Small note to Billie Holiday

Will your love
defeat my sorrow
trounce my abandonment?

I will make the winter endless
so that you may never die.

[Poema 8] Descolorido

Los colores son más diferentes, más brillantes, en las fronteras. Necesitan toparse, autodefinirse, clarificarse, para ser color. En su mezcla los colores se oscurecen y se aclaran mutuamente.

En su lodo, los colores híbridos dominan.

En su reino, los colores singulares apuntan hacia la mezcla.

Aprender colores es aprender nuevos lenguajes.

Amarillo lenguajes de soles vivos.
Rojo, lenguaje de pueblos ancestros.
Negro, lenguaje puro.
Blanco, lenguaje mezclado de lenguajes, mestizo.
Guindo, lenguaje de pieles.

La lengua brota de colores, es una paleta de audio-colores, colores-olas, colores-ondas, colores gargantales.

Ser bi-lingüe en colores es ser arcoiris-machete,
doble filo con venas.

Mi lenguaje es verde,
mis venas azules,
mi piel vidrio,
mi caminar café,
mi corazón azul celeste,
mis ojos torbellinos de polvo,
mis oidos el color de montañas que sueñan ser
semillas en los picos de pájaros o de un colibrí libertador.

Los colores mortales,
los colores infinitos,
topan en mi piel
y algún día quebrarán todos mis huesos.

Los colores de mi lengua prueba todo..

Mi cuerpo es una bomba de colores,
un cuerpo de incesantes explosiones de fragmentación de arcoirises;
un cuerpo que pregunta y cuestiona y no acepta
e insiste en el trueno de mi corazón descolorido,
para barrer ojos y paredes,
pieles y sepultados,
soles y lunares.

La guitarra tiene una sombra cristalina, donde
reposan los colores cimarrones,
los esclavos fugitivos se esconden en su boca.

Mis colores son descendientes de
purépechas,
palestinos,
yemenis,
mexicanas,
mestizajes,
chicanos,
xicanas,
hombres, hijos, padres,
abuelitos, tátarabuelitos, vecinos ancestrales,
sepultura venerada, polvo,
callos, tintas, pinturas, voz,
la piel es una envoltura de
frágiles huesos, tierras, cielos,
cinco o más soles,
una explosión cultivada por mis manos,
un deseo hondo con piernas fósiles,
un migrante viento, fronteras, hamburuñas,
sueños astrales, amores, montañas, plantas, palabras y poderes.

Los colores digitales, electrónicos y venales
y una mujer llamada Guadalupe/Coatlicue
(que en este mundo le llamo la mujer de la paz y el amor)

Dentro de mi mueren más soles, colores, explosiones constelares oceánicos,
que escurren de tus ojos y mis nubes futuras, tierras-en-gestión,
explosiones potables.

Dentro de mi nacen semillas coloridas, explosivas,
que pulverizan soles y plantas,
la germinación de colores.

Tu cuerpo es color que hace preguntas infinitas,
cuestiona entre lo negro y lo blanco,
alza polvorientas banderas, huipiles en los irises.

Vamos acumulando colores que surgen de los dolores,
colores gestados en vientres de dolor
gestando y pariendo colores hasta que una noche
todos los colores tienen su propio arcoiris, su propia piel,
su propia insurrección,
la revolución de ser humano
una cadena rota de colores libertadores.

Hasta que los colores mismos estén libres de su color:
Los negros liberan el negro
Los blancos el banco
los mexicanos liberan la mezcla
Los palestinos liberan a Palestina
Los migrantes liberan a la tierra
Las mujeres liberan a todos los colores
Los colores liberan a los colores
y el dolor cesa de ser color.

Nadie teme el gris.
Todos tememos el blanco, la blancura, la blancanada, la blancaloca, la blancabanco,
la blancura perfecta de los dientes que comen todo
y nunca sufren caríes.

Nadie teme la pureza.
Todos temen el mestizo,
La mestizaje que duerme con todos y sueña con sí misma,
La mestizaje que pare negros, blancos, indios y toda clase de sorpresas
con pigmentación clara:

El color perro.
El color carcajada.
El color sonrisa.
El color cintura.
El color basura.
El color pechos.
El color luto.
El color espacio.
El color zapatos tirados.
El color piernas cruzadas.
El color reunión.

Las reservas de nuestros colores, el color
explosivo, el catálisis de mis írises-redes visuales,
transmiten la energía y la carne de mi pigmentación.

