world doesn't stop for humans. She keeps spinning, wobbling around the sixth sun.

Lately, she's hobbling after being badly hurt once again by human activity that humans, some of us, call corporate greed for oil, profits, accumulation for private consumption.

BP was drilling into the crust of the earth, to suck up oil to process into fuel for our cars, trains, and other energy and forms.

We are now living under one of the worst oil spills in human history after an explosion ripped open a gash in her belly allowing crude to swoosh up in hundreds of thousands of gallons per day, poisoning everything in its wake.

Humans, specifically corporate humans, are responsible for the spill; it was not an accident; the spill is a warning and a sign that our relationship to the natural world doesn't work.

The human corporate polluter, ravager of the earth, has a name, British Petroleum, BP. And he has accomplices, every day sitting in gridlock on their way to shop, work or home.

The Big Bang Strikes Again at the Belly-Button of the Moon

Six millions years ago, give or take a few millennia, an asteroid ripped into earth, gashing a crescent wound into the continent where the Yucatán peninsula now sits. The impact was of such an intensity that part of the earth was lopped off and drifted into space, eventually becoming our moon.

Humans in the Mesoamerican region venerated the almost perfect arc after arc of cenotes, wells (that were created by the backfire of the asteroid's impact on the earth), that covered the Yucatán peninsula. The cenotes were treated as sacred portals or places that were given human and plant sacrifices or offerings.

Mesoamerican naturalists thousands of years ago made the connection between the moon and Mesoamerica and began calling the entire region Mexico. Mexico is the Spanish-ized version of Mexica (pronounced: meh shee kah), formed by the fusion of two Nahuatl language words, metztli (moon) [pronounced: mets-tuhlee] and xictli [sheek-tuhlee] (belly-button) "Belly-button of the Moon."

The asteroid's destruction of animal and plant life created the sediment that eventually over millions of years was compressed and transformed into crude. Coal, oil, in other words, fossil fuel, are the remnants of animal and plant life, which humans have learned badly to use as fuel for extremely short-sighted needs. Human dominant industrial social formations, mainly Europe and the U.S. are using up the past faster than we can create the future, any future that might be sustainable or survivable for humans.

The Wétiko Disease: Gulf of Mexico Oil Disasters

This is the second oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. In the 1980s another oil rig accident caused a tremendous oil spill. I lived in south Texas, close to Padre Island, at the time and I remember the oil clumping into fist-sized balls of crude. The beaches, the sea-life, the water suffered tremendously; other than sitting on the beach sands, the gulf waters were deadly to all life forms.

But no one should worry.

Humans, especially those of us who have lived under and through the the dominant industrial society cannot destroy the earth. We can only destroy the habitat, the eco-systems of air, water and soil, that support human life.

What is destroying us is what Jack Forbes, renown Native American scholar and poet, calls the "wétiko" disease. Jack Forbes writes, the wétiko disease is "... the consuming of another's life for one's own private purpose or profit."

The wétiko disease is the disease of possession, that anyone of us can own land or build, drill, shovel it around -- or in the case of BP, oil that is over five thousand feet below the surface of the Gulf waters -- without consequences.

The U'wa a few years ago reminded humans, especially those of us from the dominant industrial societies, that the oil in the land and under the crust of the earth is there for its own reasons.

The oil is part of the balance and once you pilfer it, suck it up into ocean carriers and transport it to refineries, we will pay a heavy price, said the U'wa. The whole process of unbalancing comes to the fore. The result? The current and most deadly spill ever of crude gushing from the bottom of the Gulf.

2010-04-30T21:09:00.000-07:00

arnoldo garcía

[Scribblings for Poems 29 and 30 April Poetry Month]

these are poetic deviations

doctrinal disasters

for power

for individualism

for my heart

to beat the crooked

root into the sky

waggle our legs

in the sea

swim in the wind

1. una llamarada

(habla

una ternura de camarada)

2. tu voz entra a la electricidad alámbrica e inalámbrica

para llegar completa

a mis oídos

(y entre la electricidad

de los kilómetros y

kilómetros que se estiran

sobre montañas, llanos

y ciudades

corriendo por los alambres tendidos sobre los postes

que desfilan al lado

de las carreteras solitarias

tu voz delgada llega tras

las olas eléctricas ondas traspasadoras

3.esto te puede matar, sí

esto sí te puede matar.

poesía y amor

gasolina y fuego

una bomba molotov

es lo que cargo en mi pecho

que ustedes le llaman corazón

una bomba molotov

para las luchas callejeras contigo

traigo sangre combustible

y palabras eléctricas

para ponerle fuego a tus sentidos

4. que se acaben las mentiras

que se ahoguen

en mi garganta ronca

que se mueran todas

y que triunfe la ternura...

sovereignty

is the self-inflicted wound

of lovers

who make themselves free

tu cuerpo

le habla

a mi cuerpo

químico

una arma biológica

un terremoto de ondas y olas

que me estremecen

no aguanto mi propio sexo

me transformo en agua, lluvia

truenos

tu cuerpo un relámpago

de huesos, senos, labios, electricidad

luz en el techo

tu cuerpo

la habla

al mío

y me transformas en silencio

que gime en los pulmones

que gira en mis irises

que se libera con tus manos

tu cuerpo cerca del mío

y ni las sombras

ni las opiniones

importan

el mundo desaparece

en tu risa

y el sol explota entre mis

piernas o mi lengua trabada

por las vibras

de tu cuerpo

for my grandfather purépecha

When you are the Cloud people

the clouds are the most powerful

(my grandfather's words)

When you are the Mud people

mixtery, fusion, convergence, gestation

muddy waters' mongrelity is the most

powerful

(my heart mestizaje of lands' words, mixtery of cloud, rain, dust)

