Five Questions

What were the best five lives,

the best five big bangs

the best five galaxies

the best five universes

the best five suns

the best five worlds

the best five centuries

the best five decades,

the best five years,

the best five months,

the best five days,

the best five hours,

the best five minutes,

the best five seconds

of a moment

of your family?

If you hear creaking mattresses

in the night of your home

is it ghosts or the orgasms

of unrequited lovers?

How many mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, grandma’s, grandpa’s, aunts, uncles

have given their lives

so that you may have a shot at happiness?

What happens to you

when you see old photographs

of your ancestors,

do you fall in love with them

or do you wish they could tell you their stories?

Do you know

your grandmother’s favorite colors,

her birthdate,

the name of her first boyfriend,

if she loved someone other than your grandfather

and never left?

Will you be like her,

give birth to twelve children

with a man she may not love?

Will your love be that strong to survive anguish and wars?

My grandmother taught me

that my success was the offspring

of 1000 relatives and ancestors

who failed,

who struggled,

who suffered

and only knew happiness

as a legacy she, he, they gave to me.

I carry the anguish of thousands in my bones,

I get to smile, laugh, be nourished, be hopeful,

because they had no happiness,

only disease, deaths, harsh work

and tender lovemaking that birthed dead or dying children.

All my ancestors are light as an orgasm,

as deep as my belly laughs,

as clear as my tears.

When my grandmother tried to choke to death her husband

she was trying to kill the woman she never became.

She was a woman who loved women,

who loved me,

who loved plants and seeds,

who took care of all children

– because no child could be illegitimate –

who only believed in horizons

and where the waterfalls were her prayer beads.

She said:

You will become a revolutionary of love,

a revolutionary to destroy solitudes,

to resurrect all the old ones who didn’t make it

because they harvested someone else’s crops,

tilled their lands for other people,

who were killed by work and hate,

whose love was never honored,

whose lives mattered because they, she, created more life and lives.

My grandmother said she did not have children so that they would be slaves.

She had children so that they would have lives, not hers, their own.

And she would live in us, in me,

in whatever life we chose

and she would be free, lazy, drinking coffee,

have more free time to debate Protestants

and make her body the theology of the future.

My grandmother made love, made children, made a new god of her body…

[September 2013 | Oakland, Califaztlán, Ohlone Territory]

my status is Palestine

My status is Palestine
There are no walls between our lands, our skins, our hearts
Palestine is the horizon of humanity
I am Palestine
I am nomad on the longest walk to return to her
Palestine: either we are all free or we are all fucked.
Hold my hand
Hold my body
Hold my head
Hold my tears
From your bed to the workplace
From the long-distance phone calls to your voice
Hold me Palestine
Her first name is love
Her last name is peace
She will hold me
For she is Palestine
The land is Palestine
The sea is Palestine
The sky is Palestine
The moon is Palestine
The sun is Palestine
And
wherever I stand
wherever I dream
wherever I cry
wherever I love
wherever I live and die
Palestine

My status, write it down, is Palestine ...

Recipe for a new humanity

How to cook a Mexican-American [1994]

First, pre-heat oven at slightly over five-hundred years.

Second, destroy languages, monolingualize, monoculturize, monocropize,

harangue the people who speak them,

erase the lands they named,

give them names from other lands,

force them to flee,

make them forget their history my any means necessary,

make them speak languages which don't respect the lands,

make them die surviving,

make them believe they are ugly, everything they stand for,

every syllable, consonant,

every gesture,

the rough-hewn hands, their wrinkled hearts,

their ancient lungs,

the wind they create,

every iota of their ugly being,

steal their foods, seeds and soil and call them yours,

steal their finest words and call them yours,

steal their dances that stamp the dust into the sun and call them yours,

steal their music and call it heinous, heathen, devil-inspired,

burn their corn, their flowers and songs,

make them

forget how to treat their dead,

forget how to treat their elders,

forget how to treat the young,

forget how to treat the lovers,

make their sacred profane, their profane sacred,

the flight and wind of birds go north instead of south,

divide up life into hours, hours into money, money into life.

(If you cannot get fresh, unspoiled peoples, you can use the colonized as a substitute. Taste will be a little more historically stale than original recipe.)

Third, bring some dirt from the valley.

Pour into the water you erin.

Walk many miles to work.

Be too tired to rest, dream or be passionate.

