[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 3] 2 Poems 3: Cloud Serpents, Cloud Ocean | Human morning

Cloud Serpents, Cloud Ocean

I have discovered

the cloud ocean

where my grandfather's people live

wave after wave

of cloud

of clouds

I am

their commodore

their stevedore

their day laborer

their migrant campesino sun

the eleventh comandante

of the open cloud sea.

My grandfather

belonged to the serpent cloud people

the clouds,

he always smiled as he proclaimed his roots,

are the most powerful of all gods

and goddesses

natural deities

and forces, animals and

creatures, human

and inhuman,

he said.

The cloud ocean

dominates

the blue and the brown,

the cosmos

and the molecules

Yes, you can fly

right through them

because nothing can harm, destroy or burst

them

wave after wave of cloud

relentless colorless

now retreating, now attacking

now nowhere to be seen

suddenly they ambush the sky

and flood the land

with their transparent blood,

which regroups

shape shifts

are resurrected

reincarnated

reclaiming the liquid light

front and rises again

and again and again

complete hegemony without end

or beginning

The clouds will

blind you

extinguish the sun

make you crash or slow down

they make you forget

which way is up, which way is down

the clouds take your north, your south, your west, your east

make you lose your place

they make you forget where you are

where they sky is

where the earth used to be.

Flying instruments, compasses and sextants are usless

in the cloud ocean

She is a deadly quilt

or a serpent whose skin

wraps around the whole horizon,

asphixiating the sun

till you freeze and sunburn.

The cloud ocean is no shield

a stampede that fools you

because she just floats by.

The cloud ocean lulls you

into believing in rain,

a rain-goddess,

into believing in planting

into treading mountains

into precarious ceremony

into believing you can

channel her

claim her

drown her in fields of maize

devour her in revolutionary theory and hunger

bath in her

cloud ocean is humanity's

complete passage

She is snow-peaked mountain

She is reservoir

She is snowline

She is transparency of winds

the turbulence of human migrancy

tornado, whirlwind, hurricane, tempest

lightning, thunder,

bed, springboard

air current-serpent

whirling slithering deity of complete flight

She is faithful

to her people

and eternal blindness

to those who do not recognize

her world as the real

that decides the faith

of the unbelievers

She translates light

She is the biggest living organism

in the earth cloud ocean

nothing no one can

stop her

resist her

Submit, submission

is the all

She takes her time

because she created time

She defines space

because she is space

She has carved grand canyons

and birthed grandfather

She is ancient riverbed

She is Mississippi on her curved hips and back

the place we we worship pray

become human cloud

She is ancestor seabed

lashing out forever

to the meteor wall

the unforgiving wound

She resists, plays with us

makes us stumble

The plane slashes her skin, her flesh

she heals as fast, faster than our flight

That's what my grandfather,

son of the cloud serpents,

told me

to remember

to live

to become

a cloud

as he exhaled smoky clouds

from his cigarette...

*

Human Morning

I am suffering
from a deep sadness

rooted in the Atlantic salt

of chains dogs

the corpse of our lands

and police fields,

the honor of separation.

I remember everything, everyone

this deep sadness

of sunsets in strange lands

that

slap me

work me

into the oblivion of winter.

Right now

Only

your tenderness

your unconditional embrace

your mouth over mine

only you could heal me

no one else

not I alone,

two or more to build

an endless embrace

an infinite tenderness

to counter the bleak horizon

of those I've lost

of those who have lost me

in the dust of migrant implosions

only tenderness

your body against and over mine

to protect me

to save me

from the hole

they've dug

in my body

emptying me

of myself

emptying you

from me

and

filling me

filling us

with their despair

with their rage

against us

who ignore their destruction

An embrace

gestating an inheritance of a new land, a new house, a new home, a different horizon

from the splinters of our skin

from the shadows of our revolutions

from the iris of our smile

Put your arms around me

Put yourself in my arms

We become a weapon

a human bomb

a human bond

a human fault-line

the geology of our veins

that topples walls

that lacerates dictatorships

with the callousness of a new human tenderness

to rise up a new morning...

