I am a ghost

there are days
when i believe
i am a ghost
haunting stairwells
and abandoned migrant camps
sleeping with Billie Holiday
and getting drunk with drunk Indians 
Being pulled into seance sessions with bolshevik clouds
Having to possess her body to become real

Ghosts do not cry. Ghosts do not die. Ghosts have unfinished revolutions.
I cry so maybe I exist.
I will die so maybe I still have a shot at space travel

My revolution has not started so I continue offering sage
to the ancestors and to the babies whose future I hold in mine.
When night comes I become a ghost in other planes of existence
I am an apparition in another dimension of her heart
Even the noted dialectical materialist, Frederick Engels, believed the world and her double were being recreated simultaneously in another realm of space at the same time.
I have visited that world, actually worlds, several times.
She is different, beautiful, you can choose to be yourself or another, because she is free of the restraints of our skins:
There you can walk barefoot,
drink the water from the ground, from the streams and rivers,
no danger there except of not wanting to return.
There the rain is made of crystals that bend the sun into a creaking womb of life.
There i can fall through the sky and enter my house through the roof of my bedroom.
There it is always morning.
Then an arm pulls me through the walls and I cry out, gasp as I land once again on the floor of my reality, my ghost hood.
Come talk with me, tell me how you're doing -- that will be enough assurance that I am alive and well -- and if you want to know the future come visit me in your sleep
I will show you how a ghost dances cubist cúmbias and gets electrified at the neighborhood pachanga.
You turn out to be a ghost and I turn out to be your body
You turn out to come from those other worlds and I turn out to return the visit
You turn out to heal your wounds and I turn out carrying them all so that I can say I am human because of your gentle laughter.
So tell me, who do you see?
Am I man or ghost
Am I human or shadow
Am I real or just someone you conspired with at another meeting to exorcize the ghosts who rule through war and illusion
I will be a ghost until the world I need becomes real...

I am tumbling | day five poetry month

I am tumbling
in the debris of space
going backwards, lunging forward
paralyzed by the electric sun.
my ancestors
for generations
studied the sky's movements
to determine
our place
in the cosmos,
they were not lost or seeking gold and power.
what sun is it
they would ask

how did we end up with the moon's bellybutton
they asked
what lands do our hands traverse
where is
the root of our songs
a journey in community
to find the place
where the sun had been born
to become undivided again
to become the breath of gods and goddesses
ants each carrying a grain of maize on their backs
going into the darkness of the soil
to gestate
to sew
to inhale
to ingest
to uphold
the sun's dust
at this time
when autumn begins stroking my hair
when the rivulets of cries have hewn my face
when suffering is ordinary
and laughter extraordinary
i ask:
is that the same sun of our ancestors
is the belly-button of the moon infected
where do I belong
how can i stand when I am against myself
the pollen makes me sick
i am alone under the sky of wars
where is my place
filled with sea-shells and the old man's ceremonies
I have become a molecule
on the edge of a knife
in a crazed hand
stabbing at the longest night
The scientists peer through cosmic telescopes
photograph the dancing explosions
the incandescent snails spinning out of our control
the Hubble telescope dangles between microwaves and quartz
and what are their conclusions
are we in place
are we where we belong
does the moon have the final say of the sea
can we return to rub, massage, mingle once again
in the belly-button of our mother
how do we turn back
the turbines' threshing of water, salmon, tribes, wind, migrants,
the human deformation of the rivers' spinal cord
who can have enough with just the other's love
who has had enough

[Poema 26] The aura of Buddha

Buddha is electrocuted
Buddha is dead
Buddha surges upward
a lotus of lightning
he cuts down four trees
to water, to vomit space
for the other four to grow
he cut down the trees
of suffering
of void
of impermanence
of impersonality
For there is nothing wrong
with suffering
except that suffering is
not an acceptable mode
of conversation over expresso
you don't exist
when you beg ragged
on sidewalks
passed out in passageways
with only soiled clothes and a flute
you are no one
and when you die
no one misses your death
personality is a funnel
for money
or it is a nothing

Buddha beckons
you to the shade
the shade of permanence
the shade of joy
the shade of personality
the shade of perpetuity
You are here until you
get it right, a fire, a wisp of smoke
you are light that
materializes in laughter
you are a human vessel
a human root
a human path
a spiraling, tornado, hurricane
with broad branches
red veins protruding
through the open skin
of leaf
Buddha has cut down with
the axe of his death
and four trees remained
standing
yet you seek the
withered flesh
of trees
the paper sun folded
to slap down flies
or create rubbish
out of tongues
You learnéd ones
you can distinguish
languages
but you cannot hear
the tongues
of tenderness
of solidarity
of human suffering
you are here
the roar of an extinguished night

