Un-Notes on Unutopias | Unlike me or others

Unlike unme unyou unothyers unyoke
uncola unthink unenemy unstranger unpasserby uncitizen unimmigrant
unart unpoetic unlove unhate unindifference
unstruggle unliberate
unwalk ungestate unborn
unsmile unlink unsmirk
untweet unspam unhand unhug unfuck
unsing unerase unwrite unread
unfight uncheat unchew unthrow-up
unrainbow unblush unlaugh unemail
unfinger unhand unspit unsnitch
unstrum unstrung unlynch unrace ungender unclass unconsciousness
undeath unlife unalone unloan unloner
unteach uneducate unliterary uncommunicate
unspeak untongue unswallow unstupid unsmart
unwash unclean undirt undirty unshit
unfool unface unspy unwear unstare
unpage unfan unlist unserve unlick unfart unsmell unsquelch unbelch
unpregnant unquote uninseminate
unvote unbomb uninvade unoccupy unassassinate unnuke unstate unpower unexploit unoppress
unsex uncolor unlanguage unclass unpigment unskin unborder unmilitarize
unmigrate unmigrant undisplacement
unneoliberalism unimperialism
unpioneer unpilgrim uncowboy unbuffalo ungenocide unfemnicide
unwarm unclimate unglobalization uninjustice uniequality unfreedom unrights
unguns unkill unwound unheal undrive-by-shooting
untag ungraffiti unheart unburn unleave unabandon
unproletarianize unbourgeosie unroot unforget unmemory
unfist unviolence unpeace unwar
unfront unliberation
unearthquake untsunami untide
unsuck untuck unplastic
untrash unflash unarm
unhorizons uncosmos unnations
unweapons unmanifestos
unzoo unpollution uncontaminate unhear unfear unbit
ungallop unfast unslow undie unold unage unyoung ungreen
undentures unfang unraid unhuman unwoman unman unboy ungirl
untongue unargue undebate undefine unjoke unwhere unhere unthere uneverywhere
unmarichi unson unzapatista unqueer uncorrido unhuasteca undance unhip-hop unrap
unmexicanize unmexican unearth unmoon unsun unplanets
unwinter untragedy unbreak-up unhook-up unone-night untype
unwipe unsurrender
untenderness unharshness unpoet ungods unchurch unpriest unnun unaltarboys unbelievers
unsaints uncommunion unlevitate unjesus uncross
unterrorist unwar-on-terror unabu-ghraib
unjail undeport unnaturalize uncitizen unresident unwelfare
uncapital uninvestments
unvirgin unwhore unmother unlady unscrew
unadmit uncomment unpost unthanksgiving unX-mas
unrock-n-roll unjazz unmix unears unclick unsew
unsing uninvent unclap unnote unscream unerror unferal unbreak
unsteak unvegan unsquash unsunset unwake unsleep unthroat
unaztec unaztlan untwirl unfurl unyou unme unus unasshole
uncondemn unbury unship unletter unbreath unsmoke
unhigh unlow unaddict unscreech undrunk unhangover
uncry undump unhump unbruise
ungoodbye unforever unvow unmarry undivorce unpregate
unerection unerectile unfunctional unviagra unsmooch
unsting unscammed unscar unbar unculture unignorance unclassconscious unimagine
untime unclock undeposit
unwork unemployed unstrike
unslap uninsult unlusion undeception undeceive
unmoan ungroan undespair unweary
unalone untogether uncollective unfamily unhome unhouse unhomeless
unmop unsweep unclean unutopia unleft unright unmiddle-class unday-laborer unservant
unwarmth uncold unwow unmow unkick unhistory
unrain unsnow unscarce undrought unshortage unflu unpoor unpoverty unillness uncommunity
unpurity unpeople unbatter unpolice unresist unfist unfightback unmarch unprotest unslogan
undogmatic undogma unchrist unkneel unprison unclouds unaccident
uncall untext unpicture unbed undream unnightmare unsnore unanxiety unanxious
undownload unupload unradio untv uncommercial unactor unsit-com uncapitalize
unpride unbrown unsleep unmurder unbrand unwhite unblack unputdown unfalse-consciousness
uncortez uncolumbus undisappear uncolonize unempire unracism unclassism unsexism unheterosexism
unagonize unhurt unhibernate uninsured uncorporations unfreetrade unponzyscheme unscheme
unshame unfallapart unaccent undiscriminate unlead unhello uncontrol
ungrey unagism unhomophobia unxenophobia unborders unlimited
undependent unco-dependent undocument unillegal unminority
unlast unfirst unalone unbetter unindividualism ungatedcommunity
unbarrier unprofiling unpush unhush
unchachacha unipod undisaster unpredictible unstoppable unutopias

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]

From somewhere in East Oakland, imagining a different community of communities

Arnoldo Garcia

Blinded by Color, Unbound by Place: Trayvon Martin

Dedicated to my children and our future together

To the youth, the boys and girls in my neighborhood struggling to live and to their present together.

