arno!do garcía

Your colonialism did this to me

Your skin did this to me

Your 99.9% dropless blood

Your redlining

Your redneck

Your monotone monolingual Christianity

Your tone-deaf tongue

Your flat-ass flat world

did this to me.

*

Notes for my Palestine war

Anwar Balousha

mourns his five daughters

killed by an Israeli Apache [sic]

helicopter that fired mssiles

at a mosque in Jabaliya

Anwar's house was destroyed

by the blasts

Four of his children escaped

Samar, six years old

Dina, seven years old

Jawaker, eight years ofld

Abram, 14

Tahnir, 17

were all crushed to death

where they slept

Five missiles

one for each daughter

Five daughters

one for each missile

five centuries

five Malinches

in the refugee camps

in the migrant camps

Israeli drones in the dark night

looking for their targets

using infrared television cameras

found the five sleeping beauties

five dreaming peace or love

or family or fast asleep resting

getting ready for the next day

But how do you get reay

for the next day of bombardments

of atrocities of F-16 jet fighter pilots

who destroy mosques,

homes, school, universities,

markets, killing and maiming

Palestinians?

Even the ruins are Palestinian.

*

Gaza,

all the missiles

all the bayonets

all the tanks

all the soldiers

all the armies

are hunting you

All they can do is give us time

to prepare for our turn at war

at the fountains of blood

where Israel is quenching

Palestine is rubble under the bombardments

crushed children crushed women

crushed men

who will continue resiting

as dust as ruins as slogans as martyrs

at our marches

as the ultimate dream of freedom

that can only be crushed

by an ignorant enemy

Nowhere to run or hide

what kind of satellite is needed

to hunt down a people

the tables are turned

Israel is driving Palestine

into the sea

and Palestine will become

the largest country in the world

Palestine Palestinian ocean

and you will have to be beg, ask permission on the knees of your ancestors and soul

for at least 500 years

to cross

to bathe

to swim

in our liquid nation

to enter into the realm of our catastrophic borders

the U.S. submarines will snk

the gunboats, the warships

the corporate petroleum pirates the nukes

will be grounded

Israel buries Palestin

and the Palestinians

grow roots an underground

seed that flowers

without dynamite strapped

to her waist

that furrows under and causes the occupation to cave in to sink

in the aquifers of our loud tender mouths

Israel makes Palestinians mourn, twists and maims

their bodies, blasts apart

children and measly armed men,

Israel believes he is winning

76% of the Israelies support the war

they lie, hate cannot be

measured by wars.

*

Oscar Gaza

Broken windows

over a man shot in the back

over a man unarmed

laying face down

with four cops on top of him

shot in the back

a case of a mistaken bullet?

But what color was this Gazan in East Oakland?

who breaks windows, burns cars

who shoots us in the back

who is guilty

who is free

where is Gaza

where is Oakland

where is your sea our ocean our country of open arms and caresses?

Note: these are poems 23 and 24 for April Poetry Month. I was unable to post the 23rd poem on April 23 because I was busy working with communities responding to the rising apartheid and Jim Crow segregation in Arizona, after AZ Governor Janet Brewer signed into law SB1070, which makes racial profiling and discrimination legal. SB1070 give police the power to question anyone they suspect of being undocumented and to investigate private and public agencies, employers if they are serving or hiring undocumented people. Take four actions for justice in Arizona and to denounce SB1070 here.]

arnoldo garcía

Migrant Incantations

échame tierra

sobre la cabeza y la cara

brota mi pecho con polvo

enloda mi lengua

échame tierra

porque me voy muy lejos de aquí

*

throw some dirt

over my head, let it run over my face

rub some dust on my breasts and chest

muddy my tongue

throw some dirt over me

because I am going far far away from here

*

To discuss

words with words

is the height

of consciousness

consciousness

of consciousness

the infinite molting

of consciousness

a head full of serpents

a chaos of

molecular currents pushing herself slithering making time and space

exploding at

the touch of air

blood the altitude of tenderness

tenderness the attitude of my blood

Arnoldo García

Burma

can a few men with guns
rule
dominate
multitudes
of
peaceful
unarmed
nonviolent
monks
students
youth
day workers
who's in the army
who obeys orders to shoot the people
who commands the soldier to shoot the people
monks
students
youth
day workers
tear gas
scatters monks and pigeons
skyful of blood in the airwaves
can the thugs rule us
can the generals crush all the cameras
can the chief of police, the sheriff, the governor, the state senator, the racist
a few good haters
rule
dominate
ignore
the multitudes
of students
day laborers
Indians
immigrants
farmworkers
domestic workers
women with children
can a few men with guns rule the world
make the multitudes cower
destroy the earth
destroy our spirit our lands our communities
can they?
will we
the unarmed the peaceful the drunk on poetry & horizons
the ones who all we want to do is learn, laugh with the elders
can they really sentence us to life in prison in poverty
is a bayonette really more powerful than a pen a pencil solidarity love
can the army make us kneel ask for forgiveness ask for better jails more laws to obey
why do they believe in the possible when we are the impossible