Now you are ready to begin mixing the ingredients:

Gather:

1 Palestinian worker

1 Indigenous woman (origin unknown)

1 Yemini woman

1 Purépecha family

1 mestizo, like yourself, but one who is a fervent Catholic (they are called by various names: half-breed, mixed blood, mongrel, mud people, greaser, indio, wetback, illegal alien, immigrant).

They must all be landless and in some state of statelessness, homelandlessness, but not lost.

Tenderize by deliberately dragging them across oceans, suffering wars, disease, death of families, villages razed, make them work miserably in the fields and deny who they are to avoid problems.

Set aside for at least five generations.

You will also need:

English

Spanish

Arabic

Stunted purépecha sprinkled with swahili, nahuatl, pocho and German

No more than two years of formal education

Alcoholism, perfect pitch, ability to work long hours and withstand lynchings

Awe for nature, migrant campus, being stopped constantly by bosses, police and other state agents, harassed by landlords or anyone else who thinks they have more power than you or actually have more power or they're of lighter skin.

Make sure at least half, if not more, of the ingredients are women folk or else the taste will not be as bitter.

NOTE For a delicious variation of this recipe also add any of the following:

The Texas Rangers

borders and border patrols

greedy contratistas

greedier landowners

"No dogs or Mexicans allowed" signs

Teachers who beat anything that moves like a Mexican

Offspring that are kicked out of schools between the third and sixth grade and are made to work in the fields and aspire to nothing else.

Now, bring back the main ingredients when they have two children, name them Manuela and José.

Manuela is the perfect blend of mestiza. She is a curandera, a priestess who baptizes illegitimate children, knows the Bible backward and forward, knows plants, herbs, seeds, knows how to cook at least fifty dishes without measuring anything once, can hear tomatoes, chiles, frijoles, green beans, avocados, onions (any plant she cooks) sing on her comal (griddle), cooked all meals, worked full-time in the fields, took care of her own children, grandchildren, neighbors' children, would use our innocence to fight evil, ward off storms, nuclear holocausts, hurricanes and lightning storms with her chants, prayers and knives while we kneeled in prayer, cure newborn'smoyeras, massaged away any pain stomach ache, fever; she would absorb all the dangers her sons and daughters faced on any night out at work or at play meditating for hours on end. She hardly slept; would go outside very night to pray in the still of star-filled skies; she would always remind us not to be afraid of ghosts, the dead, spirits when she was outside in the dark but be very afraid of living persons who could harm us. No one could lie to her; her eyes would make you stutter, weaken your knees. She always forgave, always loved; was a master of discipline. she had twelve children (six girls/six boys); took care of animals, constantly nursed birds, gave water and planted nectar for hummingbirds. In the fields, snakes would always appear in her row. She would shriek then laugh at her own surprise while the rest opus would jump up and away in fear. She has a man's name because her mother lost all her female children except the last five when she gave them men's name to fool death. From this she learned to name things by their names. She knew that one's name was the heart of culture and life, the blood of gods and goddesses and without your real name you would die before your time. When she dies she promises to come back, appear and give us guidance only in the dreariest of times; and she keeps her word.

José is an indio, an Indian, who has lost everything except being an Indio: A purépecha, cultured, cuadri-lingual (spoke purépecha, Spanish, later English; and then created a language with a landowner who only spoke what we believe was German -- because we knew it was not Engish -- and because he taught the landowner how to take care of the land he was rewarded a job).

José begins working in the the fields at five years old, he has the duty of burying the dead of his community during one of the many epidemics that hit his people in the mountains. His family is decimated; with his father he becomes part of the displaced indigenous communities forced into indentured servitude becoming farmworkers or like the Chinese in the U.S., forced into mining and building the railroad lines that run north into the U.S.

With his father, they reach the border and work in the U.S. several years. José is undocumented, illegal, Indio, witnesses wars and revolutions, lynchings, works every single day of his life, helps build churches wherever he lived in communities, knows how the plants grow, how the land is alive, how much tilling, how much walking among the plants is needed before the harvest is ready, knows how to live anywhere, find work anywhere, knows how to find any field in the middle of nowhere at four o'clock in the morning darkness, never complained abut anything only about not having enough time to be with us and he always lets us sleep as long as possible even though he gets up hours ahead to prepare the meals, the tools and pray for the day light. Patience, tranquility, meditation with a rosary every night counting the stars as his beads; he works every day until he dies in a field in the Lomas Coloradas, dies a painful death caused by pesticide poisoning.