Sólo quería ser alegre.
Me tupía de sus colores sin saber
que cada uno, cada infinito color,
era la raíz cósmica
de la tristeza.
Sólo los colores
llenan, sucumben
mi deseo
mis deseos
colorados
*
asi
me haces
sentir.
quiero ser
inundado
abrumado
invadido
por los colores
de tu voz

Soy todos los colores
Mi piel, una arcoiris poroso
Mi lengua, una paleta vibrosa
ojos de acrílicos despellejados
témpera sobre mis labios.
Tu sobre todo.

[Poem 7] Bury me dreaming

When you bury me

build

a literary cultural center

with a café for talking

over my grave.

I will be silent,

I will listen carefully,

Scribble down

your words and conversations

your manifestos

your romances

your silent thoughts in my irises

to your loved ones

in the most fertile roots of my grave.

My body will nourish your struggles.

My words will gestate in your lungs.

Bury me dreaming.

Carry my voice

across the river

Drag my body

Through the desert

Don’t let my bones

turn into stone

Carry my dust

In your pockets

On your tongue.

Bury me dreaming.

 

I tell my work:

Disobey me.

I read my words,

I disobey them.

I write my words:

Don’t let them

think for you.

Run your eyes

over each curve and wrinkle

of my scribbles

that’s how I think

unsmooth, crooked,

jagged ideas,

songs wrecking

into each other

into you

a broken path

holes, ruts,

corrugated

in the middle of thoughts

criss-crossing

chaotic rhythms

spontaneous languages

to make you slow down.

You listen,

read

the static

the overtones

of a reed

stuck in my lungs

vibrating.

Don’t let my words

sing for you

What can defeat

us?

If you do not

love me,

If I do not

take care of you.

Together

we are:

The wall

they cannot build,

The border

they cannot

double cross

The community

they cannot

break

The new word

that overthrows their tongues

and opens up

the lands.

You can kill me,

my skeleton will rise up

Out of every closet.

You can bury me upside down

And flowers will sprout form my anus.

You can disappear me,

My shadows will haunt you.

My voice will continue transmitting

Over the airwaves.

You can jail me

But it will be cheaper

To force me into your universities

to write useless

essays and book reports.

The worst thing

has already happened to me.

Everything else

is a surprise

That makes me laugh harder.

Bury me dreaming…

[Poema 6] The Quilt People

-->

Immigrants

of my land

You make

Americans

believe they alone

are

Americans

You traverse

the chaos

of American borders

You are the human

wire-cutters

saving our land

with us

from the razor barbed-wire

twisted around our wrists

sunk into the hip of our continent

tighter and tighter

till your blood explodes

from the American wrists.

Immigrants

Indians all

invisible,

cross-fertilizing

hope and fear

into strength

with no way out

except life

*

Ah mis fronteas

Ah mis dulces

Fronteras

amargas

realidades

donde los indios

invisibles

cruzan

tenue

espinadorsal

un ejército

de polvo

un abrazo

de vientos

una raíz

clandestine

derrocando

muros

inhumanos.

*

the quilt of farmwokers

wraps around and on top of the land

patches of green,

canals

and dusty roads

surrounded by planks

Yet my farmworkers

die in the desert

freeze in the winter

starve in the spring

are lost in the autumn

yellow leaves

yellow eyelids

yellow skin

yellow tears

yellow suns

Where is the quilt

to wrap around

the sore shoulders

of my farmworkers,

Where?

The horizon

curves

around my arms

the hip where humanity

suckles

now smooth

now flaying

in the sun

Only farmworkers and Indians

can dance with the sun

to give us another day

to rescue ourselves and our world

from those who take the quilt

for their own

[Poema 4] solidaridad humana: mi querer, our words, my world

Mi querer

Yo no quiero
que a mi
pueblo
lo hagan
dios.
Yo no queiero
que a mi
pueblo
lo hagan heroico.
Yo no quiero
que a mi pueblo
la vayan a hacer
el único, el escogido
sabiduría sin fondo.
Yo no quiero
que a mi pueblo
sepa más su historia,
lo hagan
reino incesante
de liberaciones
y libertadores.
Yo no quiero
que a mi
pueblo
lo quieran ni más
ni menos
que a su propio pueblo.
Yo no quiero
que a mi
pueblo
le quiten sus canciones
ni sus lenguajes polvorosos.
En mi corazón hace
nido, en mi lengua sus alas
en mis manos sus antepasados
en mis ojos todos sus soles
en mi sonrisa su luna llena,
luna nueva,
en mi rabia su canto
en mi amor todos los pueblos.