*
buddha plays soccer

be present
not on what you don't have
not on what you had
not on what you lost
not on past grievances failures or successes
not on what you want
not on your desires
be present
on who surrounds you who accompanies you who holds you
on who makes your heart beat loud suns
on the riches of your life that can't be put in a bank account that can't be invested in an IRA
on who fills your lungs with the big bang
who vibrates & plucks the strings of your pigmented guitar
be present
to listen
to breath
to give
to rest
to be

*
campesino

I don't want to bother you
I am no one
I am not important
I hardly exist
I exist in your shadow
I live to be lived and loved by you
without you I am no one
without you I have no shadow
I am a shadow-in-waiting
I will self-destruct without you
I will crumble into a pile of dust
at the mercy of the wind

*
canción

casi te abracé
casi te bese
casi te tuve por una vida entera
casi fuimos uno
casi humanos
casi locos
casi dulzura con cara pecada
y tu corazón de curandera
casi te quise
casi exploto
casi me pierdo en tu sonrisa y cuerpo
casi fue todo
casi fue nada
casi te he querido
casi me deseas
casi duermes commigo
casi no me quito de tu lado
casi apareces en horizontes con filos azules
casi me emborracho con tu cuerpo
casi te apreto en la isla barbuda
casi me pasa todo contigo
casi me enamoro de tí
casi nazco nuevo en tus brazos
casi me olvidas
casi me trastorna y me hace sombra del polvo
casi tengo una vida, una ofrenda
casi entro a la eternidad
casi el amor infinito

*
buddha laughs

end all worries
let them wait
forget them
live now
fight now
free now
free forever
no running
no stopping
no jump starting
no runnning away
no violence
no peace
no hate
no love
nothing
except breathing and horizons

*
war plans

war plans
for killing
bombing
maiming
destroying
coercing
refugees
displaces
widows
orphans
trauma
wrecked
dreams
empire
colony
nukes
generals
bayonettes
prisoners
destruction
oncentration
camps
hopelessness
sociopathy
rape
war plans
for profits and contracts
domination
contractors
weapons R&D
soldiers
hierarchies
patriots
sales
medals
heroes
presidential
world leader
Nobel Peace Prize
re-election now!
home by x-mas
family & country
blood for oil
no homeland
no nation
nowhere
war there
peaceful war here
drive-by's
drones
assassins
state
of
the
uniuon
coffins
flags
burials
21-gun salutes
armies of headstones
sargent pepper's lonely purple hearts band of bros
PTSS
homelessness
safe suburbs
migrants
profits
prayers
anguish
indifference
parasites
cancers
cocktail parties
cockroach revolution

*
Sail

my
words
my tongue
my lungs fill with wind
my consciousness implodes into space
I vibrate beat against the waves lungs flap
wind above water below and stream over the solar skin
|
|

Arnoldo Garcia

Las lomas coloradas / the red hills [extractos|excerpts]


time grew
the days weren't slow
the nights weren't fast

time grew everywhere
in the sorgo
in the chaparral
in the red clouds of cardenales
in the shadows of the auras
beautiful zopilotes announcing the new dawn
in the poise of the hare
in the glistening camouflage
of the rattlesnake
on the backs of the turtles
keepers of the cenotes
in the whirring of doves
palomas that we ate in droves

the days we spent
wrapped in colchas
made of maize, frijol and watermelons

at night our backs arched over
to gulp down the rain of stars
or sniff at a satellite passing high in
the skin of the earth
an alien clockwork

while time grew
our bodies became spring
our tongues summer
our beards fall
our souls winter
hibernating time
to restore the land
the red hills
las lomas coloradas
with our fallow hands
a place where migrants disappeared
and became whirlwinds

arnoldo garcía

trozos / chunks

me haces habitar

todos mis cuerpos

y tu lengua

el lenguaje

del paraíso

despierta sobre mis sentidos

*

you make me live

in all my bodies

and your tongue

the language

of paradise

carrouses over all my senses

*

what color

is the skin

of the border

what languages

evaporate

what peoples

are swept away

by the broom of bayonettes

what does it matter

if Indians die

if the malls are full

if the shoppers smile

if profits swell

*

de qué color

es la piel de la frontera

qué lenguajes

se evaporizan

qué pueblos son barridos

por las escobas de bayonetas

qué importa que mueran indios

si los malls están llenos

si los clientes sonríen

si la plusvalía se hincha

*

Nadie sabe que es una frontera

abierta

es una herida

una revolución

un abrazo

un zipper

un cementerio de la seguridad nacional

el único lugar donde los indios

son bienvendios

el reino de la frontera?

No hay lenguaje todavía

para mis pueblos desaparecidos

*

No one knows what is a border

open

a wound

a revolution

a zipper

a clandestine cemetery of national security

the only place Indians

are welcome

the kingdom of the border?

There is no language yet

for my disappeared peoples

*

Don't listen to anyone who doesn't love you

Ignore them, only listen to me,

listen to your mother, your father,

your sisters, your lover, only listen

listen to those who love you.

