The four directions of my border blues

I miss
Tacuache,
Homer,
Johnson,
Crow
the four directions
of my blues
the four musics
of my valley
the guitarist
the drummer
the friend
geniuses all
beheaded by whites
loved by Mexicans
Elvira and her sister, too
The tula fog
the cries
for the mother
The music was our music
we knew we would never see each other again
never gave up the blues
never surrendered to the night of our long separation
Tacuache bellowing,
hair down to his hips,
I want pussah, pussah
Homer roaring in laughter
I am in the back seat remembering us all
Where's Cinthia?
She was my outcast, my future woman
I would love and love always
eternity had her names, ours
Johnson was a madman
with a Gibson strapped across his shoulder
Crow the music organism
Tacuache spirit armed with spirit to pound away our fears
Homer the friend we would never give up
Then we left each other
alone
We left each other
and ever since
music is
incomplete
unfinished tenderness...

Electric blind blues

My eyes

have broken

the lightning
shattered

the campesino electrocutions
in the fields

of verdant fears
in the footsteps

of indian shadows
the lightning shards

cut up my liver
scrape the sockets

of my eyes
with the darkest threat

of starless nights
the crickets call out her name

over and over
whirring,

displacing thunder,

dispensing with formalities
pouncing

on the drum

of my senses
making the lightning tremble

slicing open the irises,
bleeding electricity.

I am going blind

because the lightning won't rise up
against the mother
as acrylic clouds

dance upon the rain
inside my skin 

the lightning broken,

cries,
lashes at the hat

the farmworker wears

to carry the sun
The lightning 

s broken,

mortally wounded,

dying

inside my eyes
My eyes become

a mudslide of extinction...

When I die | Day 9 Poetry Month

 When I die
I will be so dead
You will have to invent a fake life
to match my real death
I will be such a big death
that everyone will enjoy
the musical composition
of my decomposing body of work,
inhaling the stench of my improvisations
My blues will finally be about being down, out and dead.
Laying there in my coffin
please know I got dead drunk on tequila shots of formaldehyde
salt and lime my corpse
and make video called "The Dead Gone Wild"
When I die
all the flowers will cry
out of happiness
Now that I am gone
They'll sing:
He will never bother us again!
he cannot torture us anymore with his shitty clichés!
Everyone who is important will show up with crocodiles
cause they will not be able to fake their own tears
Anyone who knew me
will praise my name to the skies with the left hand
while with the right hand they will hold their nose
Oh when I die I will be so dead
no one will really know what to do with me
Bury me?
Cremate me?
Ask the pope to canonize me?
Build a mausoleum specifically for poets
So they can visit my Leninesque physiqueness,
preserving me for eternity to ward off limericks and capitalists?
Maybe just let me rot under a highway underpass?
I don't know what to suggest or expect
When you're dead, you're dead and self-determination takes over
but please:
no accolades,
no praises,
no homages,
no illegitimate children or polyamourists
to denounce me for lack of providing orgasms
or who may want to lay claim to my literary real estates
When I die
maybe sprinkle a bit of mud on your shoes,
maybe wipe my slate clean,
maybe laugh at me for all my stupid mistakes,
maybe remember the nights we spent together,
anything that makes me human will do.
When I am dead I will still be waiting for you
Arms open
Deep sighing
Faking my own life so I can't be dead
Well, really dead but still true...

Billie Holiday | day seven poetry month |

She sings:
My heart is in Baltimore
My voice is scattered
in the ruins of your bruises
Winter always
hangs 'round
the corner
of my eyes
Spring
is handcuffed
to my blues
Wherever she goes
I will follow on my knees

She sleeps:
There was a man
who buried his hands
in the gardenia of my suns
Inhaled the DNA of my suffering
to erase the darkness
And take me away
busting me out of my cocoon


She improvises:
I was black I was white I was a woman
Whose only weapon was a song and night.
I was red I was blue I was a woman
Whose body became a battlefield for their lust
I was yellow I was North Star I was a woman
Whose voice tamed the coyote and the wild forgetfulness
I was brown I was azure for the lost south
Craving a family, a sacred land, a house, a lover-man

She writes:
He only wanted
what nobody else wanted
To let me sing
Sending death away empty handed
To drown his skull in my ecstasy...

Billie Holiday sits in my living room
holding my hands
traces the notes of her next song
on my wings
She rises from the couch
Puts on her shoes and walks away
pushing away the shadows...

She texts me her goodbyes:
I was blues
I was ebony
I was a woman
I was black
I was white
I was a woman
standing on the stage
gently ripping open
the graves of my bones
with the chrysalis
of my hands and caresses
on saxophones and pianos and an occasional guitar
I was power
I was explosion
I was a woman
who pinned gardenias
on the shock of dusk
who uplifted
the vibrato
of her fears
to carry you wherever I sang

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.