*

[Poema 2.5] Laura Rivas: Una xicana exiliada en Oakland

2.6.09

A Xicana exile in Oakland
There are some things that shouldn’t be written
And can only be felt

And there are other things that must be written
Are already written
That we cannot afford to feel

I don’t like writing and yet it carries me like water
All my favorite writers
Use metaphors of water, light, food,
Things that awaken our senses

Why exiled? Because I cannot return
Or because I was forced to leave?
In resistance I chose never to return
And at times I feel I never really left

The Roma say nostalgia is a longing
For a home one never really had
A return that is impossible
After generations displaced and dispossessed
The journey is our home
Migrations and movements
Nos alimentan

###

I want to write a poem about survival
But I want it to be strong
Like my ancestors in the past
Who fought and resisted
the annihilation of our people, culture, mother tongue
Like my ancestors today
Who stand on street corners selling oranges
looking for work, cleaning your homes, raising your children.
Resisting death every day
Resisting the heaviness of poverty
Resisting depression, anxiety, isolation
Fighting to live, breathe, smell clean air

Survival

###

How long would it take me to write a poem?

20 minutes
20 hours
20 weeks
or 20 years

I started writing about my life at the age of 10.
My first journal my refuge
For an isolated child
No warm hand to hold
Shoulders too tired to lean on
Ears too busy for me
Spilled out words
About what she had to survive
Endure
Hide
And struggle with for the rest of her life

My pen and paper took me places I could never afford to go
In my mind I wandered off the map
Got lost and didn’t care that they may not find me
That I might go hungry or get cold

###

2. 10. 09

last night an unexpected reunion
of exiles
wordsmiths
crafters of imagination
words take flight
from underneath dim lights
spilling warmth
comfort
art.

Poetry of place
You mean I can write about that place
That sad buried place
I carry in me like marrow?
Bone marrow.
It’s in my bones, she said
And I felt shivers

Lynwood is a small place
Like Antigua
A small place in the middle of an urban ocean
“The armpit of L.A.”

Where metal birds swoop low
Overtaking sounds of children playing
Laughing señoras with colorful mandiles
Hanging from jiggling bellies

Where nopales and rosales grow
In the midst of grafitti, LA smog, drive-by shootings, and droughts
Teaching persistence and survival

Where children ride skateboards on their knees
Wear rollerblades 3 sizes too big

Where bottles and cans decorate lawns
Yellow, green, and brown with wooden sticks to hold up skinny trees

A small place where I was born
A small place that raised me
To see with my heart and act with integrity
A small place that could not hold me anymore
A small place that exploded with urban uprising in the 90’s
And spit out children with fear in their eyes
Violence on their minds
Resistance in their hearts
Songs of hope on their tongues

A small place where we looked up and saw stars
Lined up perfectly in the sky
Connect-the-dots one by one
A little closer a sparkle and then another
O wait! It’s an airplane not a star

A small place ‘mistaking planes for stars’

-
References made to poems by Aida Salazar and Raquel from Butchlalis of
Panochtitlan, from the reading at Galeria de la Raza one chilly Monday evening
at an event called “mistaking planes for stars”
------

Migrante (In)migrante quieres ser mi amante?
2.17.09

Por el día del amor y la amistad
Porque nuestra gente se dispone a dejarlo todo, hasta su propia vida… por amor
Porque mi gente me sigue enseñado todo lo que es del amor y la amistad
Una jornada imposible al parecer
Te enfrentas a riesgos inolvidables
Inaguantables
Intolerantes
Inevitables

Porque aquí no te abren las puertas
Barreras sobre barreras
Sobre tierra y dentro del mar
Bajo cielos azules y estrellas conmovedoras

Paredes y fronteras te dicen que no
Tus niños familia demuestran que sí
Es posible pero más que nada es
Necesario
Para llenar esos ojitos de esperanza
Con un poquito de pan
Y leche para nutrir un corazonsito que solo sabe de
Su padre dentro de marcos decorados
por fotos y recuerdos guardados en el alma de su madre
y de su abuela

por allá dicen que somos indocumentados
entre mi gente somos los que aguantan
somos los que luchan
somos los que sufren
y despiertan con hambre
se acuestan con frío

trabajan sin protección sin derechos sin exigir demasiado

Pero también somos dignos
De una vida justa y humana
De darle a nuestros hijos
El sudor de nuestra frente en forma de un tierno abrazo y un ‘te quiero’