*

No le hagas caso a alguien que no te ama

Ignoralo, sólo escuchame

escucha a tu mamá, a tu papá,

a tus hermanas, a tu amante, solo escúchalos

sólo escucha a las y los que te aman.

*

the snake cloud people

the serpent cloud people

revered the sky

because the sky was the home

of their creator their goddess their power

their horizon their land their laughter

the serpent-snake-cloud

the most powerful force of the natural world

that also threatens or embraces

strikes down or gestates humanity.

*

el pueblo de la nube víbora

el pueblo de la nube serpiente

adoran al cielo

porque el cielo es el hogar

de su creadora su diosa su poder

su horizonte su tierra su alegría

la nube víbora-serpiente

la fuerza más poderosa de la naturaleza

que también amenaza o abraza

derrumba o gesta a la humanidad.

*

I never get to dream

My ancestors are insistent:

everyone's dreams first

(then yours, if there's time)

No one's dreams are complete

can be completed

until the ancestors' dreams

are fulfilled are completed

They'll have to resurrect me

raise dust and hell

to make my dreams real

to get to dream finally together.

*

Nunca me soñar

Mis antepasados son insistentes:

Los sueños de todas y todos primero

(los tuyos después si hay tiempo)

Nuestros sueños nunca son completos

nunca podrán ser cumplidos

hasta que los sueños de nuestros antepasados

estén satisfacidos estén cumplidos

Tendrán que resurrectarme

causar polvaderas y truenazos

para hacer mis sueños reales

para poder por fin soñar juntos.

arno!do garcía

río bravo

I go to the place where my sisters and brothers
pray, where the sky and the river zip lock the horizon.

my river's banks are lips
that kiss the feet of lovers
or migrants crossing over
her smile is muddy, wild, indomable
the nature of the next community. Mud
is the mixture of life, eggs embracing semen
the amino acids that convulse and conspire with life.
I was born in the middle of this muddy river,
a people arose from her mud
and now we drink muddy waters
to ingest our ancestors

Upon your, my, death
Throw my body into the wild
river where I was born.
Let her swallow me, sweep
me out into the gulf where the salt
will dissolve me return me
to where I started, where
Guadalupe conceived me.

*

I drink my coffee, begin the day
scribbling against the madness
so that I can get my heaven my landless place
that I long for.
I can't beat on my guitar anymore
my guitar is no substitute
for your embrace
I have practiced all my life
that's why I give myself no
choice other than to work and
to love, to write what is
mine, ours, what is yours
what is my ancestors, my future
wherever I go. My work my
love is this everyday life
of rising, planting and imagining uprisings
maybe few if anyone notices
that we are all the same
what matters above all else is
how we treat and greet each other
work, love, words, struggle, movements, community -- it's all the same...

Arnoldo García

quetzalcoatl

my languages

have muddied work-boots on

callused syllables for hands

my languages

are prome

to heart attacks and alcoholism

my languages have peaceful armies called spring

who wage war for flower, song and a living wage

pregnant with seeds, souls and sacrifice

fertile

awaiting

your tongues

*

My tongue is

a feathered serpent

crawling in the spittle of massacres

flying into the dust of retreats

organizing for the sixth sun...

Arnoldo García

[April 15+ poems]

Belief systems in trance-sits

I believe in

humming birds

colibrís

chuparrosas

hum-

ming

birds,

the only goddesses

worthy

of

my

sins.

*

En mis palabras viven

campesinos

soles-huracanes

hombres y mujeres poseidas

por dioses y diosas

alabando luz y verdes

senderos, un cielo azul

que se trenza en ríos,

en árboles y una

humanidad contrincante

contradiciente

multicoloreada

multicorozonada

alegre, esperazuda

palabras hinchadas

gestando

lluvias y soles

*

Speaking in transtongues

trancemusic

trancemission

trancegenders

trancelingual

trancepose

trancegender

trancemusics

trancelate

trancenatioal

trancehuman

trancefusion

tranceplant

trancejazz

trancelucid

trancesmile

trancemission

trancesister

trancerevolution

trancegress

trancegressor

trancelocated

tranceplanted

trancesperm

trancegestate

trancetongue

trancedancing

tranceborder

tranceblood

trancecultura(l)

trancelocura

trancetorno

trancegest

trancegod

trancewords

trancetongue

trancelanguage

tranceborders

trancecolors

tranceeyes

trancevision

trancelaughter

trancebound

tranceband

tranceport

trancemusic

trancespace

tranceblues

trancegoddesses

tranceshell

trancesex

tranceorgasm

tranceat

tranceculture

trancepoetry

trancehuman

trans-trance

trancegenic

trancestorm

trancehuracán

trancehuman

trancerevolution

trancelands

trancegarabateos

transas

trancescribbles

arnoldo garcía

transtongue

My brain is a network of languages

you here read in english

My brain processes everything three times

in english

in spanish

in pocho dream languages

I translate every syllable among every syllable

i am at the speed of molecules

bouncing making chaos out of every sound

combining and recombing

until i spit it out

Marx called language practical consciousness

you hear, you read, you think what I speak, write, or gestate to you

my tongue is a superhighway of consciousness

the transtongue of humanity

I am a human bridge of words with feet, desires, six senses, tattoos

lover's eyes that are sabers or tenderness

I jump from one language bank to another

my tongue gets wet or swept away, drowning, in the currents of my throat.

