I was born in the wrong world

I was born in the wrong world
I was born at the wrong time

In my world you could peer into the waters
So clear
That you could see
all the way
to the other side
of the universe
 the constellations curving around you
in a deep hug

I was born in the wrong world
In my world you could scoop up the dirt
Taste it
Eat it
Drink the soilOn occasion
To commune with the souls of the ancestors
To remember the electricity of the big bang

I was  born in the wrong world
A slave to humans who thought
they could enslave everyone and everything
And I was the soil, I was the stars,
I was unbreakable,
i was another world
that would implode this wrong world
You will return
even if it is on my back
my skin branded
my land demolished
my past scuttled (but not for long)
to the world
where our roots will be the electric grid
where our language will be the banner of the wind
where we will dream by gazing at the stars
where we will weave our lives
with maize squash beans muddy embraces...

Soy del otro lado | I am from the other side

Soy del otro lado
del lado bravo
del lado tuyo
del lado izquierdo
donde tengo el nido
para tus abrazos
Soy del otro lado
donde los muros
son las sombras
que persiguen
a los policías
que defienden
a los tiranos del mercado
Y el sol está
a nuestro lado
el lado de la tierra
el lado de las lágrimas con sus sonrisas
el lado de la luna llena y vacía
el lado que es combustible para las estrellas
el lado donde somos íntegros
el lado que divide a las bestias
adomándolas con nuestra luz
el lado que nos abriga
contra la rabia del dinero
Soy de ese lado
con sus seis direcciones y sus siete espacios
donde los abrazos abren cielos y puertas
donde los llantos espantan a las fronteras
y las mujeres nos dan su espalda
para cargarnos y sobrevivir
Del lado donde nuestros desaparecidos
reaparecen
Soy del otro lado
del lado tuyo...

[Abril 2016]

| * |

I am from the other side

I am from the other side
from the side of the Bravo
from your side
from the left side
where I have a nest
for your arms
I am from the other side
where the walls
are shadows
that chase down
the police
that defend
the tyrants of the markers
And the sun is
on our side
on the side of the earth
on the side of tears with smiles
on the side of the of the full and empty moon
on the side that is fuel for the stars
on the side where we are whole
on the side that divides the beasts
taming them with our light
on the side that holds us
against the rage of money
I am from that side=
with its six directions and seven spaces
where our embrace open up skies and doors
where our cries threaten borders
and the women give us their backs
to carry us and to survive
From the side where our disappeared
reappear
I am from the other side
from your side ...

[April 2016]

Soy del otro lado | i am from the other side

Soy del otro lado
del lado bravo
del lado tuyo
del lado izquierdo
donde tengo el nido
para tus abrazos
Soy del otro lado
donde los muros
son las sombras
que persiguen
a los policías
que defienden
a los tiranos del mercado
Y el sol está
a nuestro lado
el lado de la tierra
el lado de las lágrimas con sus sonrisas
el lado de la luna llena y vacía
el lado que es combustible para las estrellas
el lado donde somos íntegros
el lado que divide a las bestias
adomándolas con nuestra luz
el lado que nos abriga
contra la rabia del dinero
Soy de ese lado
con sus seis direcciones y sus siete espacios
donde los abrazos abren cielos y puertas
donde los llantos espantan a las fronteras
y las mujeres nos dan su espalda
para cargarnos y sobrevivir
Del lado donde nuestros desaparecidos
reaparecen
Soy del otro lado
del lado tuyo...

*

I am from the other side
from the side of the Bravo
from your side
from the left side
where there is a nest
for your embraces & love
I am from the other side
where the walls
are shadows
that persecute
the police
who defend
the tyrants of the market
And the sun is
at our side
on the side of the earth
on the side of the tears with her smiles
on the side of the full and the empty moon
the side that is fuel for the stars
the side where we are whole
the side that divides the beasts
taming them with our light
the side that protects us
against the rage of money
I am from that side
with her six directions and seven spaces
where our embraces open skies and doors
where our crying intimidates borders
and the women give us their backs
to carry us and survive
From the side where our disappeared
reappear
I am from the other side
from your side...