When memory is an infinite

fragmentation bomb

then we are everywhere

(the chorus)

Seismic skin

your hands transform me

turn me into a tremor

your skin against mine

(the earth quakes

our jaws unlock)

I am buried in the rubble of my existence

I am

a glutton

for words

It's not just

that I want you

your body,

it's that your mind

is strapped

to your body

and I cannot

get to your

mind

except

through

your

body.

los deberes del che

El deber de cada

revolucionario

es hacer revoluciones

El deber de cada

poeta

es hacer poesía

El deber de cada

activista

es hacer actividades en la calle

El deber de cada

movimiento

es hacer movidas movimientos

El deber de cada

pensador

es hacer pensamientos

El deber de cada

caminante

es hacer caminos

El deber de cada

barbudo

es hacernos las barbas

El deber de cada

rebelde

es hacer rebeliones

El deber de cada

mártir

es hacer martirios a martillazos

El deber de cada

muerto

es deshacer a la muerte

El deber de cada

vivo

es rehacer la vida

El deber de cada

espíritu

es cantar espirituales

El deber de cada

lengua

es hacer lenguajes

El deber de cada

triste

es hacer tristezas

El deber de cada

mesero

es hacer mesas

El deber de cada

endeudado

es deshacer deudas

El deber de cada

pobre

es deshacer la pobreza

El deber de cada

rico

es deshacerse de sus riquezas

El deber de cada

cubano

es hacer Cuba

El deber de cada

color

es hacer arcoirises

El deber de cada

ruido

es hacer oídos

El deber de cada

loco

es hacer locuras

El deber de cada

enfermo

es hacer enfermedades

El deber de cada

sucio

es hacer suciedades

El deber de cada

socio

es hacer sociologías

El deber de cada

obrera

es hacer obras

El deber de cada

mujer

es deshacer mujeriegos

El deber de cada

hombre

es deshacerse de ser hombre

El deber de cada

anciano

es deshacer ansiedades

El deber de cada

ansioso

es hacerse anciano

El deber de cada

terremoto

es hacer temblores

El deber de cada

moco

es hacer estornudos gordianos

El deber de cada

che

es hacer guevaristas

El deber de cada

helado

es redetirse

El deber de cada

religión

es hacer religiosos

El deber de cada

liberado

es hacer liberaciones

El deber de cada

encarcelado

es deshacer cárceles

El deber de cada

sonrisa

es hacer sonrientes

El deber de cada

zapatero

es hacer zapatistas

El deber de cada

erección

es hacer insurrecciones

El deber de cada

orgasmo

es desdoblar los origamis del ombligo

El deber de cada

nalga

es hacer nalgadas

El deber de cada

garrapata

es hacer garabateos

El deber de cada

cucaracha

es hacer cucharadas

El deber de cada

diccionario

es hacer adicciones

El deber de cada

nervioso

es hacer nervios

El deber de cada

semáforo

es hacer señales

El deber de cada

montaña

es hacer guerrillas

El deber de cada

guerrilla

es cuidar montañas

El deber de cada

lluvia

es hacer charcos e inundaciones

El deber de cada

sequía

es hacer asequias

El deber de cada

dios

es hacer pordioseros

El deber de cada

pordiosero

es hacerse dios

El deber de cada

puerco

es hacer porquerías

El deber de cada

palabra

es hacer palaobreros

El deber de cada

hechicero

es hacerse hechos

El deber de cada

calavera

es calar de veras

El deber de cada

desnudo

es hacer nudos

El deber de cada

nudo

es desnudarse

El deber de cada

explotado

es hacer explosiones

El deber de cada

oprimido

es hacer opresiones

El deber de cada

deprimido

es hacer depresiones

El deber de cada

largo

es alargarse

El deber de cada

crucificado

es hacer resurrecciones insurreccionales

El deber de cada

cana

es hacer canosos

El deber de cada

embarazada

es desembarazar a los imbarazables

El deber de cada

callejón sin salida

es abrirse a la poesía y a los carros abandonados

El deber de cada

sombra

es asombrarnos por ser fiel al sol

El deber de cada

ahogado

es desahogarse

El deber de cada

llanto

es hacer livianos los pesares

El deber de cada

deber

es hacernos soveranos

2010-04-28T19:06:00.000-07:00

arnoldo garcía

Manos incómodas / Uncomfortable hands

Ella con sus manos incómodas

teclando sueños sin electricidad

cabeceando sí sí, ignorando al público

Qué diría la tierra sin nosotros

qué haría la naturaleza sin tantos

carros y chimeneas qué haría

yo sin ella?

Las cáscaras del tiempo

la migajas de las carcajadas

las urnas de tu piel y amor

La dictadura de tus ojos

tu cintura, espacio cósmico para mis manos

El ruido de la periódicos en guerras

la ventana de tu lengua

el lenguaje de tu envidia

la verdura de tu vientre

las costillas de tus palabras

los campos de concentración

donde el ajedrez es un horno

para sublevar soles y antepasados

el deseo de no tener deseo

el deseo de aburrirme ante tus desastres

para que veas que todo está bien

El diálogo de bayonetas y trincheras

Los bemoles de las llantas

los blues de las carreteras a las

tres de la mañana

Tus labios come-lunas, luna de crema

y pecados con vela llena de mojados

clandestinos sin papeles sin cosmos

sin estrellas sin nada pero con tierra

y camposantos donde viven para morir

en una fábrica en Chicago o de

autonomía en el sudeste mesoamericano

qué sería de los horizontes sin tus

cadáveres, sin tus pecados falsificados,

fraudes electorales y monturas

silvestres? Qué será de mí sin

tinta y ternura, las ametralladoras

de mis sentidos, qué será

si nunca tengo el tiempo para

escucharte, para tocar la infinidad

de tu cuerpo y su cosmos, curvas y caricias?

