Día nuevo | Policía blanco sobre piedra negra | poema 8

 Arnoldo García

Es un día nuevo

Es un nuevo día
girando y desgirando hacia el sol
la tierra circula
por las venas del espacio
el sol circula
por las venas de mi cuerpo
el viento el vientre
el aire el desaire
en mis pulmones
nidos para las estrellas moribundas
mi cuerpo un camposanto
de soles y cósmos disueltos
en el polvo purépecha y
proletario.

Es un día nuevo
con su noche espectacular
El día se cansa con el sol
la noche se acuesta con las estrellas
y todos despiertos y soñando
el nuevo amanecer
el mejor más humano
el más nuevo para cumplir con la palabra
Y abajo
debajo
de la tierra
del polvo
la polvorosa lucha...

*
un policía
blanco
dispara
sobre
un hombre
negro


un hombre
negro
reclama
contra
un hombre
blanco


un policía
blanco
dispara
en
la espalda
de un jóven
negro
que está
bocabajo
con
las manos
torcidas
sobre
su espalda
negra


un hombre
blanco
dispara
mata
muchos
hombres
negros


hombres blancos
sobre
piedras negras
sangrando


Dos
migrantes
desaparecen
cada día
en la frontera
reaparecen
muertos
negros
esqueletos
blancos
sobre
piedras
negras


Los desaparecidos
negros
migrantes
el nuevo día negro
contra la noche blanca


mi palabra
negra
sobre
el papel
la pantalla
blanca


palabra
negra
sobre
papel
blanco


palabras
contra
el color
del desastre
blanco


la noche
es
la infinidad
la infinidad
es negra
es tinta
infinitamente
negra
mi lengua
mis pulmones
mis huesos
mis dedos
mis plumas
mis pieles
mi calavera
mi amante
mi orgasmo
mis sentidos
mis manos
sobre tus pechos
en tu boca
soy
negro
soy
piedra
negra
sobre
papel
sobre
piel
sobre
hombres
blancos

El nuevo día
es negro
el día viejo
es blanco
escribo
toda
la humanidad
negra
oscura
bronce
roja
azul
amarilla
verde
púrpura
negra negra
sobre
todo blanco

borro
la blancura
con
la negreza
de mi alma cósmica
mi cuerpo terrenal
polvorosamente negro
horizontalmente
un cuchillo
que corta rebanadas
del sol
para
ensartarselas
en las gargantas
que todavía
rezan en blanco
su pureza
cuando
la pureza
la purísima
es negra
como
mi lengua
como mi corazón
como el calor que tengo
el deseo que nada lo detiene
cuando siento tu cuerpo
acercándose
a mí
aunque virtualmente
mi mirada negra
no la detiene
la pantalla blanca
mi tinta
mi conciencia
mis palabras
mis gritos
mi rabia
mi ternura
explota en todos los colores
de tu piel
negra
de tu amor
negro
es un día nuevo....

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.]

Driving from East to West Oakland
to See Our Walls Speak (part 1)

One Sunday a week after the BART police killing of Oscar Grant III I took a drive from Oakland's eastern edge with San Leandro, driving down Foothill and then turning right on 103rd or so and driving west on East 14th, aka International Boulevard, all the way to West Oakland, to drive a bit on Mandela Parkway and the surrounding neighborhoods.

I took photographs of murals, graffitti and other commercial and non-commercial art on walls and in windows.

This is the visual record of that Sunday morning driving east to west with a beautiful sun shining on our tragedies and daily tribulations of work, family, community and survival.

There is a battle between art, graffitti, tagging and commercial art, decorative art that advertizes. The contradictions abound.

Our walls speak whoever writes or paints on them. Like the mural above, tagged with some "consideration," that is making the tag almost a part of the mural, blending it like streaks in her hair? A second tagger or color however disrupts and mars whatever was friendly in the first tag.

What does this mural depict? This is the legendary myth of Popocateptl, "the smoking mountain" (the "warrior" on the right) and Cicihuatl Chicihuatl Itzaccihuatl, the sleeping mountain (I can't remember the spelling right now, I'll correct it later!).

This is the personification of two volcanoes that are in the Valley of Mexico and have been depicted as a Aztec warrior watching over his "sleeping beauty." This is the eurocentri interpretation. This myth is painted and protrayed everywhere, from restaurant and grocery store calendars given out free every new year to countless those paimted by anonymous community muralists on public and private walls in the Southwest, in Mexico and other parts of the Mexican-friendly world.

Here's a close-up
The figures do not look "Indian" -- although undoubtedly there are Mexican indians that can pass and are off-spring of Europeans who forced themselves on Indian women, some inter-married, many didn't.