Somos un pueblo de buen Corazón
Somos de canela pura
Somos la sal de la tierra
Somos la caña dulce de un dia largo y asoleado

Somos el hoy ayer y mañana
Somos el Nuevo amanecer
Somos la nueva luna
La luna llena
El tochtli aventurero
Que canta con las estrellas

Somos el fuego que arde
Que consume
Que deja todo
Y abre caminos para poder empezar otra vez

Somos desierto, mar y montaña

Somos los hijos y los nietos soñadores
Ilusionados con la vida a pesar del profundo dolor
De la separación y la distancia

Somos aquí y somos allá
La lucha seguirá!

Somos amor
Somos cariño, ternura e ilusión
Todo por una vida mejor
… por un pequeño mundo mejor
Donde el amor no nos cueste la vida
Donde el hambre no nos lleve a la muerte bajo un sol ardiente
Donde el trabajo no nos desbarate los pulmones, brazos, espaldas, cuellos, cinturas,
ojos y organos digestivos.
Donde el miedo y las preocupaciones de la vida no nos llegue a destrozar el corazon.

Donde nuestros hijos e hijas ya no tendrán que esperar un docena de años para
volvernos a ver… a acariciar… a abrazar… a disfrutar

Donde nuestros padres no mueren solitos… sin la tierna caricia de sus hijos, nietos y
sobrinos.

Migrante… eres amor, ternura, canela pura
Migrante (in)migrante… no quieres ser mi amante?

###

“No hay cien años que no reviente … ni esclavo que lo aguante”

*

Laura Rivas es una activista de derechos humanos y poeta en desarrollo. Ella trabajó por la Red Nacional Pro Derechos Refugidos e Inmigrantes (www.nnirr.org), organizando con comunidades y documentando violaciones para defender nuestros derechos humanos.

[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.

[Poema 1] Six Sky Resurrection [ancient ransom note]

On the day
8 Ben 16 Kayab
Six Sky
of Río Azul
was
buried.

Most likely
during the year
450


Then in the late 20th Century
Looters took
the vessel
from
her grave.

Now Six Sky sits
under a glass display
(anxiously awaiting liberation)
in the Detroit Institute of the Arts.
The looters kept no record,
but the people will always remember

In December 1985
140 small pieces of
gold
jade
obsidian
and
turquoise
were taken from
the National Museum of Anthropology
in Mexico City | Tenochtitlán
the thieves
sent
a message:
these priceless precious stones
are being held for ransom

Now, the Maya Zapatistas are paying the ransom
freeing Indigenous past and present
from the neo-liberal kidnappers, the grave-baron-land-robbers,
the military industrial complex of generals, soldiers, paramilitaries,
police, battalions, secret police, political parties, non-profits, politicians
and toastmasters of capital.

Six Sky
has been
resurrected,
scattered
between Detroit and Tenochtitlán
Seattle, Oakland, Matamoros,
Chicago, Toledo, New York
Organized into a community army
armed with the colors of the earth
their weapons are our ancestors
who have secretly taken over the underworld
putting ski-masks on the sun and moon

Gestating flesh and blood onto the skeletons of our dreamers
.
In the butterfly of our women
flutter two banners, two flags, their lips chanting
we shall dream
we shall win
we shall birth
we shall love
we shall shatter
we shall clench our hearts
we shall cry in community
we shall sing off the face of the enemy
we shall batter the helmeted soldier,
laugh at his bayonet
we shall stop the bullets, the bombs, the fires
And the new people
that Six Sky dreamt
in her deep sleep
in the year 450
emerge, rise, fly, speak with an earthen tongue
when we will swallow the sky
to become pregnant with clouds, rain, butterflies, milpas, babies,
chidlren-ancestors, who slept in our arms
and made thunder rise
from the maize, the frijol, the women, the men,
the elders, the still-born, the invaders, the raptors,
who remembered then:
Six Sky was resurrected in the sixth sun….