She with her uncomfortable hands

clicking dreams on a keyboard without electricity

moving her head back and forth, yes, yes, ignoring the public

What would the earth say without us

what would the natural world do without so many

cars and smokestacks what would

I do without her?

The peels of time

the scraps of belly laughs

the urns of you skin and love

The dictatorship of your eyes

Your cosmic waist, space for my hands

the noise of newspapers in wars

the window of your tongue

the language of your envy

the verdure the fresh greens of your womb

the ribs of your words

the concentration camps

where chess is an oven

to organize uprisings of suns and ancestors

The desire of not having desires

the desire of boring myself with your disasters

so that you see that everything is ok.

The dialogue of bayonets and trenches

the b-flats of tires

the blues of the highway at

three in the morning

Your moon-eating lips, moon of foamy cream

and sins with a wind-filled sail full of clandestine

wetbacks without papers without a cosmos

without stars without nothing except land

and holy ground where they live to die

in a factory in Chicago or from

autonomy in the Mesoamerican Southeast

What would become of the horizons without your

cadavers, without your forged sins,

electoral frauds and wild

saddles? What will become of me without

ink and tenderness, the machine-guns

of my five senses, what will of me

if I never have the time to

listen to you, touch the infinity

of your body and your cosmos, curved spaces and caresses?

NOTE: Poem 28 for April Poetry Month 2010.

2010-04-27T21:07:00.000-07:00

Arnoldo García

curanderas dignidad

The curanderas put their hands on

my body, rubbed my skin with

plants and the palms of their

penetrating hands. My body

becomes one body as their

hands shape and pull at

every contour and curve of my

body. The curandera is the

body of bodies, who embrace

themselves, who absorb all

my sorrows, ghosts and

pain massaging me into

myself: I have a curandera,

therefore my body exists.

I am reassured of the

existence of the world, the

cosmos and my body where

her hands reside, live,

struggle, dream, become and

make my body real. My grandmother,

who healed with her thoughts, prayers

eyes and hands, had three bodies:

her body as mother, lover and

grandmother.

Her body as a woman who loved

other women equally and in

some cases more than she loved

her husband and her family and

even herself.

Her body as a healer, a curandera,

who negated her own body

who leapt out of her body

to make your body bodily, a

maternal temple, existence. This

was the only body capable of holding

all her bodies together. She could

cuddle and nurture babies, even

baptize them when she didn't

believe in the baptizer.

Because she was a bodily-healer, she

died but her body continued living

not only in my body and in those

she healed and cared for

but in her own body. She rescued

us even after death, took care

of us after we buried her and

then came back to visit me

twice before saying farewell

to this place, this part, this dimension

of the world

she built, healed, smiled at,

cultivated flowers, plants and

fruits. The curandera is a

seed, floating, holding on,

taken care of, planted, cultivated,

watered, sprouting people and

flowering for the next

generations.

She wanted to be wanted and

she would dress as a man

to go to the dances and

dance with women, she would

charm and seduce and make

them whole, make each one

two women in one and she, three

women in one body forever

gestating herself, self-gestating

the community, her family, her

lovers. Her hands, her stretched

body stretched by having given

birth to six girsl and six boys,

were, are her dignity, not mute

out loud gentle tenderness from

her lips. She counseled:

if you are in a tight situation,

violence or humiliation aimed at

you, do not answer in-kind.

If you don't know what to do,

what to say, how to react:

respond with your dignity,

react with your dignity,

answer with your dignity

and nothing can stop you,

no one can get away from you

no one will raise their voice

against you because dignity

and nothing else will matter

Your dignity will shut down ignorance.

her dignity was the cure,

la curandera la dignidad

2010-04-26T19:37:00.000-07:00

Arnoldo García

Toppenish

Toppenish

was

my home

the rolling hills belonged to no one

yet drunk Indians and Mexicans thought they were theirs

(that is drunk Indians all).

Three syllables

three roots

dirt roads

cold seasons every winter

putting us in our place

My grandmother and grandfather

thought this place better than Texas

where whites lynched Mexicans

Here they strangled us with

hard labor in the fields

Even the Indians had to

change the spelling of their

names, their homeland

so that no one would confuse

Mexicans with Yakamas

that is whites only,

whites

who took their land

and made us work it

made fertile volcanic soil and dust

mesh with our sweats, our

dream of return

only to die paupers

without land, work or home

except in the cemetery.

Toppenish, rolling hills, makes

me dizzy

swallows me up

my soul is tumbleweed

dried up at the emrcy

of northern winds

Toppenish is my hose

my horizon my word

my roots also

buried there.

My hands lie fallow

I hibernate in dreams

of toxic-free seeds

and uneven rows

meant for walking

and not tractors

we grew up walking

migrant comet trails

blazing, cornstalks,

greenbeans, hops,

orchards across the

brown sky of the land

In Toppenish you see everything

and you see what you need to see

You cannot ignore me

or forget me in Toppenish.

I did not choose this land

This land did not choose me

or my people

Now she is mine and I hers

Toppenish is the wind become

mountains, hills, valley,

volcanic paths, migrant tomb,

laughter and bully.

2010-04-25T21:54:00.000-07:00

arnoldo garcía

Poem/poema 25 de abril 2010

i don't want you

to read my thoughts

but here you are...

manos abiertas

ríos salvajes

territorios libres

que vuelva la tierra

que vuela la tierra

qué lengua la tierra

qué tierra la lengua

un lenguaje terrenal

un territorio lengual

tu y yo

lenguas-pueblos

comunidades-lenguas

eres de la noche

eres mi manifiesto nocturno

viento gira

alrededor

relámpago corta

al sufridor

polvo en mis pensamientos

surge el beso

más antiguo

en las armas

de tus brazos

por el reino

de tu amor

2010-04-24T08:43:00.000-07:00

arno!do garcía

Your colonialism did this to me

Your skin did this to me

Your 99.9% dropless blood

Your redlining

Your redneck

Your monotone monolingual Christianity

Your tone-deaf tongue

Your flat-ass flat world

did this to me.