I go over or under each language knowing that she is a bare electrical chord of lightnings

that can electrocute me, sear my tongue

with an explosion that rises up from the belly of the earth

blows a hole the size of a tractor in my tongue

all the words spill out of the dam of my breasts

Please drink me, do not let me evaporate in the blasting sun or thunderstorm...

*

Please note: This is the 14th spontaneous poem for 30 in April 2010.

arnoldo garcía

homesickness

i am homesickness

the road

the wandering

the horizon

the search for the next field

moving on after the last harvest season

packing everything into the pick-up

hopping in the back

the road is for the weary migrant

the road is the migrant's other vacation

you go to the next season

prune souls

prop communal branches sagging with the goddess's breasts

we suckle on ripening lips

sunburnt chapped nipples

our bodies

rasping against

the trees

apples

cherries

apricots

peaches

green beans

tomatoes

watermelons

grapes

hops

beet

before winter sets in

and we flee before the snow

traps us in her ice cream with canned condensed milk

I am homesickness

I don't belong anywhere

except on the dark nights

sliced by highways and rosaries for insurance

No one will remember me anywhere

I have lived nowhere long enough to be a memory

I become the human dust

the housewife washes off the fruit and vegetables

while she cooks for her family

I am at the table being eaten alive

as I hunger over beans and tortillas in a moldy migrant camp

crunch on the rare chile verde

I hear laughter (our own)

I hear prayers (my grandmother leading us from temptations)

I hear snoring (the fatigue of hardest working brothers and sisters slightly poisoned every day to ensure a slow death by a thousand hoes and blisters)

In the morning the singing begins

The comal sizzling with tomatoes being cooked on the ancient griddle my gandmom

carries with us from meal to meal, a portable stove top over an open fire, from place to place,

My grandfather is a human compass and map

He can find any field anywhere in the dark of the early hours of what will be a 14, 15 16, 17, 18, even 20 hour work-day (depending on the season)

We drive to the edge of a day that will soon arrive

with her ignorant sun that treats humans and plants equally

no mercy for those without a chlorophyl skin, a green skin that ripens fruit

and ages humans into dog years

You pour your coffee without a thought

You slice your tomatoes, sometimes a little miffed by its imperfections

You cook bacon, chicken, spaghetti, carrots, broccoli, tasty salads,

impeccably topped with goat cheese or olives

Oblivious to the migrant hands and backs

the destruction of a human body the circumstantial evidence of your ignorance

I am now homesick

for every place I've ever trekked

for every migrant camp I ever lived even if for a few weeks

for every road that lead us to our homes everywhere

I am homesick every day that I am not on the road

to the next season

to the next field

to the next migrant dance and wedding

the luxury of the poor who feed you every day and night

I am homesick and there is no cure

except to bury me in a dirt road

at the intersection of solstices

There is no cure

except to banish the sadness of departures and separation

keep me close to your eyes your breathing your steady word

You come home every day after work

I look for my home as I look for work

My sickness is fatal, is collective

except for a home and assurances that I won't be thrown out or away

when the last season is done and the geese fly over the fields

and we follow them, we're next, we're done and forgotten

Don't forget me, don't obliterate us

shelter us

defend us

put your arm around the shadows of our desires

and everything may be alright

but not today

not this morning

I am homesick and this place will not heal me

Arnoldo García

La bandera

Mi única bandera

es la colcha

que Agustina cortó y cosió con pedazos de su cuerpo

The only flag

worthy of marching under

of pledging allegiance

is the quilt that Agustina

cut and sew from body

Arnoldo García

The next shell/el caracol porvenir (drafts)

The revolution

is to be human poet

The revolution

Walter Lowenfels

Vladimir Mayakovsky

Cherrie Moraga

The human skin is

tender from the class struggle

human tenderness

John Trudell stickman

Rubi Orozco musa

Roque Dalton payaso

Somos humanos

invisibles pulmones

Indivisibles

Mi Rubén Rangel

Ella Barbara Reyes

headRush mis locos

No es mi culpa

que una revolución

humana total

Es la unica

vía pa limpiar todo

lo inhumano

Canto humano

y canto inhumano

la autogestión

Emancipación

liberación humana

sin esclavitud

Te necesita

con tus contradicciones

y maldiciones

Toda palabra

palanca de conciencia

Nos abre surcos

Las semillas son

tus pasos y tus manos

tus besos armas

Una explosión

que late en tu pecho

es la ternura

You are the next shell

communal individual

Art within art

Her patience the lands

compiling lists of demands

That are all our dreams

End human disease

profits, private property

The poets cry out

Let's make up our words

human struggles of beauty

synonyms of dream

Arnoldo García

The commonest manifesto (excerpts)

the hammer and sickle was the first successful world-wide branding of a revolution.