[1984-2012, unfinished words of mariposas | c.s]

[Poema 0] Companion of the winds

Irascible winds
of the world
push me upward in your anger
into your arms
i want to be fully human
unafraid of the vast night
that surrounds our frail
skulls;
in me
a luminous skeleton
a mineral web of light
a sinew of dialectical mercury
a mirror of air
a storm of verbs
a root of veins
gathers,
gestates,
agonizes,
rises
a full sail
a net of winds
a companion of these winds.

*

To know my identity
you have to touch
the ground under my feet.
To then know the difference
between
my identity
and
the ground
that holds them up,
you will begin
grasping
the thing
which is reflected
in the six syllables of my
name.

*

Por qué nací
bajo este signo
en mí residen
las peores experiencias
heredadas a golpes
enterradas a lágrimas

.

*

The guitar prayer (far east Oakland)

Bryan asks me to bless him
Walks behind the table where I am sitting,
into a room and comes out with a new guitar in a case.
He pulls out the guitar
Places it in my hand
Then he stands at the head of the table
Puts a plastic glass filled with a bit of water
and leans a plastic-encased god against the glass 
Places his palms together
and bows his head
I begin strumming minor chords, diminished chords
double-diminished riffs and a Victor Jara or two melody.
Bryan then kneels
Eyes closed,
his arms and hands still palm to palm 
held tight to his chest
He bends down touching the tiled floor with his forehead
in the communion of my rattling guitar
The strings become disembodied paths,
the explosion of time strewn across your lap
I improvise I invent I hum I hit the harmonics
I vibrate in the ultimatums gushing out of the mouth of the guitar
I bend the strings, twisting the voice of the faithful to stand up
against the mercy of a merciless god
The guitar becomes a wall pushing me
to the edge of another spiritual disaster
There is tremolo in my fingertips
Making space flutter, implode, scratch, annul the human pact
I inject the music, the tones, the rusty strings into my skin
Invading the veins, subjugate the heart
My body becomes transformed into a well of noises, lungs and monsters
My bones become the broken strings that stitch together what remains
of my corpse, my soul, my bloodied tongue
Bryan kneeling is unmoved by the turbulence of the guitar upon him
I am breathing, choking, being sucked under through the mouth of the guitar
I am ingesting the suffering, the breach
where the enemy of noise storms my body
I keep strumming, plucking sounds out of god's breasts
Bryan has dissolved into himself
a mirage, a beggar, a street-corner guitarist
wailing, breathing, becoming a son without a mother
The guitar brings us both back to the cafe where cups clink on tabletops
Friends talk becomes a blurring of words cut into waves of human comfort
Bryan stand up slowly, his hands palm-to-palm still against his chest
He opens his eyes and declares:
The water is now holy water.
Should I drink it? he asks for my opinion.
You should go outside and pour on a plant, on the dirt
Offer to our ancestors mixed there.
One day our descendants will also pour water holy or not
at the new year's eve or on our anniversary
to let us once again drink together, live together, eat together
Praying or warring
Divided or hurt
Willing or not
Alive in any case.
Bryan lifts and places the plastic cup of water next to my laptop
Please share the holy water, pour it for me on the dirt and plants outside.
He walks away
the music swirling around him
Biting him, chunk by chunk, distracting his body
And he dissolves into the breath of a shadow....

La comuna de nuestra lengua | The commune of the tongue

-->

La comuna de nuestra lengua |
The commune of our tongue 
[extracts]

a communion

of commotion

a commovement

of movements

who will revolutionize

the skin

of our languages

make

our tongues

as invisible

as transparent

as the most illegal of illegals

as the most undocumented of undocumented

as the most minority of minorities

as the most queer of the queer

as the most visible of the invisible

as the most remembered of the forgotten

as the lowest of the lowliest

as the most homeless among the homelandless

as the most human of humanityness

so when you put your words in the vibrating air

anyone can step into them

feel at home

transliterating freedoms

obliterating the muteness

making the world

into jagged pieces

that fit together in their crags and ragged tendernesses

everything

disperses in orderly chaos

organizes in spontaneous spring-times, whatever the season

who dares make the commotion together

who dares make the movement different

who cares about tomorrow, the natural world

who cares about the land, the community

who cares about our bones, the wind

who dares the sun to return for the sixth time, the continents

who dares to stop time

and return to the starting place?