Notes for my Palestine war

Anwar Balousha

mourns his five daughters

killed by an Israeli Apache [sic]

helicopter that fired mssiles

at a mosque in Jabaliya

Anwar's house was destroyed

by the blasts

Four of his children escaped

Samar, six years old

Dina, seven years old

Jawaker, eight years ofld

Abram, 14

Tahnir, 17

were all crushed to death

where they slept

Five missiles

one for each daughter

Five daughters

one for each missile

five centuries

five Malinches

in the refugee camps

in the migrant camps

Israeli drones in the dark night

looking for their targets

using infrared television cameras

found the five sleeping beauties

five dreaming peace or love

or family or fast asleep resting

getting ready for the next day

But how do you get reay

for the next day of bombardments

of atrocities of F-16 jet fighter pilots

who destroy mosques,

homes, school, universities,

markets, killing and maiming

Palestinians?

Even the ruins are Palestinian.

Gaza,

all the missiles

all the bayonets

all the tanks

all the soldiers

all the armies

are hunting you

All they can do is give us time

to prepare for our turn at war

at the fountains of blood

where Israel is quenching

Palestine is rubble under the bombardments

crushed children crushed women

crushed men

who will continue resiting

as dust as ruins as slogans as martyrs

at our marches

as the ultimate dream of freedom

that can only be crushed

by an ignorant enemy

Nowhere to run or hide

what kind of satellite is needed

to hunt down a people

the tables are turned

Israel is driving Palestine

into the sea

and Palestine will become

the largest country in the world

Palestine Palestinian ocean

and you will have to be beg, ask permission on the knees of your ancestors and soul

for at least 500 years

to cross

to bathe

to swim

in our liquid nation

to enter into the realm of our catastrophic borders

the U.S. submarines will snk

the gunboats, the warships

the corporate petroleum pirates the nukes

will be grounded

Israel buries Palestin

and the Palestinians

grow roots an underground

seed that flowers

without dynamite strapped

to her waist

that furrows under and causes the occupation to cave in to sink

in the aquifers of our loud tender mouths

Israel makes Palestinians mourn, twists and maims

their bodies, blasts apart

children and measly armed men,

Israel believes he is winning

76% of the Israelies support the war

they lie, hate cannot be

measured by wars.

Oscar Gaza

Broken windows

over a man shot in the back

over a man unarmed

laying face down

with four cops on top of him

shot in the back

a case of a mistaken bullet?

But what color was this Gazan in East Oakland?

who breaks windows, burns cars

who shoots us in the back

who is guilty

who is free

where is Gaza

where is Oakland

where is your sea our ocean our country of open arms and caresses?

Note: these are poems 23 and 24 for April Poetry Month. I was unable to post the 23rd poem on April 23 because I was busy working with communities responding to the rising apartheid and Jim Crow segregation in Arizona, after AZ Governor Janet Brewer signed into law SB1070, which makes racial profiling and discrimination legal. SB1070 give police the power to question anyone they suspect of being undocumented and to investigate private and public agencies, employers if they are serving or hiring undocumented people. Take four actions for justice in Arizona and to denounce SB1070 here.]

2010-04-22T08:46:00.000-07:00

arnoldo garcía

Migrant Incantations

échame tierra

sobre la cabeza y la cara

brota mi pecho con polvo

enloda mi lengua

échame tierra

porque me voy muy lejos de aquí

throw some dirt

over my head, let it run over my face

rub some dust on my breasts and chest

muddy my tongue

throw some dirt over me

because I am going far far away from here

To discuss

words with words

is the height

of consciousness

consciousness

of consciousness

the infinite molting

of consciousness

a head full of serpents

a chaos of

molecular currents pushing herself slithering making time and space

exploding at

the touch of air

blood the altitude of tenderness

tenderness the attitude of my blood

2010-04-20T19:46:00.000-07:00

Arnoldo García

Burma

can a few men with guns
rule
dominate
multitudes
of
peaceful
unarmed
nonviolent
monks
students
youth
day workers
who's in the army
who obeys orders to shoot the people
who commands the soldier to shoot the people
monks
students
youth
day workers
tear gas
scatters monks and pigeons
skyful of blood in the airwaves
can the thugs rule us
can the generals crush all the cameras
can the chief of police, the sheriff, the governor, the state senator, the racist
a few good haters
rule
dominate
ignore
the multitudes
of students
day laborers
Indians
immigrants
farmworkers
domestic workers
women with children
can a few men with guns rule the world
make the multitudes cower
destroy the earth
destroy our spirit our lands our communities
can they?
will we
the unarmed the peaceful the drunk on poetry & horizons
the ones who all we want to do is learn, laugh with the elders
can they really sentence us to life in prison in poverty
is a bayonette really more powerful than a pen a pencil solidarity love
can the army make us kneel ask for forgiveness ask for better jails more laws to obey
why do they believe in the possible when we are the impossible

*
buddha plays soccer

be present
not on what you don't have
not on what you had
not on what you lost
not on past grievances failures or successes
not on what you want
not on your desires
be present
on who surrounds you who accompanies you who holds you
on who makes your heart beat loud suns
on the riches of your life that can't be put in a bank account that can't be invested in an IRA
on who fills your lungs with the big bang
who vibrates & plucks the strings of your pigmented guitar
be present
to listen
to breath
to give
to rest
to be