You'd never mistake the hammer and the sickle, a worker, a campesino, an industrial

revolution claiming the lives of ecologies, farmlands, the earth's dna in humanity, seeds,

continental confluences, tributaries and ocean world currents bringing us together

colonization, crystallization of human bones and communes now crying out

for a return to the thirst

...

I don't want a working class revolution.

I want to dismantle the industrial smokestacks, the oil refineries, the paving over of aquifers,

dissolve the combustible explosion, dismember the nuclear imagination into

small quarks of tenderness for the natural world

...

The art of the commune starts somewhere even on a factory floor

where the human automatons rebel, refuse work, refuse to be appendages

the human appendicitis is coming to a peak oil stop

...

proletari-arte to dehumanize humans,

make them creatures of the water-ways and seasonal migrations

...

this is the commonest manifesto:

clean air

clear water

clean soil

for human community

needs

winds in her lungs and to dry her tears

xocolatl (muddy waters) to mix it up with the ancestors of today and tomorrow

dirt-eaters all: maize, beans, calabacitas (squash), chiles, flores, hierbas (weeds and herbs)

we eat dirt by eating plants that sprout their wings in the dirt

...

Arnoldo Garc ía

Redes

enlaces

tejidos

agujas

hilos

sílabas

sonrisas

pláticas

zurcos

semillas

agua

sol

manos

uñas

sazones

tiempos

historias

horas

días

noches

sueños

cambio

letras

garabateos

púas

polvo

sentidos

sabores

olfateos

verbos

sustantivos

sostenibles

aguantables

grava

gravar

escupir

llover

zonas

temporadas

temporales

ideas

pensamientos

notas

músicas

dientes

lengua

garganta

pulmones

corazón

venas

poros

sangre

pies

músculos

nervios

sinapsis

estómago

ano

pené

vagina

pies

rodillas

tierra

camposanto

ancestrales

astrales

antepasados

puertas

ventanas

paredes

pisos

fundación

base

saludos

besos

labios

lenguas

narices

ojos

orejas

quijadas

cabello

carcajadas

rajas

rebanada

arcoiris

luz

cielo

alambre

enchufes

ondas

olas

inalámbricas

gestión

sexual

revolución

mareada

aterrada

evaporada

hervida

congelada

reditada

desplomada

desplumada

fertil

diapositivos

fotografías

luna

zacate

nidos

árboles

ramas

hojas

otoño

migrantes

pájaros

plumas

desnudeces

gestos

tiemblos

reportajes

relojes

respiros

suspiros

sudares

señales

trenzas

hipnóticas

blancos

colisiones

explosiones

abrazos

partituras

parteras

despedidas

despedazos

desperdicios

desesperados

desaparecidos

despertares

disparos

destintas

destinos

destapes

deseos

desastres

desvelos

derrames

derrumbes

danzas

cúmbias

instrumentos

cuerdas

cajas

hoyos

agujeros

tarimas

tareas

tangueos

tanteos

tantrumes

terquedades

tercos

tololoches

talalaches

tarareos

reos

rejas

rayas

retumbas

tumbas

túneles

tonadas

toneladas

tonterías

cicatrices

herida

lista

listones

blusas

blues

blandeceres

ombligos

vientres

ventanas

vértices

verdades

vértigos

vergas

guerrilla

guerrotas

garrotes

gaviotas

galopeo

relinchar

relumbrar

rescatar

respirar

restar

sumir

dividir

multiplicar

embarazar

embelezar

embarcar

masticar

digerir

defecar

enterrar

sobar

alar

volar

trigal

inseminar

diseminar

decimar

vibrar

gotear

cósmica

big

bang

el bang

humano

e

inhumano

la bomba

atómica

humana

el sol

el cuajo

de cúazares

el

tic

toc

la marcha

marchitándose

la composición

de la descomposición

podrido

ciclo

ciclón

huracán

vientos

olas

ondas

oh

Arnoldo García

10 Things to Do

(plus a bonus track)

1. Build a new

community

2. Learn a new

language

3. Be loved &

love

4. Accept tenderness

in all her shapes, forms & powers

5. Organize a guerrillla

of poetry

(a little war of words)

6. Visit my family,

my neighbors

7. Eradicate sadness

& human suffering

8. Draw a map

of the desired world,

superimpose your map

over the known world

Now throw away the one that's easier

to live and struggle in

9. Write your dreams on walls

as graffitti

10. Celebrate, honor

your ancestors, your lovers

Bonus track, world premiere release:

11. Surprise yourself, surprise me

let's live together our worldly life.

Arnoldo García

Our revolution & theirs

I was not born of Adam & Eve

I was born

from the breasts

of Quetzalcoatl

I was born

out

of her plumed vagina

the birth canal leading to a sun-womb

born

crashing out

of the belly button of the moon.