[Poema 11] Mixtery in South Africa

Language to language
our words in different lands
speak to each other
call to each other
sister brother blood
the solution is our words, our place
hear each other talk
hear each other walk
hear each other
the same words the same
listen
to our tongues
divide the sylabbles
to unite the wind, to share the howling
the answer the reply the mirror the shadow my sun
the topography of your tongue
my words are in yours
my anger my muddiness my crystalline ink
in your language your place.

Rescue yourself
rescue community
rescue the land
rescue all our relations
wind, dust, water, suns
ancestral flesh
ancestral bones
a commune of the tongue
rescue time
rescue space
rescue our cosmic skin
hang the moon
on our tongue
rescue the imprisoned
recue the freedomed
rescue our words,
our words: word,
the skin of our struggle,
our world.



Rescue
each other's silence
record each others imprint, growl, guttural scribbles
grabar engrave tatoo transparent skins
grape-words that can be gently squeezed out of their skins
listen to each other we say the same things
differently.
We succumb to each other, we feed each other, we clothe,
we heal, we love, we abandon each other, we
cry, we dream each other, we haunt each tother
we wake each other, we remember, we forget,
we impress each other, we are made of each other, we
fight each other, we make up, we feel each other, we disappear and reappear
we lust over each other,
we need each other, we can't live without words,
with words, each other, with words or
their silent stares or aging silence
or new-born echoes. Our words are our food,
the only food with no obesity or obsolescence or
obsidian gushes that split open the tongue.
We wreck each other's words or we become one,
a tiny wound of immutable love or a wound that overcomes.



Our words are maps, topography, flesh offerings,
molecules of our being. Language herself finds
her counterparts in other and other's languages.
Language is the sister of water. Language rolls
down and rolls, waves, shells, along the ground
of our tongues and consciousness to purify herself,
to rid herself of
any subjectivities that might kill her or lead to suicide
and objects extraneous to herself or she ingests them,
gestates them into new verbal wings. Language
too coughs and wheezes, clears her throat,
syllabilizes, rolls and waves off our tongues
to become consciousness, in order to change the world or,
in our case, to restore ourselves to put place in the natural world
-- not to its redeeming past -- to a new world where
humans are subordinate once again, offspring
caring of the earth. Then the words take on
their opponents with salival ease: hopelessness,
imprisonment has no chance with language's
hopefulness, liberty -- preferable to but mentor to
free-dom, free-with boundaries, with hierarchy-dom,
whereas being free, is being boundless, liberated. Poets,
free poets, resistance poets, alternative poets, organizer poets, activist poets, community-based poets
have to first ride their tongues to struggle and
to offer clarity, flesh, sisterhood, contradiction, muddy waters,
ears that kiss, listening that fasts, scraped lungs, calloused eyes, attentive
hearts, risk everything to face the microchip-industrial
information-electronic web complex so that she would
be herself again, so that we could speak again
with the land, with ourselves.

[Excerpt from my diary and notes taken down in conversations, meetings and other human formations during travel in Johannesburg-Durban, South Africa. August 2001.]

Excerpts of a painting commissioned by the National Network for Immigrant and Refugees (NNIRR), by Daniel Camacho, for the NNIRR delegation that participated in the U.N. World Conference against Racism held in Durban, South Africa, August-September 2011.

[Poema 9] La red infinita: todos somos Quetzalcoátl | Quién sueña a la tierra?

Mi corazón
es una diosa emplumada
que guía al quintísimo sol
a su aurora infinita.
Mi corazón
es la tierra misma
en el cosmos de mi cuerpo
es la red infinita
de venas pescadoras
de estrellas
que de cercas son soles
y de lejos son las pupilas
de mis pueblos
a quién ofrezco mi corazón.
Mi corazón
es una diosa
emplumada de vientos terrenales
un remolino de luz líquida
un tambor incansable
buum-buum tocando sin miedo
a través de los sueños, las guerras, los desastres
los terremotos, los amores perdidos
buum-buum tocando sin perder
el ritmo de los tiempos
sin perder la vista y no olvidarse de la muerte
Mi corazón renace
en los pulmones del sol.