*
campesino

I don't want to bother you
I am no one
I am not important
I hardly exist
I exist in your shadow
I live to be lived and loved by you
without you I am no one
without you I have no shadow
I am a shadow-in-waiting
I will self-destruct without you
I will crumble into a pile of dust
at the mercy of the wind

*
canción

casi te abracé
casi te bese
casi te tuve por una vida entera
casi fuimos uno
casi humanos
casi locos
casi dulzura con cara pecada
y tu corazón de curandera
casi te quise
casi exploto
casi me pierdo en tu sonrisa y cuerpo
casi fue todo
casi fue nada
casi te he querido
casi me deseas
casi duermes commigo
casi no me quito de tu lado
casi apareces en horizontes con filos azules
casi me emborracho con tu cuerpo
casi te apreto en la isla barbuda
casi me pasa todo contigo
casi me enamoro de tí
casi nazco nuevo en tus brazos
casi me olvidas
casi me trastorna y me hace sombra del polvo
casi tengo una vida, una ofrenda
casi entro a la eternidad
casi el amor infinito

*
buddha laughs

end all worries
let them wait
forget them
live now
fight now
free now
free forever
no running
no stopping
no jump starting
no runnning away
no violence
no peace
no hate
no love
nothing
except breathing and horizons

*
war plans

war plans
for killing
bombing
maiming
destroying
coercing
refugees
displaces
widows
orphans
trauma
wrecked
dreams
empire
colony
nukes
generals
bayonettes
prisoners
destruction
oncentration
camps
hopelessness
sociopathy
rape
war plans
for profits and contracts
domination
contractors
weapons R&D
soldiers
hierarchies
patriots
sales
medals
heroes
presidential
world leader
Nobel Peace Prize
re-election now!
home by x-mas
family & country
blood for oil
no homeland
no nation
nowhere
war there
peaceful war here
drive-by's
drones
assassins
state
of
the
uniuon
coffins
flags
burials
21-gun salutes
armies of headstones
sargent pepper's lonely purple hearts band of bros
PTSS
homelessness
safe suburbs
migrants
profits
prayers
anguish
indifference
parasites
cancers
cocktail parties
cockroach revolution

*
Sail

my
words
my tongue
my lungs fill with wind
my consciousness implodes into space
I vibrate beat against the waves lungs flap
wind above water below and stream over the solar skin
|
|

2010-04-19T15:33:00.000-07:00

Arnoldo Garcia

Las lomas coloradas / the red hills [extractos|excerpts]

time grew
the days weren't slow
the nights weren't fast

time grew everywhere
in the sorgo
in the chaparral
in the red clouds of cardenales
in the shadows of the auras
beautiful zopilotes announcing the new dawn
in the poise of the hare
in the glistening camouflage
of the rattlesnake
on the backs of the turtles
keepers of the cenotes
in the whirring of doves
palomas that we ate in droves

the days we spent
wrapped in colchas
made of maize, frijol and watermelons

at night our backs arched over
to gulp down the rain of stars
or sniff at a satellite passing high in
the skin of the earth
an alien clockwork

while time grew
our bodies became spring
our tongues summer
our beards fall
our souls winter
hibernating time
to restore the land
the red hills
las lomas coloradas
with our fallow hands
a place where migrants disappeared
and became whirlwinds

2010-04-18T20:03:00.000-07:00

arnoldo garcía

trozos / chunks

me haces habitar

todos mis cuerpos

y tu lengua

el lenguaje

del paraíso

despierta sobre mis sentidos

you make me live

in all my bodies

and your tongue

the language

of paradise

carrouses over all my senses

what color

is the skin

of the border

what languages

evaporate

what peoples

are swept away

by the broom of bayonettes

what does it matter

if Indians die

if the malls are full

if the shoppers smile

if profits swell

de qué color

es la piel de la frontera

qué lenguajes

se evaporizan

qué pueblos son barridos

por las escobas de bayonetas

qué importa que mueran indios

si los malls están llenos

si los clientes sonríen

si la plusvalía se hincha

Nadie sabe que es una frontera

abierta

es una herida

una revolución

un abrazo

un zipper

un cementerio de la seguridad nacional

el único lugar donde los indios

son bienvendios

el reino de la frontera?

No hay lenguaje todavía

para mis pueblos desaparecidos

No one knows what is a border

open

a wound

a revolution

a zipper

a clandestine cemetery of national security

the only place Indians

are welcome

the kingdom of the border?

There is no language yet

for my disappeared peoples

Don't listen to anyone who doesn't love you

Ignore them, only listen to me,

listen to your mother, your father,

your sisters, your lover, only listen

listen to those who love you.

No le hagas caso a alguien que no te ama

Ignoralo, sólo escuchame

escucha a tu mamá, a tu papá,

a tus hermanas, a tu amante, solo escúchalos

sólo escucha a las y los que te aman.

the snake cloud people

the serpent cloud people

revered the sky

because the sky was the home

of their creator their goddess their power

their horizon their land their laughter

the serpent-snake-cloud

the most powerful force of the natural world

that also threatens or embraces

strikes down or gestates humanity.

el pueblo de la nube víbora

el pueblo de la nube serpiente

adoran al cielo

porque el cielo es el hogar

de su creadora su diosa su poder

su horizonte su tierra su alegría

la nube víbora-serpiente

la fuerza más poderosa de la naturaleza

que también amenaza o abraza

derrumba o gesta a la humanidad.

I never get to dream

My ancestors are insistent:

everyone's dreams first

(then yours, if there's time)

No one's dreams are complete

can be completed

until the ancestors' dreams

are fulfilled are completed

They'll have to resurrect me

raise dust and hell

to make my dreams real

to get to dream finally together.