Yo no quiero
que a mi
pueblo
un día desaparezca de
en tus sueños
y el tuyo esté abandonado.
Yo no quero
más pueblos
que el mío.
Yo no quiero
más pueblos,
que los nuestros.
Yo no quiero
que a mis
pueblos
le quiten
su humanidad
pueblo
humano
imperfecto.
Yo quiero
a mi
pueblo
en la esperanza de la tierra misma....

*
Our Words

Our words are changing
the borders and boundaries
between colors
between tongues
between sounds
between tastes
among realms
among waters
among lands
Our words are changing
their pigmentation
their stratospheres
their memory
their time
their space
ecology of of skin
lanterns of smile
a commnity of thirst
dusting off our ancestoral skills
using their ribs
to till the kand
to cultivate stanzas
of maize milpas
green machetes
verdant bombs.

*
My World

My world
sunders Engels
My world is the specter haunting
the other world, the copyrighted,
the xeroxed into oblivion-contrast world
My world is born
every five hundred years
of resistances
which does not use the world
other than to be born
to become human again
My world is more than words
more than cosmos
more than my skin.

[...]

[Poema 2] Rolling Hills | The land does not forget

-->

Lomas rodantes | Rolling hills

Toppenish

surrounds

cornfields

hops

mint

asparagus

migrants

indians

and the weekly drug war deaths

Capital

of

the

Yakama

ancient salmon spawning rivers

where once Yakama stood atop platforms

with hand-made nets

tied to the end of long poles

catching

salmon

flying up waterfalls

or twirling, zig-zagging against the rapids

Where Yakama

Today the river is dammed up

dying from pesticide run-off,

cement, asphalt, carbon monoxide

the salmon no more

the Yakama fisher a ghost

spying on the orchards and agricultural fields

now tended by other Indians

Our homes

and

Our eyes

are surrounded

by rolling hills,

Toppenish,

in the Yakama language

That's how you know

you're in the center of Yakama lands,

Toppenish

Now a res

sobering up to the realities of capitalism

and meth-smacked young Indians and Mexicans

that is, young Indians all.

Men and women

who fall off the wagon

into their graves.

The Yakama

signed a treaty

with the United States Government

in 1855

ceding infinite land

to end one war

and start another

Where Indians

of all nations

of all lands

(Yakama, Mexica, Maya, Purépecha, Zapotec, Mixtec, Snix and on and on from other horizons)

die of diabetes, drugs, drunkenness

Where they call us migrants,

when we have been Indians all along

Now suffering the pain of hundreds of years

of occupation, disturbances, turbulent hard labor in the fields,

displacement, homelandlessness\planting, cultivating, harvesting
the winters, springs and autumns of shadows

that cast long into migration

encased in the one drop quantum

that has evaporated us

with the neutron bomb the U.S. has poured into our veins.

The central Valley

the Yakama's Valley

the Río Grande | Río Bravo Valley

The cosmic central Valley

with colchas verdes

extendidas

para abrigarnos

contra el frío del hambre

contra la eternidad Blanca

para dar vuelo emborrachado

a las orgías de las avispas

pollination sin fronteras

las campesinas son semilla y pollen

de la humanidad

que hoy se acumula

en el centro de las lomas rodantes

accumulations

of hope and communities

where matriarchs struggle against death

where matriarchs are surrounded

by the ancestors,

the brothers and sisters,

the sons and daughters,

the grandchildren

scattering into oblivion

 

Ella

es

una

utopia

donde

trabaja

la esperanza

de semillas

y zurcos

el arco

con flechas

para encajar

en el cuerpo del desastre

y vivirás

*

The land does not forget

The earth does not forget.

Men forget.

Women forget.

Countries forget men and women.

Some drown,

literally,

their memory

in alcohol

or in others.

The land does not forget

The land does not forget

how she was treated,

polluted, misused, diverted, distorted

by human consciousness.

The land does not forget

her own life, dust, plants,

seeds, creations, species, worms,

ants, the four directions, the seven spaces, water

and the mixtures in union with air, the wind.

The land begets life.

The land will swallow us, gestate new life, gestate new horizons,

The earth does not die, does not forget.