My river banks are lips

that kiss the feet of my lovers

or migrants crossing over

her smile is muddy

mud the mixture of life, the semen stinking the eggs

the amino acids that convulse with life

I was born in the middle of a muddy river

a people rising from the mud

and now we drink muddy-water

to ingest our ancestors

upon

your

my

deaths

Throw my body into the wild river

where I was born

Let her swallow me

take me to the gulf

where the salt

will dissolve me

return me

to where I started

where I was conceived

I drink my coffee

begin the day

scribbling against the madness

my heaven

my landless place

that I long for

I can't beat on my guitar anymore

My guitar is no substitute

for your embrace

your raspy silence

I have been practical all my life

that's why I give myself

no choice

other than to work and to love

to write and read poetry

wherever I go

My work my love is my poetry of everyday

and maybe few if anyone notices

that we are all the same

what matters above all else

is how we treat and greet each other

work, love, poetry -- it's all the same

*

I could peel the sun for you

but would you eat

such a fruit?

haiku besos

i crave raw kisses rubbing against her fresh lips my mouth squeezing hers

Arnoldo García

Stopping

I have stopped

fighting my English

garbling my Spanish

denouncing the Aztecs

ignoring my Purépecha tongue

on which war rages

and rage cries unbroken

I am a polygamist

married to many languages

with many more lovers

I am faithful

to all my words

in any language

in any land

on any body

my people invented french kissing

we stick our tongue in your mouth

to taste and desire every dictionary

lust translators interpret

the same dream

in so many dusts

in so many mouths

our lips the shock troops

our desire to subjugate your tongue

by any verb necessary

your ears fall

and your body follows

and your imagination hobbled

speak in tongues but don't mumble

vomit doves and poison syllables

I speak out, denounce and debate against myself

I am split in three

and my tongue

binds my wounds

and my tongue

heals my bones

and laps up

the water from your body

My tongue drills

endlessly into your ears

guaguanco on the shell of your being

a human vibe

to turn you against yourself

that garbles

my ways

mimics

and makes a mockery

of the root

of a different world

sound

Arnoldo García

mi cuerpo/my body

My body

is spring

your smile

autumn

where I live without aging

where I lay

to guide the stars

that's why

my body

is spring.

Mi cuerpo es

la primavera

Tu sonrisa

el otoño

donde

vivo

sin envejecer

donde

me acuesto

para guiar a las estrellas

por eso

mi cuerpo es

la primavera

The Pages of Day and Night by Adonis (Ali Ahmad Sa’id) علي أحمد سعيد إسبر‎

Adonis is the poet of the human body and all her sensations, senses and junctures, mixteries and recombinations. Anyone can love anyone, Adonis's poems prove this and provide the fertile soil for soul partners and lovers to merge and emerge in ecstasy and sober. Read Adonis to complete yourself as a human View all my reviews >>

Arnoldo García

my words my languages are nothing more than my lovers

I am not a train

my tongue is not a railroad

my heart is not a steam-engine,

my language is not a combustible explosion

I do not stop to switch lines so that someone may understand me

I am a transnational suicide language bomber

I have dictionaries, dirt and communities strapped to my chest

I explode in mixteries

I am not a code-switcher

I am a river of sounds made by communities

singing

flying

in the dust

I cough up ancestors

cambio al español

paddling through the rough waters

of having english forced down my throat

drowning my Mexicanness

under the whips and slaps

of white teachers

monolingual monsters

who feared anything they didn't understand

and attempted to break down

My language is a wild horse a crazy horse an untamable horse

a migrant horse

un caballo locote

un caballo indomable

un caballo que relincha con el viento

i am no code switcher

i do not change directions like a train

no i am fluid water muddy waters avalanches lavalas

a mass movement of syllabic hammer and sickles

a dictatorship of communal tenderness

a french kiss con labios mestizos

un beso que nunca puede ser un kiss

un beso donde intercambios saliva ancestral y deseos hondos

como las raíces de mi lengua y sus lenguajes

mis palabras no son más que mis amantes.

my words my languages are nothing more than my lovers

Arnoldo García

This neighborhood dies of thirst

Our revolution

has no martyrs

we have no revolution

yet we have martyrs

young men and boys

who kill each other

because we have no revolution

except the violence of one for them

The border brothers

make north and south

the north is nothing without the south

the south cannot exist without the north

yet young men and boys

kill each other

for lack of direction

the border brothers are both

north and south

north is a border

south of the border

north borders south

they are lost in their vengeance

"War is the extension of politics by other means"

Gang war

is a figment

of the imagination

of boys and young men

with guns

what politics

are they extending

except naked power

over their neighbors

over their families

in the ruins of an imaginary war

with real bullets

with real victims

destroyed families

Thirteen years old

fourteen

fifteen

sixteen

seventeen

they'll be forgotten

only to be remembered by their mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters

who have a crushed sun in their throat

East Oakland is a ghost, a crying woman, a gutted kid, foreclosed futures

altars on 55th, 40th, MacArthur, Foothill

Our future disappears in drive-bys and shootouts

we have a name and a history

we are not to die before our time

we walk the graveyard that the guns propose in our neighborhoods

When I go to work in the mornings

I see students walking to school

I look for colors

red blue black & white signals

spray-can scribes

marking the neighborhood as theirs

and everyone else beware

but the cops have more guns, radios, courts, judges, jails

more men armed and dangerous

patrolling the streets

where will the children go

to jail to school to work to post?