Nunca me soñar

Mis antepasados son insistentes:

Los sueños de todas y todos primero

(los tuyos después si hay tiempo)

Nuestros sueños nunca son completos

nunca podrán ser cumplidos

hasta que los sueños de nuestros antepasados

estén satisfacidos estén cumplidos

Tendrán que resurrectarme

causar polvaderas y truenazos

para hacer mis sueños reales

para poder por fin soñar juntos.

2010-04-17T08:18:00.000-07:00

arno!do garcía

río bravo

I go to the place where my sisters and brothers
pray, where the sky and the river zip lock the horizon.

my river's banks are lips
that kiss the feet of lovers
or migrants crossing over
her smile is muddy, wild, indomable
the nature of the next community. Mud
is the mixture of life, eggs embracing semen
the amino acids that convulse and conspire with life.
I was born in the middle of this muddy river,
a people arose from her mud
and now we drink muddy waters
to ingest our ancestors

Upon your, my, death
Throw my body into the wild
river where I was born.
Let her swallow me, sweep
me out into the gulf where the salt
will dissolve me return me
to where I started, where
Guadalupe conceived me.

*

I drink my coffee, begin the day
scribbling against the madness
so that I can get my heaven my landless place
that I long for.
I can't beat on my guitar anymore
my guitar is no substitute
for your embrace
I have practiced all my life
that's why I give myself no
choice other than to work and
to love, to write what is
mine, ours, what is yours
what is my ancestors, my future
wherever I go. My work my
love is this everyday life
of rising, planting and imagining uprisings
maybe few if anyone notices
that we are all the same
what matters above all else is
how we treat and greet each other
work, love, words, struggle, movements, community -- it's all the same...

2010-04-16T08:33:00.000-07:00

Arnoldo García

quetzalcoatl

my languages

have muddied work-boots on

callused syllables for hands

my languages

are prome

to heart attacks and alcoholism

my languages have peaceful armies called spring

who wage war for flower, song and a living wage

pregnant with seeds, souls and sacrifice

fertile

awaiting

your tongues

My tongue is

a feathered serpent

crawling in the spittle of massacres

flying into the dust of retreats

organizing for the sixth sun...

2010-04-15T22:20:00.000-07:00

Arnoldo García

[April 15+ poems]

Belief systems in trance-sits

I believe in

humming birds

colibrís

chuparrosas

hum-

ming

birds,

the only goddesses

worthy

sins.

En mis palabras viven

campesinos

soles-huracanes

hombres y mujeres poseidas

por dioses y diosas

alabando luz y verdes

senderos, un cielo azul

que se trenza en ríos,

en árboles y una

humanidad contrincante

contradiciente

multicoloreada

multicorozonada

alegre, esperazuda

palabras hinchadas

gestando

lluvias y soles

Speaking in transtongues

trancemusic

trancemission

trancegenders

trancelingual

trancepose

trancegender

trancemusics

trancelate

trancenatioal

trancehuman

trancefusion

tranceplant

trancejazz

trancelucid

trancesmile

trancemission

trancesister

trancerevolution

trancegress

trancegressor

trancelocated

tranceplanted

trancesperm

trancegestate

trancetongue

trancedancing

tranceborder

tranceblood

trancecultura(l)

trancelocura

trancetorno

trancegest

trancegod

trancewords

trancetongue

trancelanguage

tranceborders

trancecolors

tranceeyes

trancevision

trancelaughter

trancebound

tranceband

tranceport

trancemusic

trancespace

tranceblues

trancegoddesses

tranceshell

trancesex

tranceorgasm

tranceat

tranceculture

trancepoetry

trancehuman

trans-trance

trancegenic

trancestorm

trancehuracán

trancehuman

trancerevolution

trancelands

trancegarabateos

transas

trancescribbles

2010-04-14T15:48:00.000-07:00

arnoldo garcía

transtongue

My brain is a network of languages

you here read in english

My brain processes everything three times

in english

in spanish

in pocho dream languages

I translate every syllable among every syllable

i am at the speed of molecules

bouncing making chaos out of every sound

combining and recombing

until i spit it out

Marx called language practical consciousness

you hear, you read, you think what I speak, write, or gestate to you

my tongue is a superhighway of consciousness

the transtongue of humanity

I am a human bridge of words with feet, desires, six senses, tattoos

lover's eyes that are sabers or tenderness

I jump from one language bank to another

my tongue gets wet or swept away, drowning, in the currents of my throat.

I go over or under each language knowing that she is a bare electrical chord of lightnings

that can electrocute me, sear my tongue

with an explosion that rises up from the belly of the earth

blows a hole the size of a tractor in my tongue

all the words spill out of the dam of my breasts

Please drink me, do not let me evaporate in the blasting sun or thunderstorm...

Please note: This is the 14th spontaneous poem for 30 in April 2010.

2010-04-13T08:30:00.000-07:00

arnoldo garcía

homesickness

i am homesickness

the road

the wandering

the horizon

the search for the next field

moving on after the last harvest season

packing everything into the pick-up

hopping in the back

the road is for the weary migrant

the road is the migrant's other vacation

you go to the next season

prune souls

prop communal branches sagging with the goddess's breasts

we suckle on ripening lips

sunburnt chapped nipples

our bodies

rasping against

the trees

apples

cherries

apricots

peaches

green beans

tomatoes

watermelons

grapes

hops

beet

before winter sets in

and we flee before the snow

traps us in her ice cream with canned condensed milk

I am homesickness

I don't belong anywhere

except on the dark nights

sliced by highways and rosaries for insurance

No one will remember me anywhere

I have lived nowhere long enough to be a memory

I become the human dust

the housewife washes off the fruit and vegetables

while she cooks for her family

I am at the table being eaten alive

as I hunger over beans and tortillas in a moldy migrant camp

crunch on the rare chile verde

I hear laughter (our own)

