Directions to where you and I belong | arnoldo colibrí

arnoldo garcía: abuelito in blue
(9"x16 'on fat paper, June 2025

Go south

To winter from the borders

Go north to flee to freedom

Go east to meet the grandfather of all grandfathers

Go west, sleep, to rest, to be safe, among the only humans who make life as part of their life

Go to the center to place your head on the pillow made of dirt and the bones of our ancestors

Go up into the stars and constellations

Go down into the DNA of the human soul

If you are human

If you are life

You are a nomad

You are movement to keep the natural world alive

You are where you belong.

 

January 8, 2025

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...

International human rights day | Día internacional de los derechos human

Welcome

to international human rights day:

Human rights day is

the day

when you
can be fully human,

imperfect,

immigrant,

imbecilic,

important, 
impotent

to stop the U.S. disaster,

immune

to the past,

immured

with the possibilities

of liberation,

human liberation,

in the new day.

When indigenous

indios

are

The People of the Earth

The original human

The human emblem of humanness

When migrants

are the norm

for humanity

To be fully human

is to be a nomad, a migrant

to walk without weariness

to the define the horizon of liberation

I am 
therefore

we are

human,

humane,

humanity.

A little ration

(of humanness)

never hurt anyone...

*

Bienvenidos
al día internacional de derechos humanos:

El día de los derechos humanos es

el día

cuando
puedes ser plenamente humano

imperfecto,

inmigrante,

imbecilico,

importante, 
impotente

frente al desastre estadounidense,

inmune

al pasado,

emparedado

con las posibilidades

de la liberación,

la liberación humana,

en el día nuevo.

Cuando los indígenas

los indios

son

El Pueblo de la Tierra

los humanos originales

La bandera humana de la humanidad

Cuando las migrantes

son la norma

de ser humano

Y ser humano integral

es ser nómada, es ser migrante

es caminar sin cansancio

para definir el horizonte de la liberación

Soy
por lo tanto

somos

humanos,

humanamente,

humanidad.

Una pequeña ración

(de humanidad)

nunca ha lastimado a nadie ...

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...

Madre-abuelita (for manuela & josé)

I long for my grandmother's tortillas

her bold hands that seized fevers and captured ghosts

her guidance, her comales, where chiles and tomatoes sang

she nourished us with food and prayer

to plant flowers

to surround us with family, community and hope

she didn’t want anyone to die

she preferred to die first

than see us suffer

she promised to see us after death

she came back twice

once she alone and the last time she was with her husband José.

She smiled sternly, but she was smiling.

Everything works out in the end

Her bones rest

Her footsteps let us know she does not sleep

Until everyone is safe

She loved

black coffee,

fresh jalapeños that made men cry

and talking back to God.

As she lay dying

Her eyes

Her hands

Her wilting heart

showered us with tenderness and compassion

Even when she recovered from the first heart attack

she didn’t stop working

Instead of resting

we would return from work

to find the house swept and mopped

food cooking on the stove

a stack of freshly cooked tortillas

and she on her feet

challenging us, defying her own heart

praying

her whole body

was a prayer

a thunderous prayer

then she decided to die

after she found out some terrible news

she was betrayed

she tried to strangle my grandfather

who did not resist

he knew what he had done and was willing to let her have what she wanted now

Gustavo and I were in a side room playing guitars

when we heard arguing voices crescendo

then bodies crashing against walls and floors

We stuck our heads out the door and slowly came out

She was choking my abuelito

He just lay there, she on top, still

holding him down with her legs over his chest and knees on his arms

Then she flopped down on the floor

Leaning her head against the frayed sofa

Enraged, spit drooling out of her mouth

Her body was still a prayer

Invoking herself against herself

That summer

She continued working in the fields

Until she suffered another stroke at the onset of autumn

Then winter came

And she died

Her body still a prayer

When we buried her it began raining, then the sun broke through

The winter day became springtime

We sent her off with prayers, partying

Time under the open sky

The stars swelling until everyone cried

because we were going to miss her

we miss her prayers, her praying

her backbone

her food, her caldos, tortillas, her ponqui pie, her lipstick

her curses, her defense

She kept her promises, she waits for everyone.

Will we rest alongside her bones

or will we be scattered by the wind

only to be reached by her voice,

rescued by her prayers?