*

poem & art: arnoldo garcía

[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…

paradise here | utopia there

Arnoldo García

paradise here | utopia there

We are home
We were expelled from paradise
arriving in the American dream
paradise here
utopia there
We belong in both places
yet we have no King David
to save us for our rightful country
We are sliced in half
no more there
no more here
Wherever you go you are home
They deport us home
We return crossing deserts and street corners
home
Home is in motion
We are a migration-nation
We carry our portable roots in our backpacks

We do not need your
papers,
visas,
passports,
security check-points,
iris-scans,
skin,
pat-downs, cramming our bodies through body-sized x-ray machines,
birth certificates
or your permission
to survive.

*

I raise my hands in the air



Alzo mis manos al aire
no para rendirme
para ser
red humana
vela humana
para captar al viento
en mis manos y pulmones
volar sobre los muertos y las fronteras

Pongo mis manos en el aire
no para rendirme
porque el sol cabe en ellas
para que el sol camine por las veredas de mis manos
la topografía de la ternura
Para detener a la guerra
desarmar a los militares con los vientos del pueblo
señales para que los soldados
todas y todos
heridos, muertos y vivos
vulevan a sus casas
vuelvan al amor

Pongo las manos en el aire
no para rendirme
para que todas y todos hagan lo mismo
y vivan....

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...

Zen fronteras | leche

Arnoldo García

zen fronteras*

Es casi imposible
ser buddista indocumentado
cuando hay
una lucha de clases
una lucha entre pieles negras, de bronce y blancas

La espiritualidad
está de venta
Steven Seagal
se compró
una reencarnación
de los dailai lamas
Ahora anda
de Border Patrol
armado con carabinas,
pistolas, comunicación digital
y cuentas para rezar durante los breaks

Nadie me toma en serio
cuando me declaro
buddista fronterizo
Medito
para borrar
las fronteras humanas e inhumanas
y todo lo que me dan
son palizas, cárceles
y deportaciones.

*

leche
milk
Che's pseudonym
alias
leche
Transmitting from Bolivia
His son writes
"Alguien intenta quebrar el cristal
con el golpe de una gota de leche."
Che gotita en el mar de las luchas interminables
mártires
masacrados
indios
comunistas
obreros
mujeres, de todas las clases
jotos
jotas
ajorobados
los descapacitados
los enfermos sin seguro social
los deempleados
los prisioneros
los pandilleros
niños callejeros
niñas en trata
viejitas y viejitos migrantes campesinos
apachurrrados por el sol, las labores y los azadones
si yo pudiera
te comprara
una reencarnación
para gozaras de poeta o mujeriego
tu fuistes el buddista sin fronteras
En Guatemala, Cuba, en Bolivia
Te entrenastes en el Congo
No querías abandonar el campo de batalla
eres un hombre sin élites
Eres una gotas
de leche guerrillero
que pudo todo contra la muerte
Tu eres algo de lo sagrado en todos nosotras y nosotros

Zen fronteras.

*NOTE: These are pieces I have written from memory that belong to a long poem-essay I wrote in 1993 while on retreat at the Vallecitos buddhist center in the mountains of New Mexico. Zen Fronteras came out of a spiritual and ideological debate that took place there, which looks at the class, race, gender materiality of breathing and meditating. I published an excerpt of Zen Fronteras in a collaboration published in 2006 titled "XicKorea." Why do I meditate? To be free to do what I need to do to change the world, one breath at a time.

Mis ejercitos

arnoldo garcía

los alacranes
las viboras
los serpientes
las hormigas
cascabeles
las telarañas
la tinta
el papel
el polvo
los soles
las lunas
mis muertos
los arboles
las risas
tus sonrisas
las guitarras
las acordeones
tu cuerpo
en mi
imaginación
las músicas
las miradas
la tierra
con o sin
fronteras
los ríos
los oceános
los vientos
las cuatro direcciones
el calor de
tus danzas
la plática caótica
de mis fiestas
la naturaleza
los arcoírises
las ambulantes
semillas
voladoras
los perros
las perras
los gatos
las gatas
el espacio
la luz
sus sombras
tus terremotos
los volcanes
la lluvia
los huracanes
las inundaciones
las tempestades
las sazones
los muertos que cantan
la gravedad
las moscas
los zancudos
los murcielagos
las palomas
las aguilas
los zopilotes
los peces
las ballenas
los elefantes
los colores
la piel
de tu fricción
la ternura
tu palabra
la mía
tu sangre
la mía

The B Word (part 2)

By Arnoldo García

Freedom does not ask for a visa.
Justice doesn't need a passport.