Popocatepetl continues rumbling and is linked up and down the Pacific rim of the Americas with what's known as "the ring of fire" -- active volcanoes, the last major eruption was back in May of 1980 when Mt. St. Helens blew up. Now there's a volcanoe in Alaska spewing and melting a glacier in the process. Global climatic change at home.

With this new knowldege, then the myth of Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl takes on a different story. When sleeping beauty wakes up she's gonna make us pay!

Here's another close-up of the mural:
Here a tagger placed his/her spray on his leg, a clumsy attempt at blending or just plain defacement, as the artists or painters of this work would not-so-gently or nicely say.

I kept driving east, sometimes dangerously, as I pointed my camera in the direction of art on the buildings along East 14th/International Boulevard.















More art on the walls, of varying quality and skill:

I messed this shot up because I didn't pay attention to the stop sign's shadow over the portrayal of the girls playing jump rope.











Here's a mural at the East Oakland Youth Development Center wall, on 82nd and East 14th.

All these shots were taken while driving.









Further down East 14th:
She was a beautiful apparition from Michoacan or Africa.

This is a student mural done by students at Melrose Leadership academy, defaced by taggers and then the tagging was painted over. This mural is particuarly significant because MLA students organized a protest demanding a traffic light for community safety. MLA students did an action, taking over the street, creating a human chain and stopped traffic. And they got a traffic light installed! This happened about 2002?

Mural on the two floor facade of the Catholic Worker building:


This mural depicts Latin American heroes, Che, Bishop Romero of El Salvador and others.











Here's a blend of commercial and cultural mural on the facade of the Corazon del Pueblo:

This is a much better version of Latin Americanist Indigenist-oriented mural theme, which inspires Chicano mural painters and others, and has its long roots in the Popocatepetl/Iztaccihuatly theme and imagery.

The mural atop Corazon del Pueblo is developed and stylistically speaking in quite great form.

Corazon del Pueblo us my type of shop, it has Chicano/Mexicano "kitsch" and fine art, including music CDs, postcards, earrings and other jewelry, ceramic pottery, Virgen de Guadalupe and Frida Khalo pseudo-devotional art that I love to hang on my doorways and walls, huipiles, guayabaeras and posters of Mexican revolutionary icons and lots of knick-knacks for all occasions ! And on top of all this, Corazon del Pueblo truly is a cultural center, with a back room, a speakeasy of a new type, where the owner opens to community meetings, mounts fine art shows and allows many of us to put on poetry readings, musical offerings and other cultural activities inside and in front of her store.

We are all Oscar Grant! ……………&, BTW, can we please not vilify the vandals?

My thoughts on today’s protest, while they are fresh…

11pm, January 7

By Rise Up [continues below]

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR:
Here are a couple of posts written on the evening of the January 7 gathering at Oakland's Fruitvale BART Station to protest the BART police shooting and killing of Oscar Grant, which turned into a confrontation with the Oakland police. Oscar Grant was killed on New Year's Day at the Fruitvale station and was videotaped by various passengers who were on the stopped train as the BART police were handcuffing several young men involved in a fracas. Oscar Grant was on the ground face-down with three police officers on top of him, when one of them stood up, unholstered his gun and shot him in the back.

See the video documenting the police shooting Oscar Grant at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAHjhtYZpX0

Read a report by Davey D: http://www.sfbayview.com/2009/did-bart-cop-who-killed-oscar-grant-mistake-gun-for-taser/

*

We are all Oscar Grant! ……………&, BTW, can we please not vilify the vandals?
My thoughts on today’s protest, while they are fresh…

11pm, January 7

By Rise Up

So, wow. I’m listening to the ghetto birds still outside my Oakland apartment while I listen to them on the live news at the same time. I’m nursing the blister I got marching and running around 5 or so miles. I’m charging my phone ‘cause I over texted with people coming to or worrying about the protest or trying to decide what to do next at the protest.

At 11pm, they started to make mass arrests. Before that, there were 14 adults and 1 juvenile arrested. Supposedly, someone is being charged with “assaulting an officer” tho the news reports no officers were hurt. Half of us stayed at the BART station and half of us marched, putting 500 or so people in each place at some point in the evening by my estimation and the estimations of my friends.