Manuela, arise

sons and daughters

grand-sons and granddaughters

great-grand-sons and great grand-daughters

Our mother

Our grandmother

does not forget anyone

does not leave anyone behind…

[Poem: 2002 | "Manuela Ochoa on her wedding day," 6"x8" oil pastels, 1994]

word justice

my body
is the broadcasting machine
communicating waves
of color
dsl eyes
analog ancestors
waiting to be
clicked on
digitalized
sent careening
into the electronic ocean
a digital root
a dust meme
a viral rage for justice

my body is my art
my blood acrylic, oil, pastel,
ink;
My bones,
a knife to etch, scratch, brush, dab, splat,
push into
press against
the canvas of you

language is what you do
with a weapon system called
my tongue, my lungs
my brain, my memories
my lives
of migration...

Arnoldo García

The segregation of bodies, the segregation of minds

When I started reading Words, Not Swords: Iranian Women Writers and the Freedom of Movement, by Farzaneh Milani, there were what seemed countless explosions in my imagination and brain and body about how we as writers of color, Xicanos/Xicanas, Mexicans, Purépechas, Latinas, even Hispanics, or whatever you want to call yourself, have been segregated -- to no avail. Yet we are the mainstream: our stories, musics, and other experiences expressed are just ours and those who have ignored them and continue ignoring them will not know what hit them when their country becomes also ours in word and in colors.

Take note U.S.A., this is what América sounds like too: On page 29, Farzaneh Milani writes, "Sex segregation has had a powerful impact on Iranian literature.... has shaped the language, the themes, the plots and the systems of literary representation used by men and women over the centuries." And the good words over the bad swords take off even deeper from here on end.

There have deep structural political, social, economic and their corresponding cultural devastations worldwide. The current Arab and Middle East Spring, the massive uprisings and movements toppling old regimes is linked to us in many and varied ways. The U.S. had a "Migrant Spring" that opened its new season in 2006. Millions of undocumented migrant workers, their families, communities and supporters took to the streets demanding a change -- that has yet to come. However, the massive movement that continues growing in dissendence and dissoance, changed the political landscape of the U.S. forever. Undocumented people are everywhere, including U.S. citizens whose rights and dreams are being foreclosed, unemployed, and privatized. The future of workers and poor people, communities of color looks more and more like the undocumented, the "illegal." Words can become destiny.

War, Not Swords has given me a new and unfolding understanding of the relationship and impacts and influence over those who've marginalized my writing and stories, acting as if there is no genre or branding is available, unless they make sense to their markets, er I mean readers. If Syracruse University Press can get their readers to pick up this exciting work, then they should be able to see our work as not just for colored people who've gestated and given birth to the rainbow, when suicide was never enough to ake anyone understadn our words aching to be heard by everyone.

A whole new world of understanding of what I as a writer of color, a bilingual, truly multinational/multicultural/multiracial, writer, communities-based organizer face every time I write:

The segregation of our bodies has leavened a stinking segregation of the mind. Words Not Swords can become another salvo in our struggle for equality in body and in language, in desire and in voice. I want to struggle for peace, justice, human rights, with non-violent, non-humiliation strategies and words.

How have women writers, and just plain women, under the veil, in explicit patriarchy-dominant systems, fared? How has beauty, gender, nationality, eros, sex, sexual identity, race, ethnicity, the land, the natural world, urban globs of humanity -- how have they been shaped, kneaded really, under sex segregation -- and racial segregation? And now, increasingly so, citizen/immigrant segregation?

This tome is a must read to have a better grasp of what's at stake in Iran and how we're in the U.S. linked to Iran. From the three hikers, two of which continue languishing in a Tehran prison, to the trauma of their wars against Iraq, the deepening threats of U.S. and Israeli attacks and the endless war in the Middle East that doesn't seem to let up.

Women in Iran have been a force for social transformations at their own speed. Chicanas, Chicanos, Latinos, undocumented migrants, queers, African Americans, Mexicans, Indigenous peoples' struggle to recover their lands -- we share or create similar spaces to those being described and sur-veiled in this new and exciting word venture. Uncannily, here in the U.S. one of the main obstacles we face as writers/organizers/people of color is increasingly less or even racialized freedom of movement: in body and in words. SB-1070 in Arizona, the anti-immigrant, racial profiling law, has made our bodies, our Mexican-Indian-Black-Brown-queer-non-white bodies, the target. Biopolitics at its worst; whenever countries have resorted to bio-politics, they have resorted to war: war on ideas, war on difference, and eventually war on those whose ideas, bodies and differences are the carriers.