I hear prayers (my grandmother leading us from temptations)

I hear snoring (the fatigue of hardest working brothers and sisters slightly poisoned every day to ensure a slow death by a thousand hoes and blisters)

In the morning the singing begins

The comal sizzling with tomatoes being cooked on the ancient griddle my gandmom

carries with us from meal to meal, a portable stove top over an open fire, from place to place,

My grandfather is a human compass and map

He can find any field anywhere in the dark of the early hours of what will be a 14, 15 16, 17, 18, even 20 hour work-day (depending on the season)

We drive to the edge of a day that will soon arrive

with her ignorant sun that treats humans and plants equally

no mercy for those without a chlorophyl skin, a green skin that ripens fruit

and ages humans into dog years

You pour your coffee without a thought

You slice your tomatoes, sometimes a little miffed by its imperfections

You cook bacon, chicken, spaghetti, carrots, broccoli, tasty salads,

impeccably topped with goat cheese or olives

Oblivious to the migrant hands and backs

the destruction of a human body the circumstantial evidence of your ignorance

I am now homesick

for every place I've ever trekked

for every migrant camp I ever lived even if for a few weeks

for every road that lead us to our homes everywhere

I am homesick every day that I am not on the road

to the next season

to the next field

to the next migrant dance and wedding

the luxury of the poor who feed you every day and night

I am homesick and there is no cure

except to bury me in a dirt road

at the intersection of solstices

There is no cure

except to banish the sadness of departures and separation

keep me close to your eyes your breathing your steady word

You come home every day after work

I look for my home as I look for work

My sickness is fatal, is collective

except for a home and assurances that I won't be thrown out or away

when the last season is done and the geese fly over the fields

and we follow them, we're next, we're done and forgotten

Don't forget me, don't obliterate us

shelter us

defend us

put your arm around the shadows of our desires

and everything may be alright

but not today

not this morning

I am homesick and this place will not heal me

2010-04-12T08:50:00.000-07:00

Arnoldo García

La bandera

Mi única bandera

es la colcha

que Agustina cortó y cosió con pedazos de su cuerpo

The only flag

worthy of marching under

of pledging allegiance

is the quilt that Agustina

cut and sew from body

2010-04-11T18:06:00.000-07:00

Arnoldo García

The next shell/el caracol porvenir (drafts)

The revolution

is to be human poet

The revolution

Walter Lowenfels

Vladimir Mayakovsky

Cherrie Moraga

The human skin is

tender from the class struggle

human tenderness

John Trudell stickman

Rubi Orozco musa

Roque Dalton payaso

Somos humanos

invisibles pulmones

Indivisibles

Mi Rubén Rangel

Ella Barbara Reyes

headRush mis locos

No es mi culpa

que una revolución

humana total

Es la unica

vía pa limpiar todo

lo inhumano

Canto humano

y canto inhumano

la autogestión

Emancipación

liberación humana

sin esclavitud

Te necesita

con tus contradicciones

y maldiciones

Toda palabra

palanca de conciencia

Nos abre surcos

Las semillas son

tus pasos y tus manos

tus besos armas

Una explosión

que late en tu pecho

es la ternura

You are the next shell

communal individual

Art within art

Her patience the lands

compiling lists of demands

That are all our dreams

End human disease

profits, private property

The poets cry out

Let's make up our words

human struggles of beauty

synonyms of dream

2010-04-10T12:38:00.000-07:00

Arnoldo García

The commonest manifesto (excerpts)

the hammer and sickle was the first successful world-wide branding of a revolution.

You'd never mistake the hammer and the sickle, a worker, a campesino, an industrial

revolution claiming the lives of ecologies, farmlands, the earth's dna in humanity, seeds,

continental confluences, tributaries and ocean world currents bringing us together

colonization, crystallization of human bones and communes now crying out

for a return to the thirst

...

I don't want a working class revolution.

I want to dismantle the industrial smokestacks, the oil refineries, the paving over of aquifers,

dissolve the combustible explosion, dismember the nuclear imagination into

small quarks of tenderness for the natural world

...

The art of the commune starts somewhere even on a factory floor

where the human automatons rebel, refuse work, refuse to be appendages

the human appendicitis is coming to a peak oil stop

...

proletari-arte to dehumanize humans,

make them creatures of the water-ways and seasonal migrations

...

this is the commonest manifesto:

clean air

clear water

clean soil

for human community

needs

winds in her lungs and to dry her tears

xocolatl (muddy waters) to mix it up with the ancestors of today and tomorrow

dirt-eaters all: maize, beans, calabacitas (squash), chiles, flores, hierbas (weeds and herbs)

we eat dirt by eating plants that sprout their wings in the dirt

...