We must defend ourselves, you and me, from whiteness, white supremacy.

George Zimmerman was Latino? Was Zimmerman a white Hispanic? No. Zimmerman is a Hispanic/Latino mask with a white soul. There are no such humans, Latino, white. (There are Hispanics, but he isn’t one.) Additionally, there are few if any Latino or Brown on Black killings. This is another subject we have to talk about, when our Mexican youth hurt and kill other Mexican youth, when our African American youth hurt and kill other African American youth. Where is the outrage, the breaking of windows, the marches, the call for responsibility and safety, the disarming of the violence when Norteño kills Sureño? Black on Black, Brown on Brown violence is also police violence. Where do the guns and ammo come from, who licenses the arms and weapons that flood our communities, who regulates and distributes the guns, rifles, the violence and coercion that make our neighborhoods unsafe?

The Zimmerman murder of Trayvon Martin was a racist murder, a white violence that is terrorizing us all, a white supremacy that has hundreds of years of violent practice in violent subjugation and genocide and prisons and schools and the mentalities that permit them. Whiteness is not an illusion; it is very real and yet it is a delusion.

We are all very specific, concrete people. If you consider yourself white and antiracist, you are still part of the racist problem. If you consider yourself Latino and are antiracist you are still part of the racist problem. I feel troubled when I hear partner activists, who are progressive and still say they are white. Whiteness must be berated and negated, not the people who claim that identity. We have to separate the whites from the whiteness and that will take some real work. Whiteness has caused and continues causing harm and trauma to our communities of colors. Whiteness is a bipolar world, i.e. insanity with state power and institutions that make us believe, coerces us, imprisons us in cages or classrooms, that whiteness is the ultimate form of humanness.

White is a color, not a culture, not a people. The same goes for black. Black is a color, not a culture, not a people. White, black, brown, these are the identities of racialization, homogenization, which are the function and power of colonization, empire and imperialism over our consciousness and communities, the destruction of our very being and powers.

I am not oblivious (or too ignorant either) of the historical nature of these identities. To destroy and dismantle whiteness, it is not enough for us to call ourselves people of color, Black, Brown. Whites have to stop calling themselves whites and take responsibility for the legacy they have lived and are living under, the privilege of racialized empire-building and the American dream.

Black is beautiful. So is white beautiful? Brown is beautiful. Are those the only colors of the rainbow and the natural world that are beautiful? Is beauty in the gaze of the beholder? Is beauty a racial justice struggle like demanding justice for Trayvon? If Zimmerman is Latino, does that change the nature of the murder he committed against Trayvon Martin? Or must he be white, as I am arguing, for the nature of the killing to change?

What the verdict does not change and can never change is that a white man killed a Black, African American teenager. This story will never change. This is the story that we must change.

So many questions; so much rage and so little time to answer all of them. And Trayvon Martin and hundreds of other African America and Mexican, Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Honduran, Purepecha, Mixtec, Zapotec, et. al., are still dead from police violence or zombies in perpetual prison or endless criminalization.

We are not minorities either. Minority is a political project of colonialism and then U.S. imperial designs. A minority is a person, a place and a people who lack self-determination and vision – which are imposed by the so-called “majority.” The U.S. plans the future of all peoples and that future is for them to become minorities. (Note: if we count all whites the way whites count us in the Census, whites would be the minorities: 5% German there, 5% Irish there [I know, I know, Irish are not white, but who’s counting?], 5% Anglos here, 5% French, 3% Scottish, 15% Indio or Mexican – boom!)

We are not undocumented. We have enough documents to proof our history and existence that goes back at least 15,000 years. We just do not have the documents that prove we are a minority that knows its place in the uni-polarized world of the U.S. That is the purvey of immigration authority: you are not here and you do not exist until we say who you are and that you exist to serve us, disposable, deportable, guest worker, bracero, immigrant.

I am not a Latino. I am a Mexican. And even then I am a very specific type of Mexican, descended from Palestinian and Purepecha black and indio roots.

In the struggle for liberation and clarity in revolutionary transformations and reforms, civil rights and human rights and neo-liberalism, I have been dubbed Mexican, white, Mexican-American, Mexican American, Chicano, Hispanic, Latino, Brown (another color of racialization, etc.). Now we have the choice of Hispanic. Oh, I am not nor ever will be from Hispania.

In another country in the Americas, for example, you can buy your whiteness, literally, without changing your color. You have money, you buy a document that declares you white.

You can do the same thing in the U.S. You can get your whiteness in the U.S. in one of two ways: With money and with identity (or both). What we are called, what we call ourselves, is the struggle for a new type of self-determination and liberty.