I am a human out of place

I am a human in a country no longer human

I am a human in every road, path, trail, a movement

Congealing, coalescing, germinating

on the magnetic waves of tenderness

on the gravitational fields of freedom

on the bare arms of a campesina

a commotion

a communition

a cosmomovement of neighbors.

*

I do not want a revolution of empleados

I want a revolution of emplumados.

*

No quiero una revolución de empleados

Quiero una revolución de emplumados.

[...]

Rumi

Rumi

Mis rodillas
besan
a la tierra
y abrazo
al espacio
despacito
en mi carrera sin rumbo
mis labios
te besan
y en torno
besan a todos y todas.
 
Por tus labios

bebo la lluvia
Por los mios
el lodo

Lluvia
lodo
labios
besos

vida
a carrera
despacito
sin mas rumbo que encontrarte

 

Late Picasso: You can't confuse Picasso with anyone else

 


In Late Picasso, covering the last two decades of his life and art production, Picasso re-examines, remarks, re-evaluates and takes off from his own work and those of his peers and ancestors. He does not re-paint, he does not repeat himself as much as builds on his oeuvre, visiting, no retaking and occupying, the highest vantage points of his work.

Late Picasso is a deeper, newly found Picasso. Older yet now slower. He is quoted as saying that in while in one day he does a hundred drawings, variations, sketches and paints, other painters spend a 100 days on one painting.

A painter I admire much once told me that Picasso was over-rated. I did not ask after her why. Poring over each page of "Late Picasso," squinting at the paintings reproduced, he has completely reached another level, twisting-inside-out of the skin of Cubism, distortions that create a new lens of focus. While some of his late work may appear to verge on the sloppy, closer and closer inspection says otherwise. yes, his precision changed but his output didn't. In the 20-volume catalog of his complete work, more than half was produced during the period covered by "Late Picasso."

In art, in poetry, in painting, there are no accidents. In Picassos, there were no accidents.

Picasso painted his daily life, made meaning from his studio, from his relationships to women and other painters, friends and political unfoldings. Picasso made a chronology of art and the artist of a new type out of the life of his imagination. Picasso feared death, dying. This spurred him on to paint and paint, knowing that one day -- whether alive and incapacitated by age or dead, which to him we're the same -- he would not be able to. Picasso made many drafts and versions of his work, from sketches, to paintings to sculpture and collages. He then would paint his paintings, create sculptures from his paintings, an auto-locura [a self-crazyness], creating in the process a new process and fusion of what he had produced and accomplished and then some.

One of my favorite poets wrote that it was a crime for a poet to not write, to not produce poetry, every day. Picasso acted in the same way, literally to the day he died. For us, Picasso not painting was a crime to humanity.

Picasso evolved and emerged out of himself a few times over, a butterfly emerging out of the one cocoon where he created several lifetimes. Not reinventing himself but becoming a creator anew, not stuck on his accomplishments, pushing himself -- and in the process art, artists and us viewers-- to new limits.

Maybe many of us would have stopped, and maybe even the majority of work forgotten, after painting "Guernica." Picasso did no such thing. Ceramics, sculpture, collages, mural-sized paintings, poetry, theater, love making in all, Picasso's work will take many more eyes and generations to settle accounts. His last painting was an open work, yet to be finished or even started. The last painting? He left a blank canvass, signed Picasso.

Over-rated? Maybe. Great, yes. Individual, yes.

No one will confuse Picasso with anyone else other than Picasso.

 

The Prison Poems of Nikolai Bukharin by Nikolai Bukharin

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


A note to start reading "The Prison Poems of Nikolai Bukharin | Transformation of the World (Verse about the Ages, and About People."