Human rights are our only borders, our only country, our only security, our only nationality.

Human rights is the color of our skin, the pleasure of our bodies, the place where class does not matter, where class begins and begins to end, where clean air, water and soil conspire with us, where the natural world takes over and we take our place in the web of life called time, space, cosmos, universe, the Milky Way, la Vía Lactea.

In community and through communities, can our words and actions for a different, more just, fair world not only make sense but also stand up and start walking.

Everyone is a border brother, a border sister; you carry the U.S.-Mexico border wherever you go. The border follows us wherever we go:

There's the 1492 border, the mother of all borders that we know.

Racial slavery began in 1492, when a small group of white men thought they could own the world and whoever lived there by declaring it so, by declaring it theirs.

There's the landing of the Plymouth Rock border. Malcolm X was right: "We didn't land on Plymouth Rock; Plymouth Rock landed on of us."

There's the 1776 border; the 1848 border; the 1865 border; the 1880 Chinese Exclusion border; the 1890 Wounded Knee border; the 1905 border of not-so Gentleman's Agreement border to keep Japanese and Asians out.

The 1905, 1910, 1917 revolutionary borders when czars everywhere were overthrown and Bolsheviks, Zapatistas and Villistas called for new human borders everywhere

The 1492 border showed up again as World War I. The 1929 crash border that brought us World War II crushed humanity with hunger and desperation of their borders; the 1936 Spanish Civil War border that called for internationalists to cross and double-cross all borders. The 1939 border of running over everyone and everything with tanks, storm troopers, blitzkriegs and concentration camps for our border brothers and sisters. The Soviet Union and the U.S.A. had their own brand of forced laborers, braceros are braceros regardless of who's in charge of the border.

The Nazi-Fascist borders paled in comparison with the Nagasaki-Hiroshima atomic bomb borders. Capitalism's 1492 borders made full circle when they ended World War II.

The Jim Crow borders, the maquiladora borders, the bracero borders, the military-industrial complexion borders.

The military industrial complexion? Whiteness. For those who think that race, color without class analysis is poor, they have yet to learn that if you aren't color-conscious your class consciousness will be white, Eurocentric, ignoring more than 95% of world history and the movements for liberation, land, justice and humanity. Because when I say border, I am saying Europe, I am uttering Christopher Colombus, I am raising fists against colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, empires, I am speaking in silenced languages, disappeared peoples, destroyed natural worlds,

Color is class; the darker colors the darker and lower you find yourself in the working classes, the poorest are darkest, Indigenous peoples, Africans, mestizos, Asians, Arabs, Muslims, Mexicans, Salvadorans, Mayan, Lakota, Tohono O'odham, Yaqui – when you see us you see the landless, the perennially sub and unemployed, the homeless (but not without a homeland, even if it is the perenially imaginary Aztlan), who have no representative in Congress, have never had one in the White House. Have been thrown off their lands, treated as strangers, as minors incapable of managing their own dreams, experimented on with small gifts of small-pox, poisoned with siflis, cast off, put in reservations, ghettos and migrant labor camps in the U.S.

In Mexico, Meso-America, Canada, France, England, Spain, Nicaragua, Cuba, and elsewhere, the history of the struggles for freedom are inscribed, tattooed, branded, insinuated, instructed, breathing through our pores, in our pigmentation. This is the pigment of our imagination.

For poor and working class whites, their whiteness is aspiration to and sentinel of power and powerlessness to keep the darker brothers and sisters down.

Every border since 1492 has been imposed to quash the natural world and our place in her. Every border has been used to impose a redefinition, a refinement of whiteness.

Tonight I take back their words and erase their presence, erase their violent system of conquest, occupation and spiritual deceit; resurrect the Tainos, the Caribes, the Haitís, the guajiros, they who welcomed lost strangers, fed them, gave them fresh water, nourished them back to health – and lost everything for it.

Tonight let our borders sleep together, gestate, dream, make love together.

My border is my skin, my ancestral skeleton walking across fields and waiting on street corners for work.

Let the cosmos with its biggest bang pull apart the 1492 borders, until they burst in the sixth sun, scattered without redemption or hope. Leave us behind in the MesoCosmos of our borders, our lives to till the stars and regain our place in the natural world ...