NOW MIX these together while traditions and their peoples are being ravaged:

He's almost 25, she's 14. They are married for mutual life: everyone around them is dying from famines, war posing as revolution, pestilence. There is no one his age; she's married off to him so that her mother and sisters can hope to survive.

Bring to a boil and simmer for fifty years. Make sure the offspring number twelve before turning off the heat.

Serves to feed at least five constellations of families living in two different countries, five different regions, speaking in tongues, with varying degrees of recognition and monolingualism: U.S. citizens, Mexicans, Hispanics, indio coffee with varying mixtures of milk, sugar, cinnamon and fatigue, undocumented, pasaporteados, southern accents, tejanos, dispersed North and South, midwest, northwest, southwest, migrants all...

[1994 | El Presidio, San Francisco]

[Poema 3] 2 Poems 3: Cloud Serpents, Cloud Ocean | Human morning

Cloud Serpents, Cloud Ocean

I have discovered

the cloud ocean

where my grandfather's people live

wave after wave

of cloud

of clouds

I am

their commodore

their stevedore

their day laborer

their migrant campesino sun

the eleventh comandante

of the open cloud sea.

My grandfather

belonged to the serpent cloud people

the clouds,

he always smiled as he proclaimed his roots,

are the most powerful of all gods

and goddesses

natural deities

and forces, animals and

creatures, human

and inhuman,

he said.

The cloud ocean

dominates

the blue and the brown,

the cosmos

and the molecules

Yes, you can fly

right through them

because nothing can harm, destroy or burst

them

wave after wave of cloud

relentless colorless

now retreating, now attacking

now nowhere to be seen

suddenly they ambush the sky

and flood the land

with their transparent blood,

which regroups

shape shifts

are resurrected

reincarnated

reclaiming the liquid light

front and rises again

and again and again

complete hegemony without end

or beginning

The clouds will

blind you

extinguish the sun

make you crash or slow down

they make you forget

which way is up, which way is down

the clouds take your north, your south, your west, your east

make you lose your place

they make you forget where you are

where they sky is

where the earth used to be.

Flying instruments, compasses and sextants are usless

in the cloud ocean

She is a deadly quilt

or a serpent whose skin

wraps around the whole horizon,

asphixiating the sun

till you freeze and sunburn.

The cloud ocean is no shield

a stampede that fools you

because she just floats by.

The cloud ocean lulls you

into believing in rain,

a rain-goddess,

into believing in planting

into treading mountains

into precarious ceremony

into believing you can

channel her

claim her

drown her in fields of maize

devour her in revolutionary theory and hunger

bath in her

cloud ocean is humanity's

complete passage

She is snow-peaked mountain

She is reservoir

She is snowline

She is transparency of winds

the turbulence of human migrancy

tornado, whirlwind, hurricane, tempest

lightning, thunder,

bed, springboard

air current-serpent

whirling slithering deity of complete flight

She is faithful

to her people

and eternal blindness

to those who do not recognize

her world as the real

that decides the faith

of the unbelievers

She translates light

She is the biggest living organism

in the earth cloud ocean

nothing no one can

stop her

resist her

Submit, submission

is the all

She takes her time

because she created time

She defines space

because she is space

She has carved grand canyons

and birthed grandfather

She is ancient riverbed

She is Mississippi on her curved hips and back

the place we we worship pray

become human cloud

She is ancestor seabed

lashing out forever

to the meteor wall

the unforgiving wound

She resists, plays with us

makes us stumble

The plane slashes her skin, her flesh

she heals as fast, faster than our flight

That's what my grandfather,

son of the cloud serpents,

told me

to remember

to live

to become

a cloud

as he exhaled smoky clouds

from his cigarette...

*

Human Morning

I am suffering
from a deep sadness

rooted in the Atlantic salt

of chains dogs

the corpse of our lands

and police fields,

the honor of separation.

I remember everything, everyone

this deep sadness

of sunsets in strange lands

that

slap me

work me

into the oblivion of winter.