Nikolai Bukharin in Russia's revolutionary and socialist history represented a potentially humane leadership alternative to the catastrophe of Stalinism. We will never know. An economist, a sportsman, an organizer, theoretician and now a poet, you can imagine that someone with such a broad political and cultural background would have created a different result from the ex-Soviet Union. In other words Bukharin was a revolutionary with a different approach to culture and vision that was, could have been, different and had an impact. Yet, he ended up in a Stalinist prison. Bukharin was defeated in political debates by Lenin, though not eliminated. After Stalin took power, through COINTELPRO-like tactics, infiltrated, smeared, hounded, isolated, caused divisions, and persecuted, murdered some and then imprisoned many fellow leaders and members who may have thought that their views and organizing were covered by freedom of expression. Debate, oppositions and differences should have been signs of health and may have been comsidered par for the course towards achieving some semblance of unity of action. Many found out otherwise. The Stalin machine attacked Bukharin, imprisoned him, and finally erased him from official history and he faded from the scene.

Bukharin is probably only known by specialists, historians of the Bolsheviks and partisans of the long-faded communist movements. Even then only his writings, much less about his life and fate and even less so about his poetry.

Now, in a 533 page book, the reader will find out that while imprisoned he wrote a cycle of poems dedicated to telling the stories and histories of revolutionaries and their revolutions, their battles, dreams and defeats. Bukharin, even as he was imprisoned and headed towards death, believed in the machine. Irony of ironies, to believe your executioner is your liberator, that good will overcome evil, that there must have been a big mix-up and in due time will be corrected. Subtitled "Transformation of the World (Verse about the Ages, and About People," Bukharin saw all the way to the edge of the first global darkness called fascism, -- and the impending wars -- writing from the other bank of the river of history called Stalinism. Bukharin's backbone is not promising; as I skimmed the pages I saw him write a poem on the "Stalin charter." Optimism and hope never perish? C|S

“But the most amazing thing is that, despite everything, the time of shining hopes had not passed for him. He would pay for these hopes with his head. Moreover, one reason for his preposterous confessions in the dock – incomplete, but sufficiently egregious confessions – was precisely this: he still hoped that the idea to which he had dedicated his life would triumph.” [Anna Larina, This I Cannot Forget, Pandora, 1994. Bukharin's wife.]

Picasso painted as he lived

 

Picasso 1926-1939: From Minotaur to Guernica by Josep Palau i Fabre

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


In Picasso 1926-1939: from Minotaur to Guernica, Josep Palau I Fabre tracked and linked Picasso's daily output of paintings, drawings, etchings, scultptures, collages, poems and other artwork reflecting almost a chronology of his intimate, private and at times public life. A Herculean task, Palau i Fabre provides unusual insights into the creative dynamics and cultural process that is named Picasso. Covering approximately 12 years of Picasso's life and work, Palau documents over 1300 pieces of art produced by Picasso. From the monumental piece "Guernica," including dozens of preparatory pieces that are masterpieces in and of themselves, to pencil drawings on pieces of matchboxes, Palau highlights the connections and the circuits between Picasso's art and the women in his life. "Guernica" was a commissioned painting (about 11 by 25 feet) that became a homage to the city namesake that was carpet bombed during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and a continuing outcry against all war.

In From Minotaur to Guernica, Palau shows how Picasso wove his personal struggles into his artwork and in the process made art and culture that took on a life of their own. Palau links Picasso's art to Picasso's daily strife and tribulations, marriage, love affairs, politics, cultural developments, interpersonal relationships, war and nationality.

Picasso created a new way of seeing art, transforming and creating new spatial dimensions or illusions on a canvass. Picasso's art and life still continue turning heads, being contradictory, controversial, contorted, communist even, utopian, cubist, cartoonish, animated, childish, whole, full, intoxicating. Picasso showed that you can edit an image, much like a writer cuts and pastes words or sentences, and rework an idea over and over, with each iteration a stand alone piece. Fascinatingly detailed, this book is for individuals that want to learn from Picasso's method, his contributions that continuing impacting artistic production.