How will this story end?

My neighbors go to work early

come back late

the children are left alone and become old by nightfall

we bury them at dawn

and make it to work by 9?

east oakland lies in the middle of the borders north & south

surrounded by crosses, guns, cops, day laborers, norteños, sureños and gentrifiers

with their banks and police force

how will this story begin?

Todos los días, todas las noches

POESÍA

POETRY

Every day, every night

Dos poetas hoy / Two poets today:

Arnoldo García & Angel Soberanis (Muteado)

*

Arnoldo García

Tongue Effigies

(excerpt)

the moon is full tonight

in La Realidad the moon is a mirror

in Toppenish the moon is a lost migrant

in Oakland the moon is the face

of a mestiza

in Nicaragua the earth is a satellite

of the moon (Sandino's final hideout)

Tonight she bears her scars

the rabbit of ancient marathons, becoming:

homeless moon

unemployed moon

undocumented moon

terrorist moon

prostitute moon

celular moon

speak english-only moon

and she sprinkles kerosene on my tongue

effigie of my burnt language tongue

my tongue chasing back the sun

the moon a blunt dagger

thumping against my tongue

an effigie for your desire

*

*

Angel Soberanis

Axocoti cintlaolli

Purple corn reminds me of my grandma mi abuelita back in

Michoacan….teaching my moms how to

sing the songs of keeping the struggle

alive with beans and rice.. with love and

sacrifice.. with patience and not wating

for the right time.. las tortillas a mano

just like you craft a movimiento con

cuidado u need to know how…and even

do I can’t hardly remember my abuelita

cause I was to young to recall I taste the

revolution en las tortillas de mi ama… y

las Adelitas.. Asata Shakur.. las mujeres

de Chiapas y Oaxaca and indigenous

people through out the world reminds me

of the rebel spirit that lives in our people

nuestra gente valiente fighting for 500

years and counting… cause we were not

born slaves that’s why we run away…

cause we were not born slaves that’s why

we run away..

Questioning the Days

Where is Oscar Grant?
Where is Iraq?
How lost is the memory of the wounds?
What hurts more: to be forgotten, to be remembered, to be erased?

Oscar Grant
is
a black dove
Sheafing peace in a spent bullet
cuddled by his folded arms behind his back
and stars have nested
in the holes that were carved in his back and heart

Iraq has disappeared
in the long night of war
in the long day of soldiers
who long to be home
against those
who long for their homes
to be left alone

Our skins have become the walls
that determine
where we can
and cannot
go.
Black skin longer than the wall of China
God cannot cross the street without avoiding
the security check
She must have her iris scanned, fingerprinted, photographed
must prove she is God
Oscar Grant has no choice, he is black
No need to ask for papers, for ID
go straight to jail or die
God, Oscar Grant, there is no difference
since in Iraq God is not white
her believers must be guilty.

*

Oscar Grant
lies bleeding dreams and stars
at the Fruitvale BART station.
The cops smoking cigarrettes in oblivion
The flip-cams, the cell-phone cams whirring
You have to film this to believe it.

*

Iraq has bomb craters on her back
What can you build with $12 billion a month in war and occupation?

Iraq is my black sister my black brother my blackened eyes

How do you answer these questions:
We are not all Oscar Grant?
We are not all Iraq?
Sustainable violence sprouts from our pores?
...

April Fools Day/Día de los inocentes sin fronteras -- 2010

Note: Every day in April a new poem will be posted here.

NOTA: Cada día de Abril pondré un poema nuevo en aquí

My daily prayer to the gods of violence & coercion

Make this day go away.

Make the night stay

Make her body emerge (always at her side)

Shield me with ink

Tattoo my lungs with tenderness

Forgive me my daily coffee made by anonymous scalded campesinos

*

The Arizona desert is blooming

with bloated migrant bodies

the sacred human cactus

thorns in our eyes

sunlight in our veins

dust on our tongues

evaporating the shadows

that survive

the journey

to the oblivion of sweatshops, jails

& families reunited

the disappeared don't count

the survivors sometimes are jealous of their dead

who die slowly in the cross-

ing

who die slowly on the street-

corner

who die slowly in the class-

room

erased

erasing

rasing

rased

humanity

that refuses

to cower

*

Men with guns

can solve

any problem

any where

any time

in east Oakland

norteños

sureños

border brothers

OPD

the underground blues

for fallen martyrs without a cause

money & power

private property & walls

grow out of the barrel of a gun

not a pen

respect is the cost of a bullet

we

bury

our sons

and daughters

say goodbye

adiós

revenge

becomes

a life

lived

in prison

on the streets

in the schools

in the ruins

we call home

tears the size of hacksaws

shredding ribs

disturbing the ancestors

cleaving the day in two

one for sorrow

one for whatever's left of you

after the burial

men with guns

can solve anything

except this.