[Poema 0] Companion of the winds

Irascible winds
of the world
push me upward in your anger
into your arms
i want to be fully human
unafraid of the vast night
that surrounds our frail
skulls;
in me
a luminous skeleton
a mineral web of light
a sinew of dialectical mercury
a mirror of air
a storm of verbs
a root of veins
gathers,
gestates,
agonizes,
rises
a full sail
a net of winds
a companion of these winds.

*

To know my identity
you have to touch
the ground under my feet.
To then know the difference
between
my identity
and
the ground
that holds them up,
you will begin
grasping
the thing
which is reflected
in the six syllables of my
name.

*

Por qué nací
bajo este signo
en mí residen
las peores experiencias
heredadas a golpes
enterradas a lágrimas

.

*

Pueblos emplumados

Arnoldo García


Pueblos emplumados

Voy a cantar la historia
de nuestro pueblo sin tierra
Que dolor éramos indios
con toda una geografía

Nos arrebataron el suelo
nos deplazaron del cielo
para explotar a la tierra
y de privarnos de ancestros

Los indios arrodillados
los horizontes sin cantos
nos expulsan a fuerza
haciéndonos extranjeros
en nuestras tierra ancianas

En esta caminata
atravesando desiertosd
cultivando labores
no olvidamos las raíces

Somos los pueblos obreros
Desde mesoamérica
a las calles y esquinas
trabajamos contra las sombras
desprecios, maldiciones
y fregones explotadores

Para recuperar la tierra
volver a ser pueblo emplumado
Sembradores descalzos

Me gusta cantarle al viento
porque vuelan mis cantares

Mis plumas son los cantos
de mi puebli
cortando y cosiendo las heridas
del viento

*

La revolución emplumada
es la revolución humana
es volver volver volver!
a las raíces de la tierra
a las raíces del agua
a las raíces del viento
a las raíces del cielo
para volver volver volver!

Con los pies enlodados de humanidad
con los pulmones llenos de estrellas
y la sangre derramando soles.

*

Donde están los pueblos emplumados
con sus alas de polvo
y sus cantos de lluvia?

Vuelo y voces llenas de lodo
inundan mis oídos, mis sentidos, tu cuerpo

Quién dijo que el horizonte
nunca podría alcanzarse?
El horizonte es el muro
de mis sueños
La primera línea de mis milpas
donde las cárceles se desmoronan
y la esperanza nos abraza y abriga
sin temor a nada y nadie
Allí están los pueblos emplumados
juntándose uno por uno
para acabar con el desvelo de la guerra
para cuidar las semillas
para alzar el polvo con nuestras danzas

*

Neither Spanish nor English
will serve to break us out of this jail called empire
El inglés el español los tenemos
que echar de nuestra lengua
desenraizarlos deslambrarnos
uproot upend unwire unlock
In english you can love cars
and not the homeless
En español te pueden gustar
los carros y no los ancianos
How can English free us?
Como podemos liberarnos
con el español?

"Land, like language," dice Mahmoud Darwish
"is inherited."

Heredé un inglés mochado un español pocho
Una tierra cercada, envenenada, un code switching para evitar el castigo
Construí paredes que muy poso quieren cruzar
Heredé una tierra perdida,
una tierra envenenada, sorda,
casi muda,
que tatarea cantos en el viento
lee labios como zurcos
Pierde conciencia,
se desmaya
mi tierra
en mi lengua

*

Molting
feathers
painted
tongue
ready
to bury
the invaders
the occupiers
the colonial settlers
the imperial national guard
the anti-dog soldiers
the gas guzzlers
they have us
plucking chicken
speed-up's
carpel tunnel
repetitive
global assembly-line
stress
when will we bury the pestilence?

*

Ah
farmworkers
we believe
the land
is trembling with cold
so we cover her
in quilts of crops
canals to anchor her soul
at night when she dreams
and will not be thirsty
patches of green yello black
red flowers, maize, potatoes,
beans, berries, apples, squash,
pumpkin, we cover her
so she is not cold
in the winter of our trails and tribulations
ah, migrant land workers
we make the land by walking
we make the land warm with our sweat
we make the land ours
embraced by hands, seeds, roots
and walks
we make the land ours with our work.