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My land | arno!do garcia

 

My country

is the smallest country

in the world.

my country fits

inside one-hundredth
of one molecule
in a touch between one strand of DNA
my country
has room
for everyone
every European
every Chinese
every Mexican
every African
every Indian
every Asian Pacific Islander
every queer
every human
every nomad
of the earth
every two-legged, four-legged,
crawling, burrowing, winged-being
fits in my country.
Everyone is welcome, everyone
I'll happily give you
my country
as long as you promise
to take care of her
to let everyone
live in her in peace
in garbled flags
in borders without pigment
borders with human pores
to breath freely
to live breathing
My country is everyone, is everywhere
my country is small
bothers no one
invades no one
drones no one
doesn't stamp your passport
doesn't ask for identity documents
my country lets you be
lets you exist as yourself
lets you determine who you are
my country has no borders
other than those of humanity to humanity
my country has
no armies
no prisons
no police
no homeless
no one suffers
at the hands of other humans
my country is
all the colors,
the clash of colors,
the contrast,
the muddy blends,
the stark yellows,
the pink sunrises,
the red of your tongue
my country fits
in your veins
fits in the bat of an eye
welcomes you to our bodily paradise
you can have my country, if you want
it's already yours
walk slowly take your time
my country is in no rush
peace and freedom take their time
rest a bit, get up, work hard, party
in my country
even the dead
get a turn to dance
every now and then.
There are no regrets
there is only life
and its mortal pleasures
in my country.
Oh! in my country
you would be ideal
you would fit right in
like you always lived there
like your ancestors had been buried there
as a matter of fact
I would encourage you
to bury your ancestors here...
to bring your ancestors here
to my country
to bury them here
take care of them here
take care of our country
where everyone
where every living being
fits
my country is so small
that everyone fits.
And in one of her pores
fit all the suns and moon,
my country, you and me...

*****

An intifada of my own: Mini-review of "Beyond the Wall"

Beyond the Wall: Writing a Path through Palestine by Bidisha
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Beyond the Wall: Writing a Path through Palestine by Bidisha is a brief excursion into the daily life and struggles Palestinians face under apartheid Israeli rule and occupation. Written after going to Palestine to participate in a literary festival, Bidisha presents a first-person account, mincing no words describing the Israeli military and settlers inhumane treatment and obliteration of Palestine. Bidisha brings you along to see the walls, feel the bombing of Palestinians persons, homes, traditions and lands, experience the normalization of racism, hate the sexism and militarism on the streets and the treatment of women, while getting glimpses of the virtual interpenetration of resistance and culture at the Palfest she is attending.

This is a good book to gift to someone who should already be familiar with the situation in Palestine. While this may not a book for experts or organizers who have studied, organized protests, visited the Middle East, everyone should read it to understand how the occupation of Palestine and her resistance has implications for all of us.

How the Walls Connect Us

Closer to the U.S. home, the wall the U.S. is building and extending along the Mexican border is directly linked by the same policies of Israeli apartheid. The same companies and strategists that built the Israeli walls have been consulted by the U.S. government for the Mexican border wall.

The walls in Palestine and on the U.S.-Mexico border funnel people, communities and cultures to evaporation, disappearance and death. This is not inevitable but deliberate. Although the walls represent deliberate policies and strategies meant to harm and undermine people's mobility, right to place, and self-determination, survival is not being deterred by walls, armies and occupation. Survival is the hallmark of resilient cultures.

Nonetheless, Palestinians under occupation and migrants and women on the U.S.-Mexico border are paying a deadly price. The walls in Palestine will be torn down; it might take a decade or two and from behind them will emerge a new people more determined and having the potential of renewing human culture on a world scale.

Which Side Are You On?

Well, Bidisha doesn't say all this in her short Beyond the Wall. She writes so that we can see over the walls and what they are covering up: settler colonialist violence against Palestinian, against women and violence against the land and human dignity.

Bidisha lets us get on her shoulders to peer over the walls so that we can decide with a deeper certainty if we will be or not be part of this apartheid now or in the future.

Our futures are bound up by the walls and the struggles to tear them down. Her book could have easily asked her readers: Which side of the wall are you on?

Well, which side are you on?
C.S

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