A cop car got jumped on and its windows broke and some folks tried to flip it. Some dumpsters and garbage cans caught on fire. Later, some restaurant windows were broken and a few people’s cars were smashed up and burned. Here’s some video: KTVU Video of cop car getting tore up http://www.ktvu.com/video/18435145/index.html

After the window of the MacDonald’s on 14th & Jackson got broken, Mayor Ron Dellums, Black man and old school activist turned politician, came to that spot to try to talk to the protesters and calm them down. That was actually a pretty smooth move for a mayor I must say. Alas, after a few handfuls of folks listened to him and followed him like the Pied Piper back to City Hall, they decided that his words were not so consoling, booed him, and went on to tear up Oakland some more…

But, back to the beginning……
I loved the people who showed up! We were so diverse and beautiful, and all of us there, UNITED against that police murder, all of us, regardless of background, really angry and fed up with the mistreatment of black (and brown) people by the police from our different perspectives on that.

I loved the connections drawn between Gaza and Oakland. I loved that we were reminded that the Black Panthers started as a self-defense group against the police. I loved the young people and I loved all the heart and heat from the stage. I loved the sign that said “fuck the police, no army in the streets!” I loved the defiance of people lying in the streets on their bellies as if hog tied in front of the cops and telling them to shoot. I loved the fearless emotions cutting loose, and I loved it when we all chanted, “We are all Oscar Grant!” every time the police tried to face us down in the street. “Whose Streets? Our Streets! No Justice, No Peace!”

The news from 9pm or so kept saying that the protest was so dispersed and disorganized that the cops were struggling to contain it. For hours, in fact, the police really could NOT contain it. I have to admit how much I love that. I mean, it’s not really an end point or anything, but it’s so empowering for us to see some of the possibilities! “Ain’t no power like the power of the people and the power of the people don’t stop!” Here’s to a lack of organizing or whatever you call that!

There was a little internal conflict over whether we should have marched. That’s too bad since we really need all kinds of protest. I was personally not sure which group to hang out with. In the end, I marched.

Already on the news they found someone to say that it was “the anarchists” who weren’t part of organizing the protest who were responsible for both the march and for the bulk of the “violence”. But by now we expect this, no? I assure you, both groups were diverse in the end.

So we did this beautiful thing today and the unity was deep and it really had a feeling, like someone said from the stage earlier in the day, that we were at the beginning of something new, or something renewed, like the next round of a serious civil rights movement. And really, to me, this is what will “fix” it more than anything very immediate, like $25mil, or jail time for that cop. Those things should happen too, of course, but we need some very serious and deep ass change and that’s gonna start with movements of people, if you ask me, not with electing Black poster boys for president or putting bandaids on things. I have to say again, tho, how we were really diverse. I think that this will be a marker of the difference between the 60’s & 70’s and “the next movement”, whenever it is we feel able to claim that title.

But I left when folks started messin’ with people’s personal property. Well, actually, my cell battery ran out and I lost my folks so there was no one I knew havin’ my back, plus that blister on my heel was starting to get to me and I was starving and I really had to use the bathroom… but I still, I left because I didn’t really wanna be a part of attacking other peoples personal stuff or even messing with small businesses.

OK. So, someone might assume that I wanna call those people crazy, and certainly the media is going to tear into them a lot; someone will press charges, and someone will discredit the whole action due to the fact that some people expressed their rage more carelessly than others. Even parts of the left are gonna be really mad at those folks, I know.

But does anyone remember Reginald Denny? Wikipedia on Reginald Denny [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reginald_Oliver_Denny ] Well one of the people whose car got burned has already said on the news – an elderly white man – while he is upset about his car, he is really upset about Oscar Grant being murdered and understands.

It’s controversial among the people who were at the march and sparked discussions about what kinds of property destruction is ok and what kinds are not.

I want to call on people to think out this issue of “violence” and keep in mind that this was PROPERTY destruction, and not PEOPLE destruction like shooting Oscar was. And I want to call on people to keep the high spirit of ALL THE FORMS OF PROTEST AND RESISTANCE we were a part of today and tonight, and not to feed those who chose to destroy property of individuals to the wolves. We should seize the opportunity to talk among ourselves about the difference between someone breaking the windows of a City Hall or BART headquarters or a cop car, and someone breaking the windows of small restaurants and stores. We should use this as an opportunity to teach that breaking the windows of the cars of individuals doesn’t really send the message we want to send. But lets not feed those people to the wolves. OK? We have youngsters and noobs in our midst. I don’t wanna treat them like “agent provocateurs” [ http://www.answers.com/topic/agent-provocateur ] unless they actually are and in the meantime, we need to embrace them and teach them.

Yeah, I’m kind of responding there to some specific things I heard out of some particular mouths tonight, but it’s important.

The news was also showing things I saw myself but didn’t have the camera to record – a young black man lifts his shirt to bare his chest to the police and yells to shoot him now. And that young woman who said, “We live our lives in fear and tonight we want them to be afraid!” How many did she speak for?

there will be more.....