*

Where is our land
what happened to our seeds
why does my grandfather
plow with clouds
How did we get this way
plucking chickens, dismembering cows
processing apples, laughing drunk,
stuttering as if the dust did not speak
for us
My grandfather always reminded me
that the strongest deity, the most
powerful force in the natural world
were the clouds
The clouds carried rain, sunlight and our ancestors
on their backs.
The clouds, he said,
could blind you in fog or burst
you in rain and sunlight
He especially warned us of the serpent cloud
that zig-zagged its belly on the sky
descending on rivers and lakes
to drink water, quench
its journey.
(My grandfather, of course,
came from the place of clouds,
he was a son of the cloud people.)
Now his cloud people are no match
for the mushroom cloud
The serpent cloud hides in the stratosphere
afraid to drink the water
humans have dammed and made
Jetplanes slice with their turbines
the clouds,
no respect for their pilgrimages
between suns, rains, people,
Their only sorrow is not being able to connect
us once again.
The army of clouds only weapon are raindrops,
winds, the kiss between dirt and sky called lightning,
thunder. She does bit
march her armies, they walk, glide,
dance, rest on their backs,
looking down at humans
trying to see them as clouds, funny clouds,
serpent clouds, galloping to work
on the highway commute.
The clouds are perfect guerrillas
we slash them with our jet-wings
they envelope us, overwhelm us
make our landing instruments obsolete
We can't hear their demands:
stay out of my way,
get out of my body,
stay down there,
take care of your roots,
plug the smokestacks,
stop the carbon monoxide,
plug the tailpipes,
leave the rivers alone,
tear down the damns,
smash the human borders
that imperil
all clouds,
all cloud people,
all living beings
all of us.

*

"The universe is not made up of atoms," declared Muriel Rukeseyer, "It is made of stories."

When my story ends
she ends in the big bang
the big bang pounds on the drum
of my tongue
spitting and vibrating atom-stories, atom-words, atom-exclamation points
putting together molecules
onto paper, bark, howling waves
under the moon
the comal where I toast
my bread, my maize, my stories

*

Don't be afraid
of how I pray to my gods
Don't be afraid
of my prayers
don't be afraid
of those who believe
in different ways
to yours
Don't be afraid
of the reverent
of a god
you do't recognize
Don't be afraid
of how I pray
to our gods
but be very afraid
of my gods
be very afraid.

*

I invented English
so that my family
would not be mute, not hungry
I learned English
because Spanish
was beat out
of me.
My grandfather
learned Spanish
because Purépecha
was beat out
of him
Then I forgot
English because
I was kept out
of Purépecha
The I forgot Spanish
because English
drowned me

I vist my prison languages
every day
taking them out from behind the bars
one word at a time
one syllable at a time
My tongue will be free
My English'My spanish
My Purépecha
a cosmos for my next dream
of no jails no boundaries
no one telling me
not to talk.

*

Quetzalcoátl
jumps into the iron foundry fire
to save the world, the people
from the industrial smokestack cycle
of wars
Quetzalcoátl returns
as an urban pigeon
ill, can't fly, picks through the garbage
or waits for bread crumbs
from the homeless, Quetzal-
coátl's people
pigeoncoátl, snake-rat with wings
jumps into the smog
so that we are safe, reborn

*

The wobblies

Traversing the dust of my self,
my ancestors, my future seed
I claim the earth
I claim the spin
I claim the sun
I claim infinity
not for my self
but for her self
for earth
for the wobbling
for the sun
for space
have their own self-determination
as I have mine
because I am their offspring.

*

Todo
será
emplumado
o todo
será
destrozado:
vuelo
polvo
nubes
cuerpos
lenguas
lenguajes
serpientes
pájaros
tu sexo
tu amor
unión
de
tierras y cielos
abrazos y despedidas
auroras y desvelos
palabras y lodos
mujer y hombre
jotos y jotas
transversos humanos
voladores y arrastrados
espacios infinitos
encarcelados humanos
todo será emplumado
toda será emplumada
Dos, tres seres en mí en tí

Rubén Rangel: Old poems for new times & a short story

"Somos Aztlán," mural by Emilio Aguayo; Seattle; UW Ethnic Cultural Center

man defines woman

puta/santa/hermana

explore and enjoy each other’s quirks and qualities

all men are assholes, she says.

and i can’t defend it as untrue.

So when i serenade you on the train

You think this is fucked up

trying to embarrass fat latina

But I don’t want to be with someone who’s afraid

to make a scene on the F train.