Right now

Only

your tenderness

your unconditional embrace

your mouth over mine

only you could heal me

no one else

not I alone,

two or more to build

an endless embrace

an infinite tenderness

to counter the bleak horizon

of those I've lost

of those who have lost me

in the dust of migrant implosions

only tenderness

your body against and over mine

to protect me

to save me

from the hole

they've dug

in my body

emptying me

of myself

emptying you

from me

and

filling me

filling us

with their despair

with their rage

against us

who ignore their destruction

An embrace

gestating an inheritance of a new land, a new house, a new home, a different horizon

from the splinters of our skin

from the shadows of our revolutions

from the iris of our smile

Put your arms around me

Put yourself in my arms

We become a weapon

a human bomb

a human bond

a human fault-line

the geology of our veins

that topples walls

that lacerates dictatorships

with the callousness of a new human tenderness

to rise up a new morning...

*

Tiempo verde | ofrenda 29

Arnoldo García

Tiempo verde | ofrenda 29
(Improvisations | de repente)

How many worlds were destroyed
to get to this point
Zócalo de nuestros sones
Indians in the museums
Indians in the malls
we gather humanity
ants carrying a kernel of maize
texting wirelessly
my antennae are up
curling around your body
how did we get this way
I wasn't born this way
1492 is not just a number
the great catastrophe
the great cosmic cultural bang

the eagle is still
descending
crash landing

A more pleasurable war is possible
with Coke!
What is worst than war?
What is worst than death?

Piedras blancas
sobre
Pieles negras

On the way to the zócalo
this is no palimsest
this is reality:
The plaque on the corner building declares
Marques de Prado Alegra lived here starting 1725
Now the Marques is displaced
McDonald's 2012 and counting
McDonald's in lodged their, they do home deliveries too
Then right at the curved corner with two doorways
you can enter on the right
you can enter on the left
The plaque declares:
"Aquí estuvo el popular Café del Cazador, 1835-1900"
Ahora está "Go Mart" vendiendo
agua en botellas de plástico, chicle estadounidense
y café sin cafeína, sandwishes, all style of fast food


The union of harmonium players work in pairs
One working the passer-bys
the other keeping the crank going
Both with their uniform-hats asking for donations:
The harmonium yelps

"Me cansé de rogarte
Que yo sin ella ...."

Made in Berlin,
Played in the streets of Tenochtitlán-Mexico City

We are living in different time periods
the green time dominates
calls our our names
Maicitos!
Xilonen!
The Sirens that no one hears

Everyone is lost
We wear Levis pants
Abercombie t's
AE
Addidas
Nike,
the swoosh that once used to open chests,
pluck beating hearts

Everyone one is selling
Something for everyobe
Aztec danzantes charge $10 pesos
to be cleansed with copal and brushings with caxochtli
Innovators!
Their ahuehuetl is made
From a 25-gallon steel drum
The ahuehuetl is also lost, evolving adapting
peak oil, peak sacrifice and war

About 1,000 people later
their is a woman wearing
a deep crimson blouse that's skirt-length
She's also selling trinkets
She is not lost
She tells everyone where she's from
Resisting the sentence Mexicans, mexicas, nahuas, purépechas
are refusing.
Five mexicanos
are playing the Fab 4
A Beatles cover band
"And I love her ...."

More Indians
begging for money,
food, care, recognition,
humanity
You have to look down
to avoid running them over,
walking on their skin
on the goddess hands
for the 520th year.
I break down
I plop $20 pesos
in the hat of a viejito with his wife
He quickly slips
the bill in his armpit
underneath the shawl
that's draped across
his and his wife's shoulders.
I couldn't take it
He looked like my viejito
My abuelito
who was cast out Michoacán
when he was still purépecha
He was deported, repatriated back to Mexico
as a Mexican migrant farmworker
Viejitos creaking voices
in the din of thousands
of cars, pedestrians, tourists, unemployed youth,
students, housewives, clerks in ties,
couples making out
oblivious to the oblivion that surrounds us

The Metropolitan Cathedral is crooked
made of indigenous blood, gold, sacrifices
The metropolitan cathedral
is set to implode
The Aztec tyemples
will not allow all the Christians
to reach or touch
the 500 stars
The thirteenth and counting paradise
Where cihuatanteo women are defended by eagle warriors
A kid walks by his girlfiends doesn't like that I am looking at them
that they will end up in this world
He's wearing a DRGN Skateshop T
She's wearing a tanktop
She calls out to me: payaso!
A group of mexican boys wearing black hoodies all with the logo:
Hard Busters
One of them carries a boombox
slung over his shoulder
blasting techno

More condemned to step up
A mexican
dressed in all in black as a hybrid monster
Wearing a Hannibal Lector mask
With a Darth Vader hood and cape
stares at passer-bys
He only moves his eyes
A new mestizo menace
atop a milk carton
playing the role
so we enter the fantasies of the master race