Todos somos Quetzalcoátl

Every one
every people
has
their own Quetzalcoátl
their own North Star
their own Nokhwezi
their own Morning Star
that guides them to the next day
where liberation
is the welcomed surprise
is the welcomed sunrise.
Quetzalcoátl
Kulkulcán
estrella del norte
viento emplumado
liberación emplumada
pueblos emplumados
cada pueblo tiene
su guía
su tiera
su cielo
su palabra

Every time I look ahead
I follow in my ancestors'
footsteps.
Every time I look behind
I see my ancestors
following me.

Guadalupe | Coatlicue
(la mujer que llamo amor y paz)



1.
¿Qué poética es esa
que deja hombres y mujeres hambrientos
buscar comida en los basureros?
¿De quién es esa poética
que deja familias vivir en la calle
mendigar su existencia
humillarse antes las miradas de los hartos?
¿Qué poesía necesita
tanto sufrimiento
para purificar palabras e ideas
estrategias literarias
de tan pinche liberación?

2.
Mi mejor camarada es el color café
como la tierra
como el polvo
Mi mejor camarada se creía rojo
como la tierra
como el polvo
Mi mejor camarada es colorado
de toda la tiera
de todos los polvos.



3.
She wants to be an artist
yet she is one.
She dresses in the whirlwind of colors
Her lips weave culture
Her laughter is the nervous inspiration
She speaks about a new future
and only an artist of colors, weavings,
words and struggles could feed
the future light from her wide hips.
Art is a community thing. No artist
can exist outside the human community.
Art is life or it is not art.
Yet unbelieveably
a sterile art grows and flourishes
while the fruitful, the faithful
community struggles to survive.
She wants to be an artist
she has all the time she needs.
Art is not separate
Art is not special time
Art is not privileged poverty
Art is knowing when to turn on the lights
or strike a match to light a fuse or a candle
Art is learning to say all the odd things
in new ways
Art is meetings where poetry has a chance
and discussion are bled dry by hope.
She is an artist releasing souls while keeping the bodies alive.

4.
Rojo y negro
Amarillo y blanco
los cuatro colores
de sus
cuerpos
solsticios
pueblos
y pieles.
Colores de la tierra
Amores de los soles
Danzamos juntos, solos,
enlazados,
diferentes iguales
sonrientes
serias
las cuatro direcciones
rojos
negros
amarillos
blancos
todos descendientes
de pueblos libres
de tierras soveranas
de maizales, milpas y machetes verdes
que cosechan la luz.

5.
arcoirises venas
terrones vientre
vientos lágrimas
lluvias migrantes
nubes banderas
huracanes encarcelados
cuevas gargantas
murciélagos lenguajes
plumas pieles
océanos barrigosos
lodo de la belleza
pueblos naturales
colores humanos
lenguas polvorientas
girando
todas
todos
en las cuatro direcciones

Manos espejos coates
nos quitaron la tierra
nos despojaron
nos desesperamos
pueblos naturales
nos van a quitar
hasta las vibras
de nuestras voces
palabras profundas

el beso de la tierra
en todos los besos
en todos los labios

6.
Colores
ámbar

quiero
morir
para que mi corazón
se trastorne en ámbar
y allí yazga tu imagen
y en mil o un millón de años
alguien descubrirá mi corazón
y lo levante hacia la luz
para verte entera
dentro de mi corazón
ámbar.

7.
I think, therefore I love.
-- n.p.

Yo existo en la tierra de tus ideas
un figmento de tu fuerza
migrante tendedor de sazones y semillas
sembrador de ideas
cultivador y cosechador
donde muestro cuerpo sangre y sudor
para clarificar conceptos y estrategias
ideas con piel humana
mi tierra sin privilegios ni privilegiados
mi tierra donde nadie ni nada es ajeno
mi tierra donde descansan mis muertos
con sonrisas que el sol envidia
mi tierra donde caben seis soles (a última cuenta)
mi tierra que hereda corazones verdes

Los zurcos sensuales de mi cuerpo
cama para tus semillas
los zurcos de mi tierra
camposantos frescos
para que nuestros muertos
florezcan.

La tierra duerme
y nos sueña
y nos germina
en plantas nuevas.
La tierra duerme
y nos sueña
verdes
polvorientos
suaves
sobre
sus vientres cataclísmicos.
Nosotros dormimos
y quién sueña
a la tierra?