2oo4 bronx

*


Equal Opportunity Jail Poem 5inco

we out-number them

we out-number them

but that isn’t important

we have more strength

but that isn’t the main thing

we had the truth &

justice   

and they simply

kicked us in the mouth

& pulled us out by the hair

because

we held back

we held ourselves

back 

we did not release

all our power

knowing

there would be no turning back

& no copping out

because

they have .45 caliber guns &

all we have is the truth

but that isn’t enough, you see

and justice should be (more power

ful) enough

but for all we know

this could be

our last hour.

Equal Opportunity Jail Poem 3: Never Defeated

students going to jail—

the wino-brawlers & gangsters

24-hour grocery-store robbers

knew we were political

singing Quilapayun

in pinoy, Spanish

tagalog, english, swahili, farsi and creole

el Pueblo Unido the People United

fists raised

they knew                        we were

prisoners                          just like

                                        they were.

Equal Opportunity Jail Poem 6: Malcolm X

finally learned the African

song: we do not care

         if we go to jail

(bail money, political prisoners not criminals,

media coverage, who will organize while we're locked up…

and every Man-child of our ghettos is not a criminal but every Man-child of our ghettos is serving time

I am questioning your tactics…anyone can sit-in, a dog can sit, when he’s told, but to be a revolutionary

                                                asikatali no masha bowswa

zi zi mitzuli nekule ko

takes heart

(and no warrants or traffic tickets)

         it is for freedom

                                    that we surely go

um zee mah um twalo

ufuna madoda

         a heavy load, a heavy load

         and it will take some real strength

strength and unity

singing this African freedom song

until a sore-throat is overcome

with emotion hand-cuffed

singing in a round

Equal Opportunity Jail Poem 1: Police Van

they took us away in a police bus with grated windows

we sang el pueblo unido

and thought about the future generations

or the present generation that wanted

to leap into the future

& the masses

crowded around the enemy van

that had easily

too easily captured

our main forces

the people

el pueblo

gente unida

raza united

surrounding the police van

were not afraid

of the machinery

jamás será vencido

will never be defeated

the people pounding pounding angry

against the windows

& wanting to cry

with their fists

*


Sept 11 Rant in the Future Tense

These will not be terror times / these will not be peace times / these will be the times of choosing easy lies over shameful truths / of buying the cheapest made most malnourished lies / the most twisted legitimacies/  when everyone will want to sympathize and no one will want to analyze / when the limits of pain will only go back to last Tuesday

not to el 11 de septiembre that tank-rolled through Santiago

when the media could be shut out / when the press was a parrot on the General's shoulder/when there was no click, no recent post, no blog, no tweet / when history was the theatre of the absurdities / and the prison guards were the only avant garde of the vulgar / of torture and more torture / and words were tortured to death  to extract useful intelligence and useless ignorance but  no useful meaning/ no useful contentment

everything is different now / yet everything is the same / cloaked racism / drone killings / stealth sexism / to end the tyranny of select tyrants/ in defense of Afghan women / who didn't matter to the oily pigs yesterday / nor the day before / nor the century before the Shah/nor the eon after shah-zmat

and that's how I know everything is the same / because I have the memory / of ranting patriots / from decades before / and they can't erase what I choose to remember / and they cannot erase what you know to be true no matter how cruel this attack is at the heart of the World Trade

now greed will be different / boundless and shameless and blame will go hiding and the high tech taxi will not stop in my neighborhood/ and now the inhumane will be acceptable to maintain the unacceptable concentration of wealth and arrogance

and the wax museum of celebrities / will sweats out bullets and surgical bombs / and the pop star will keep smiling and selling jeans / bras/ deodorant / justifyin / as if the stench could be sprayed away / the whiffs of fascism perfumed in wiretaps and painless loss of life / loss of liberty / loss of happiness / near silent drones and near silent worker drones

united i stand / it seems with almost no one / I stand un-united with waves and waves of mustard yellow ribbons / attached to gulping big wheel sport utility vehicles / which are never used for sport / nor utility or humility/ vehicles of madness and insensation

garbage hidden from Fifth Avenue sidewalks / if we can't see it then it doesn't exist/

and everything will be okay / because we are the Good Guys / and the universe is just jealous and envious / like that ugly fat girl at the back of the classroom watching real life dramas unfold before her / but will never get asked to the prom

yet finally someone will be willing to say: not in my name/ not in my neighborhood / not in my nation trampled under Gods / of cybersex and Californication and ink stained Press-titution

and the black boy with the boom box / will step out into the wilderness / and will be drafted into this war / whether he  enlists or not

sept-octubre, 2001

bronx

*

The Event 2012

1

I get on a bus and it’s filled with old raddies, WPA types and petite bourgeois intellectuals with fading yellow pamphlets and antiquated membership sheets who ask me to join their Event Society but it’s none too clear what the Event Society is or how I might participate. Yet I am intriguingly drawn in as they temper their wit and acerbic commentary enough to convince me. I’m new to the city either SF or NYC and I like their almost self-inflicted politics.