The last 160 years worldwide have been the same: upheavals and reorganization, re-combinations of nation-states, who is the People, the chosen race, the master race. This war or struggle over land, resources, labor power, ideas, culture, industrialization leading to atomization and nuclearization, least since 1848, has been a disaster for the world. And the natural world is in upheaval too: the ice cap over the north pole has an opening; one of the largest "wildfires" is raging across Arizona, New Mexico and Texas -- growing by 20,000 acres over night. Restoring humanity to her place in the natural world has been at the center of this major, global shift. Women really will be the determining human force that will shift this battle in our favor, where possibly men with guns (one of the main problems!) will be a thing of the past -- although it will take several generations for this to happen.

So here read this new set of words, Words, Not Swords to sharpen our tongues and our steps for a different world tomorrow. Women of the world, unite! You only have men-chains to lose!

*

This is a preface to a book review to be done later after finishing reading Words, Not Swords; with the caveat and certainty that I will change my thinking and my body in the process.

Lucia Veronica Carmona

Vivir entre dos naciones

I

En el trajín de la madrugada,

como todos los días del año

pero cada uno diferente

como diferente es la inspiración,

casi arrancada del sueño

y la tibieza de la almohada,

aún con la memoria de tu piel

en mi boca…

Me levanto en la penumbra

con la idea de cumplir,

el frío me estremece

pero sé que no estoy sola,

en medio de la sombra

desprovista de sol

me acompaña el Lucero

Venus siempre fiel,

en este amanecer de Octubre radiante

cuando el verano se despide, dándole la bienvenida

a la luz del otoño.

Por fin se adivinan

los primeros rayos,

astro rey tan necesario,

compañero apacible y cálido,

que nos despierta su luz,

mientras a la espera

de cruzar el umbral

de la subsistencia

por un dólar más

para comer

para vivir…

II

…Vivir entre dos naciones,

un puente que nos separa

para cruzarlo a diario,

como un río de agua viva incontenible

que se revela a mantenerse quieto,

y quiere romper los cauces

que le ha impuesto el imperio.

Límites imaginarios,

diques construidos por sus miedos.

Ya no ven al río de agua que los nutre

a diario con su fuerza de trabajo,

sudor y sangre que se queda

en sus restaurantes, en los campos de chile,

en sus hoteles cinco-estrellas,

sus letrinas,

sus oficinas

que no quedan quietas.

Tac, tac, tac,

del teclado de una máquina

de escribir anuncia que llegaron,

ya se enciende el neón,

“Yes, we are open”

Ciudadanos de segunda

que cumplen tareas dignamente,

pilares del consumo,

para que no se consuman pronto

en sus contradicciones,

ni se derrumben…

III

Ellos ven un enemigo en cada uno,

ya no confían en miradas inocentes,

ya no pueden encubrir la maldad

esparcida por sus mandos,

desde un pentágono

hacia cinco direcciones,

cinco continentes

que pretenden gobernar,

saben que tienen enemigos a muerte.

Ellos ya no ven al río ni a la gente.

El miedo les señala la verdad,

porque la verdad es que la gente

es como una serpiente,

que a diario entra y sale,

que espera paciente

deslizarse por entre sus trampas,

derrumbando límites

y construyendo nuevos puentes

de unidad entre hermanos

de raza ancestral,

antes separados

hoy vueltos a encontrar.

Despiertan lentamente

caminando juntos,

en un nuevo amanecer,

en medio de la madrugada

y el sueño, sin desayunar.

Es la serpiente de Aztlán

la de la profecía,

la de mil cabezas que se expande

por todo el territorio.

La que avanza desde el Sur

huyendo de sequías y miseria

desafiando discriminación.

Entra y sale para nutrirse

de valor y dignidad de un pueblo,

que tan sólo espera

recuperar lo que es suyo.

La armonía que antes

habitaba en estos

Valles y Desiertos,

la Madre Naturaleza en paz,

sin basura radioactiva,

con agua buena para beber.

Madrugada del 22 de Septiembre 2001

Con espera de 4 horas para cruzar el Puente Córdova Juárez, Chihuahua/El Paso, TX

*

Lucía Veronica Carmona es una organizadora comunitaria por los derechos humanos , poeta y cantautora. Ella es descendiente del pueblo original Raramuris y la hija de una costurera y lavendera. Lucía Veronica trabaja como líder organizadora en el Consejo de Desarrollo de Colonias en la franja fronteriza de Nuevo México y Tejas, donde ha organizado por los derechos del campesino.