First strategy: Get rich (or die trying?) – or at least become part of the stable working class, i.e. middle class. And you buy your way into the gated communities or at least afford to live in the gentrified neighborhoods or districts where at least 12-15% of the residents are white. Violá – you are not white but you have bought the trappings of safety and wellbeing that whites enjoy without even a second thought about how they got this way.

How do you know you live in a gentrified neighborhood or district? Call the police for assistance and see how long it takes them to arrive or if they even show up.

The second way to buy whiteness is through identity.

Call yourself Hispanic, Latino. Poof you are white. Hispanic, Latino means: “Hey, you can’t deport me! I pay taxes; I work legitimately. I am not ‘Black.’ I am hard working, tax-paying family man. I am not a criminal!”

Agree to forget your history and your past and delude yourself into thinking that you are not the color of your dark skin, that you are not from here, and no one else will notice because you say who you are and you live in the right neighborhood.

And both of these and other ways are delusional. You are not white, you are black. You are not Hispanic, you are Mexican.

You are not Mexican, you are an Indio, an Indian who has been here longer than anyone else who is NOT Indio.

Your are not middle class, you are not rich; you are hand-to-mouth, paycheck to paycheck working class bum, filled with anxiety and worry that you will become unemployed, unemployable, homeless and black or worse end up in the barrio or ghetto.

I am not a Hispanic. Note: There are Hispanics, people who are from Spain or descended from Spanish who settle her in colonies and made colonization a way of life; who spoke Castilian, the language of the castle-imperial kings/queens. There is a 350+year old Hispanic community that settled and continues living in a region straddled by New Mexico and Colorado in the U.S. southwest. The royal academy of the Spanish language has studied this Hispanic region for years because 15^th or 16th century Spanish is still spoken there.

Hispanic is also a synonym for whiteness; Hispanics are from Europe, hence white. To erase Indios and Mexicans from the U.S., sometime in the 1960s and 1970s, the state power decided to count us Hispanic. Poof, you’re gone.

When dark-skinned Mexicans want to delude themselves, they say they are Hispanics, when they are indigenous and have been here longer than anyone else, free or slave, black or white, European, Asian, African.

Hispanic is a very recent creation, a tool of subordination, domination and soul crushing destruction of people. The Hispanics themselves, Spaniards, Spanish, created this identity to crush the indigenous peoples of what is now Spain: Basques, etc.

I am not an American in the U.S. “American” as an identity in the U.S. has been confiscated, expropriated, corroded and made unusable for everyone except whites. In my world, América is a continent not a country.

American is a synonym for whiteness and Americans barely tolerate anyone else using it. In their imperial, neocolonial kindness, whites are doing to us what they did to themselves. By changing their names, they gave themselves the authority to take whatever they wanted, all for short-term gain and long-term, continual disaster upon the world’s peoples and the natural world herself.

In the end, none of this is important if we do not stand up for Trayvon Martin and hundreds, maybe tens of thousands of other victims of racist violence. More critical, can we prevent this from happening again? Will you befriend, mentor all the Trayvon Martins of my neighborhood or are you afraid of Black and Brown Buffalo youth, boys and girls, men and women, hooded and unhooded, middle class or homeless?

I do not want to see another movie of our tragedies made. Why didn’t anyone make a movie of Oscar Grant when he was alive? Why didn’t we care nationally or even locally about Trayvon before he became Trayvon? What about Zimmerman? He is still the killer and will be for all time. Will he find redemption? How does he continue living with blood on his hands? How does the U.S. continue functioning with so much war, blood, injustices and suffering at home and abroad? Will we prevent another Zimmerman from appearing? Will I throw myself in front of the bullets meant for my Trayvon, will you?

*

P.S. we must talk, all of us of all the colors and pigments. We must talk to say who we are, where we are at and where we are going. We can exist without this world, we can thrive as communities in a different relationship. The U.S. formation is not the only world possible. Our language, our vocabularies, our self-determined beings, our relationships can change to make good our lives; we all want to be in a better relationship than the ones that permitted the emergence of Zimmermans and the criminalization of the Trayvons and the violence and coercion that codified it. We are the ones who can make this possible by being different and sometimes just by being who we are supposed to be.

Notes, Oakland, July 14, 2013.

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 17] Openings

One
I am open for poetry
I am closed for business
I am open for the sun
I am closed to the coldest shoulder.
I am open for life
I am closed for death
I am open for listening
I am closed to yelling, screaming
I am open for passion
I am closed for fists
I am open for tenderness
I am closed for forgetfulness
I am open to all the realms
of words, tongues, languages,
dreams
I am closed for silencing.
I am open for furrows,
explosive seeds, migrant hands
I am closed to pesticides,
chemical fertilizers, tractor
weapons.
I am open for horizons
I am closed for mass graves
I am open for all of my ancestors,
all my relations, all the plants and animals
I am closed for genocides.