At the event...

2

They sit at the Friends of Woodrow Wilson Guthrie Table but are not patrons or benefactors, just the last living souls who actually knew the Ramblin Guitar Man, The Johnny Appleseed of Blowin’ in the Wind. They aren’t dressed properly for a formal dinner and they are unimpressed with the fancy feast and the longwinded speeches. They want to start a breakaway Event but they know this is where the radicals unite even tho the Event has gone on so many years that it hardly even mentions Woodie and there is even some fierce debate as to whether it’s the 42nd or the 40th Anniversary of the Event.

I start to tell them I actually met Woodie once, not like them, of course...

3

Can’t escape the consumerism of the iPad WorldMart...

But I try... 

I will finally get to tell them at the end of my story that W not (Dubya) was wheeled in to see a dying Betty Marion and no one had ever thought to give him a guitar, but I gives him mine and whisper in his Parkinson’s Alzheimer deaf ear “This Machine Kills Fascists” and he begins to play and sing...full of youthful sparkle even at the age of eight decades....

4

And I want to cry and yet I don’t because he doesn’t play any of his famously popular tunes but an original Gutherie lefty ditty:

Irak, Iran, Afghanistan

Don’t let ‘em convince you

That you shouldn’t give a damn.

Detroit, or Princeton

Or Southern Alabama

We’ll never go back to Viet Nam...

5

Meanwhile, tho, I’m caught in a vortex or slights and multi layered entendres...and we are booted out or walk out of the event in protest. In the hotel elevata, Louie Poet challenges me to find meaning in the meaningless dribble of the Event or the psychotic rabble of his comrade friends and we almost miss my floor. The maid actually has to tie her apron and pry us up to the in between floor and all the rooms are non-sequential, get it?

6

And for the second time I leave an old timer waiting at my thin wooden door (they will not enter unless properly invited in). And as we enter I confide that I will write a poem on the old tennie-shoe that blocks the doorway.  And he booms Now! Write it now with such urgency that I am flustered and begin to paint in bright oranges and blues...

7

Someday the iPad will refuse to send our missive or even record them in our Drafts folder as pre censored...

I pray as the screen fills with phantom type that has no ink jet, no black and red ribbon, nor hard drive that I control...

I can’t stop it from auto spell.

Back to the dialog with Louie Poet “Are they angry that they didn’t get to speak?”

No.

Are they upset that the politics is too bland? That was Jessica Alba giving 2 million to StopGreedStreet.  (A word I invented nalgatraficantes...)

No.

They’re offended that it’s not focused on Woodie’s life anymore. Is that it?

Yes.

______________________________________________

Editor's Note: Rubén Rangel is mainly a poet, who's tied and tried his hands at civilizational-change community organizing. When he was in high school, he won a state poetry prize and showed great promise. Instead he ran into me, chipping his philosophical teeth on my forehead, and forever joined the good red road, making us different.
A migrant of sorts, Rubén Rangel moved to New York City, making the trek from one of many farm-worker valleys, to make love and revolution in the Big Apple. Like a good New Yorker, he now spends summers and winters with his roots. I don't know if he considers himself a Chicano; I don't. He was mentored by the Chicano poetics and liberation-aspiring visions; his work is a bridge between the Chicano and the movements he has participated in and lead. He has authored a young adult novel; unpublished. He has won numerous awards since high school and has mountains of unpublished poems and stories, and more yet to tell and write down. These particular poems chronicle student and youth struggles for equality and equal access to higher education in Seattle. EOP could stand for East Oakland Proletariat. Here Rubén Rangel is talking about the Equal Opportunity Program, affirmative action, civil rights meant to integrate the university and make it relevant to the future of our country and her communities. These poems represent the sit-ins and civil disobedience actions that young Chican@s, Filipinos, other Asians and African Americans took to keep the University of Washington accessible to people of color on our terms. The short story is a snapshot of a New York political community, I suppose, and her contradictions. I'm just saying.   -- Arnoldo García