Another mexican
in full Predator regalia
is posing for photos with moms and their children
The Penguin
a bit taller than the original
but a mexican nonetheless
with a variety of umbrellas in different shapes and sizes

An Indian boy
with a squeeze-box almost as big as him
slowing pushes the buttons
playing a corrido
No one notices him
You have to look down
Everyone is standing in a semi-circle
back to back with the accordeonist boy
Watching a big screen
Where the Fania All-Stars jam on salsa

A man
about as old or young as me
puts up his open hand
holding what looks like two ten-peso coins
I say sorry, no thanks
He replies: Up yours!
He keeps going in the opposite direction
I keep going with the flow,
waiting for the green light
to let thousands of pedestrians
leave this reality
and enter the next one.

*

Tiempo verde
tiempo de maíz
tiempo de los pueblos de maíz

I am lost in the greening of my eyes
My verdant heart bursting in tasty kernels
I offer myself
Coyoxauhlqui purses her lips
hugs herself
tells me to wait my turn

She tells me how embarrassing
(she actually said: how fucked up it was)
That the first official visit she received
was President Jose López Portillo, in 1978
La diosa no recibe visitas oficiales since then!
She organizes underground
Her sisters and daughters are being slayed again
Femicidio sin fronteras!

*

Ofrenda 29

Un punzón de hueso
bellamente esgrafiado
una cuenta de piedra verdísima,
carbón
y un cráneo de águila real
That's all that was found in this offering stone box
An eagle warrior
who pierced his soul
offering blood, sacrifices
to become a defender of the juarez cihuatateo women
who are being disappeared, murdered
at the border indi
in the interior
an unholy war on women
He is there now on the border
flesh offereings
for a new peace
to restore coyolxauhqui
mend her into one
bring back the green time

El tiempo verde...

Utopías

Arnoldo García

Utopías

Tenemos utopías porque nos quitaron la tierra, nuestras raíces desplazadas, desmovilizadas y nos forzaron a movernos. ¿Quién nos forzó a movernos, a abandonar nuestros pueblos, nuestras comunidades antiguas? La avaricia de otros hombres, que para acaparar más necesitaban de nuestra fuerza de mano, necesitaban nuestra sabiduría de la agricultura, las semillas y sus suelos.

Somos utópicos porque donde quiera que estemos estamos en nuestra tierra. No tenemos ningún lugar porque todos los lugares son nuestros -- por más incómodos que los terratenientes actuales tengan, por más incómodos que nos sentimos como extranjeros en nuestra propia utopía, nuestra propia tierra.

Nuestros muertos están enterrados en los estados de Washington, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Tejas, Oregon, Arizona, y pronto Nueva York y otras regiones del norte grande. Nuestros huesos se han convertido en el andamio de la tierra, ligándonos a raíces mexicanas. Y todas estas tierras son tierras de pueblos indígenas que fueron desterrados empezando en 1492.

*

Nuestras palabras, trenzadas y destrenzadas del lenguaje, tienen múltiples raíces y voces.

Nuestra alegría parece ajena, que no nos pertenece y quizás siempre es fugaz. La falta de utopías nos convierte en fieles seguidores de un dios sin milagros, flagelándonos, auto-inmolándonos para un paraíso que se viste los domingos y nada más. Otras nos convierten en consumidores de alcoholes, drogas y sustancias que nos llenan la panza pero nunca el alma.

Nosotras y nosotros los más utópicos sin vergüenzas tratamos de cambiar este mundo donde las adicciones son comunes y los grupos de anónimos tratan de convencernos de que no somos normales los que como nosotras y nosotros quieren vivir al filo del viento, pensando hoy como hacer el mundo nuevo, retomar nuestro lugar en el orden de la naturaleza?

Y quién son los anónimos de cada día? Las y los migrantes, los indocumentados, la sombra que trabaja para mantener los ricos ricos.

*

Todo es posible con la esperanza de amar hasta la muerte.
La muerte es una barrera más que hay que brincar o demoler;
no es impenetrable porque nuestras muertes no mueren sino pasan
a otra realidad fecunda, polvorosa, nebulosa,
que nos cuesta aceptar y reconocer a nosotras y nosotros los vivos
para su muerte,
nosotras y nosotros dependemos de nuestra vida de nuestros muertos.

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