2010-04-09T20:32:00.000-07:00

Arnoldo Garc ía

Redes

enlaces

tejidos

agujas

hilos

sílabas

sonrisas

pláticas

zurcos

semillas

agua

sol

manos

uñas

sazones

tiempos

historias

horas

días

noches

sueños

cambio

letras

garabateos

púas

polvo

sentidos

sabores

olfateos

verbos

sustantivos

sostenibles

aguantables

grava

gravar

escupir

llover

zonas

temporadas

temporales

ideas

pensamientos

notas

músicas

dientes

lengua

garganta

pulmones

corazón

venas

poros

sangre

pies

músculos

nervios

sinapsis

estómago

ano

pené

vagina

pies

rodillas

tierra

camposanto

ancestrales

astrales

antepasados

puertas

ventanas

paredes

pisos

fundación

base

saludos

besos

labios

lenguas

narices

ojos

orejas

quijadas

cabello

carcajadas

rajas

rebanada

arcoiris

luz

cielo

alambre

enchufes

ondas

olas

inalámbricas

gestión

sexual

revolución

mareada

aterrada

evaporada

hervida

congelada

reditada

desplomada

desplumada

fertil

diapositivos

fotografías

luna

zacate

nidos

árboles

ramas

hojas

otoño

migrantes

pájaros

plumas

desnudeces

gestos

tiemblos

reportajes

relojes

respiros

suspiros

sudares

señales

trenzas

hipnóticas

blancos

colisiones

explosiones

abrazos

partituras

parteras

despedidas

despedazos

desperdicios

desesperados

desaparecidos

despertares

disparos

destintas

destinos

destapes

deseos

desastres

desvelos

derrames

derrumbes

danzas

cúmbias

instrumentos

cuerdas

cajas

hoyos

agujeros

tarimas

tareas

tangueos

tanteos

tantrumes

terquedades

tercos

tololoches

talalaches

tarareos

reos

rejas

rayas

retumbas

tumbas

túneles

tonadas

toneladas

tonterías

cicatrices

herida

lista

listones

blusas

blues

blandeceres

ombligos

vientres

ventanas

vértices

verdades

vértigos

vergas

guerrilla

guerrotas

garrotes

gaviotas

galopeo

relinchar

relumbrar

rescatar

respirar

restar

sumir

dividir

multiplicar

embarazar

embelezar

embarcar

masticar

digerir

defecar

enterrar

sobar

alar

volar

trigal

inseminar

diseminar

decimar

vibrar

gotear

cósmica

big

bang

el bang

humano

inhumano

la bomba

atómica

humana

el sol

el cuajo

de cúazares

tic

toc

la marcha

marchitándose

la composición

de la descomposición

podrido

ciclo

ciclón

huracán

vientos

olas

ondas

2010-04-08T17:51:00.000-07:00

Arnoldo García

10 Things to Do

(plus a bonus track)

1. Build a new

community

2. Learn a new

language

3. Be loved &

love

4. Accept tenderness

in all her shapes, forms & powers

5. Organize a guerrillla

of poetry

(a little war of words)

6. Visit my family,

my neighbors

7. Eradicate sadness

& human suffering

8. Draw a map

of the desired world,

superimpose your map

over the known world

Now throw away the one that's easier

to live and struggle in

9. Write your dreams on walls

as graffitti

10. Celebrate, honor

your ancestors, your lovers

Bonus track, world premiere release:

11. Surprise yourself, surprise me

let's live together our worldly life.

2010-04-07T21:16:00.000-07:00

Arnoldo García

Our revolution & theirs

I was not born of Adam & Eve

I was born

from the breasts

of Quetzalcoatl

I was born

out

of her plumed vagina

the birth canal leading to a sun-womb

born

crashing out

of the belly button of the moon.

My river banks are lips

that kiss the feet of my lovers

or migrants crossing over

her smile is muddy

mud the mixture of life, the semen stinking the eggs

the amino acids that convulse with life

I was born in the middle of a muddy river

a people rising from the mud

and now we drink muddy-water

to ingest our ancestors

upon

your

deaths

Throw my body into the wild river

where I was born

Let her swallow me

take me to the gulf

where the salt

will dissolve me

return me

to where I started

where I was conceived

I drink my coffee

begin the day

scribbling against the madness

my heaven

my landless place

that I long for

I can't beat on my guitar anymore

My guitar is no substitute

for your embrace

your raspy silence

I have been practical all my life

that's why I give myself

no choice

other than to work and to love

to write and read poetry

wherever I go

My work my love is my poetry of everyday

and maybe few if anyone notices

that we are all the same

what matters above all else

is how we treat and greet each other

work, love, poetry -- it's all the same

I could peel the sun for you

but would you eat

such a fruit?

2010-04-07T21:03:00.000-07:00

haiku besos

i crave raw kisses rubbing against her fresh lips my mouth squeezing hers

2010-04-06T15:41:00.000-07:00

Arnoldo García

Stopping

I have stopped

fighting my English

garbling my Spanish

denouncing the Aztecs

ignoring my Purépecha tongue

on which war rages

and rage cries unbroken

I am a polygamist

married to many languages

with many more lovers

I am faithful

to all my words

in any language

in any land

on any body

my people invented french kissing

we stick our tongue in your mouth

to taste and desire every dictionary

lust translators interpret

the same dream

in so many dusts

in so many mouths

our lips the shock troops

our desire to subjugate your tongue

by any verb necessary

your ears fall

and your body follows

and your imagination hobbled

speak in tongues but don't mumble

vomit doves and poison syllables

I speak out, denounce and debate against myself

I am split in three

and my tongue

binds my wounds

and my tongue

heals my bones

and laps up

the water from your body

My tongue drills

endlessly into your ears

guaguanco on the shell of your being

a human vibe

to turn you against yourself

that garbles

my ways

mimics

and makes a mockery

of the root

of a different world

sound

2010-04-06T15:33:00.000-07:00

Arnoldo García

mi cuerpo/my body

My body

is spring

your smile

autumn

where I live without aging

where I lay

to guide the stars

that's why

my body

is spring.

Mi cuerpo es

la primavera

Tu sonrisa

el otoño

donde

vivo

sin envejecer

donde

me acuesto

para guiar a las estrellas

por eso

mi cuerpo es

la primavera

2010-04-04T21:15:00.001-07:00

The Pages of Day and Night by Adonis (Ali Ahmad Sa’id) علي أحمد سعيد إسبر‎

Adonis is the poet of the human body and all her sensations, senses and junctures, mixteries and recombinations. Anyone can love anyone, Adonis's poems prove this and provide the fertile soil for soul partners and lovers to merge and emerge in ecstasy and sober. Read Adonis to complete yourself as a human View all my reviews >>