Two
I am not the center
of the world
though I go there
every night
The center of the world
does not hold dinosaurs
and climate utopias
like in the movies
No, the center of the world
does not hold the past
or will love just anything
to do with it
The center of the world
is always the future.

Three
Human
consciousness
human
practices
and
experiences
human
relationships
with humans
and the natural world
are not
the highest
the most complex
form
of matter.
You don't see
the lowly insect
shitting in the water
You don't see
the crow or the sparrow
avoiding flight
to get in a car
that contaminates
the air,
pollutes the silence and
paves over the trees
You don't see the bears
the buffalo, the deer
divide themselves
as superior or inferior
based on the variation of colors
the pigment
of their fur,
the accents
of their bellows
or their migration story
There is yet to be a case, a story,
an abuse, an affront
among the elders of the natural world
showing insects,
birds,
ocelot
and other creatures
enslaving another insect, bird, ocelot and other creatures
working them to death
or selling them
like chattel cattle.

Four
Don't praise me
when I am dead
Don't bring flowers
to my grave
Don't sing songs
in honor of my spirit
or poems to keep my memory alive
Praise me now
I am still alive
bring me flowers
say you love me
and don't want me to die!
(I will tell you every chance I get
how important you are to me
my life depends on you
I love you now and in the afterlife)
Serenade me morning noon & night
Massage my body
smile into my eyes
it is not my spirit that will die
Without your hugs
without your arms around me
my body will give up sooner
Pass my words through your soul
I will live and stay alive
when you live
and love
with me.

[Poema 15] Song against the bombs

1.
My love,
listen
the bombs
make it hard to hear
the honey of your voice
the burning flesh
quashes
the aroma of our flowers
Listen,
my love.
We can't bury ourselves
in each other's melodious panting
with the whining threat of jets overhead
My heart
trembles
for you,
the bombs rattle
the land,
our bodies
go up
in a mushroom cloud
is it ecstasy or extermination
why are we not
inside each other?

2.
Invadidos

When I talked
they said
I growled
When I wrote
they said
nonsense
When I left them
they called me
traitor

When they called me back
they found out
they had to follow me.

They turned
my land
upside
down
and came to the conclusion
that I was lost.

Now I am free.

3.
Cuántas bombas
han lanzado
cuántas afganís
han molido
cuántos dioses
han perdido
sus creyentes
a manos
de sus creídos?

[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 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 5] East Oakland

Oakland is my small, tender Beirut

Oakland is my bullet-pocked Baghdad shelter

Oakland is my imaginary Paris with French café and Vietnamese sandwiches

Oakland is the beautiful streetwalkers

Selling their sex

to men who don’t know

how to make love,

satisfying their humanness.

Oakland is the carnival of street vendors,

The dreamwalkers

Selling everything you need

To make life comfortable, tasty,

Convenient:

Tacos, chapurreada, coffee,

tamales, colchas, duritos con chile

y limón, paletas to cool down on hot afternoons at home or at the park

Oakland, where young black men, young brown

men, shoot each other

drive-bys and families broken

life cut down in a violent explosion.

I used to believe I’d never make it past 20

And I am shocked to learn

that young people everywhere

believe they will not make it to 30.

Thirty springs, thirty summers, thirty autumns

do not need to end in thirty winters

The cold of Oakland streets bloodied warm

in youthful blood, old and dead

before my time

Oakland is hope for those who see

a way in.

My city is no more violent than yours

Only Beirut, only Baghdad, only Gaza

Only Los Angeles, only Mexico City, only Kabul

Where ancient civilizations thrive

Where the death of young men and women

Erase the memory of a deep community

Afghanistan, Iraq, Mexico and anywhere else there is U.S. war:

You are welcome to relive, to be reborn, in east Oakland

Oakland will become the city of youth eternal

Where becoming old

will be a pleasure among generations

My Oakland is not violent every day

But desperation & pettiness

Become explosion

When armed

When humanity grows out of a barrel

of a gun

of a pipe.

My Oakland is schools, children with adult hope

Families in mourning from deportations

In grief from lost expectations

My city is long avenues, deep boulevards,

Green water, broad spaces to walk

To be, to stride futures

Where everyone lives, works and dies of old age

No more elders at 18

No more deaths at 13

No more hopelessness

Darkness & rings under the eyes banished from my city

my Oakland.

No more guns in hands

meant to

write stories

paint masterpieces

and caress grandchildren,

no more fists

no more grimaces

no more shock

no more grandparents burying grandchildren

no more dropouts in coffins

no more students becoming soldiers

as the only way out:

No more out through death

Only in with life

Only in with life.

[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.