Days of Fear: A Firsthand Account of Captivity Under the New Taliban by Daniele Mastrogiacomo



This is a gripping account by a journalist who instead of getting an interview with a Taliban ("Qura'nic student movement") commander is abducted and held ransom by those he set out to interview. Daniele Mastrogiacomo, the author who tells his story in "Days of Fear: A Firsthand Account of Captivity Under the New Taliban," goes through incredible up's and downs, rationalizing and resisting, despairing and hopeful of achieving release, freedom.

Matrogiacomo shares his the roller-coaster emotions of his captivity that both paralyze and push him. One moment he is realizing he is getting what he wanted: an inside look at the Taliban. Another moment he is pleading for his life arguing that he is a journalist not a soldier and standing up, even if calm, against armed men while his hands are either tied behind his back or he is in cuff and chains.

"Days of Fear" can be read as expose of the "new" Taliban, of the mutual cruelty unleashed by U.S. occupation and war to dislodge an organized force hell-bent on living life, structuring and restructuring Afghanistan on relgious creed, a true monoculture that is a reaction to the privations, both real and ideological that we know as the economic, social, religious, cultural and political mores of the "West."

Mastrogiacomo meets Taliban men who are steeled, determined, cruel, pious, praying five times a day, capable of coercion, torture, solidarity and exaltation, laughter, happiness. British and U.S. troops, convoys, drones are always in the background, being avoided by what in reality is a guerrilla operations.This book comes at a good time, as U.S. military builds up pressure trying to dislodge and defeat the Taliban in their own strongholds.

Mastrogiacomo's story begins on February 26, 2007 and on this same day in 2010 the news reports that same impression: the Taliban are still potent, organizing resistance and fighting in ways that hadn't been seen before: suicide bombers.

Will our "days of fear" end with freedom and reunion with those we love and need to live fully? Or are we looking at a long war that is shaping what looks to be a long century of wars, depravities, natural world revolutions and deeper neoliberalism that will make the previous century look peaceful in comparison?

View all my reviews >>

Where Are Our Migrant Farmworker Poets,
Our Dissidents?

The New York Times declared misty-eyed:
Bei Dao [was] sent to the countryside, where he spent 11 years working as a blacksmith and a concrete mixer, experiences that gave him a feel for multiple aspects of Chinese life. (American fiction and poetry could use more former blacksmiths and concrete mixers among its ranks. Albeit without the forced labor.)

When ignorance shows its white face, it hurts. We have many dissidents, farmworker, former blacksmiths, dry-wall builders, migrant workers, day laborers, queer, straight, imprisoned and formerly imprisoned, criminal, on welfare, whose families were impoverished or killed because of the demand for equality and/or the return of stolen lands and resources, decimista/improvisers of traditions. We have our dissidents, but the problem is they're not white, they usually don't speak Spanish or prefer to write or speak in English (although we all do) and are also translated compentently into English.

Farmworkers poets, Chicano, Mexicans in the U.S., abound. Indigenous poets, our original dissidents, have yet to be truly and profoundly recognized.

There's Alurista, a Chicano poet who saved America from monolingualist starvations. And legions after and before him.

Ana Castillo womanist novelist and poet.

Cherrie Moraga, a visionary poet, playwright and essayist, who weaves us all into a fabric of freedom and liberation.

Raul R. Salinas, who passed away recently, a "criminal," an inmate who became a writer, poet and political activist in federal prisons and was put on parole, literally, exiled to the U.S. Northwest after a group of intellectuals and educators led by trailblazer Tomas Ybarra and others demanded his freedom, recognizing his writing work. Salinas work was first published by Hellcoal Press while still in prison. Raul retrieved and helped make sense of the Indigenous connection among and between Chicanos and other Indigenous people.

John Trudell, Indigenous political rights activist and community leader, who paid a severe price for keeping our country aware of the contemporary and historical roots of land theft, forced removal and disappearance of entire Indigenous peoples and their languages, community and cultures, destroying but not erasing the memory and practices of sustainable human-natural world relations. And with him and us,

Leonard Peltier, sentenced to the absurd two-life sentences, the longest held U.S. political prisoner, who has become a great painter and thinker-writer, redeems us all when he wrote his memoirs, My Life Is My Sun Dance.

So, New York Times, we have plenty of blacksmiths, concrete-mixers, migrant farmworker, Indigenous free and imprisoned poets, our dissidents who speak for us, dream and collaborate with us for a different U.S. where poets are teachers -- not impoverished, not unpublished, not lost to our memory and histories. We may or may not ever be recognized. Yes we want readers and audiences, television broadcasts and evening talk programs, but to get these we have to change the country, the culture of possession and dispossesion and one for cooperation, collective and individual dreaming, freedom of speech with printing presses and www's.

A country is only as mighty and visionary as her dissidents and not from the weaponry, the generals, the armies and her presidents.