I woke up too early.
It was still dark out.
I tried to read some
Hunter S. Thompson, but
it made me thirsty,
not a drop in the  
place.
I wish I were in
Puerto Rico.

A few nights ago my
girlfriend and
I got into it.
She bit me and
scratched my face.
We were drunk on  
wine from Argentina.
The coffee I’m  
drinking doesn’t taste
right.
I wish I were in
Puerto Rico.

In the wee hours of
the morning
I decided
to shave my head.
It took four razors, but
I finally got the
job done.
I looked in the
mirror,
and a stranger peered
back at me;
a head like Gandhi
and a face like Marciano.
I wish I were in
Puerto Rico.

Yesterday
my girlfriend and I went  
on a shoplifting spree.
I stole coffee,
a couple of books,
a hat, denture glue, and
a **** ring.
She’s a much better thief than
me.
She took
razors, two tapestries, laundry soap and  
trash bags, makeup, shampoo
and coffee that doesn’t taste funny.
As the sun gently
kisses the horizon
and begins to bathe
Iowa City in golden light,
I wish I were in
Puerto Rico.

Tomorrow morning
I have to be in
court.
A month ago I stole
some wine and got caught.
My day of reckoning has
almost arrived.
I should just get a
fine that I will
never pay, but
with these things,
one never knows.
The judge could be  
hung over or constipated
or worse yet, he could have
read my poetry.
I really wish I were in  
Puerto Rico.

CHAPTER ONE

My geographic movements during the past year could be called “A Tale of Two Couches.” So as June draws to a close, I assume the position here again on Couch California. I am back in Hemet, the place the smug among us call Hemetucky--as if there was nothing a couple of Mint Juleps and a **** of Blue Grass wouldn’t cure. It is the year of our Lord, 2014: so far an interesting year for women. There was a woman who wore socks to bed. There was always my long-time, here today-gone tomorrow, long time companion, currently teaching somewhere remote on the Big Rez, a southwestern Navajo concentration camp near the 4 Corners.  Next, there’s my current object of affection, that fine and frisky lady from The Bronx by way of Bernalillo--currently at home in Laguna Beach, Orange County. Trixie: my main squeeze at the moment.

And now, completely out of the ******* blue this afternoon, my cell phone rings and it’s ******* Juanita--my all-time favorite woman, Juanita Mi Favorita de La Quinta--a Coachella Valley town and desert wadi, extending its lucrative winter tourist season to become a significant, year-round retirement venue and a robust service economy feeding off it.  Juanita arrived there in the late 80s, in middle of her early forties.  She was unemployed, homeless, just a suitcase to her name and a two-year old toddler in tow. Her parents were there, as was her Aunt Peggy.  Juanita was always Peggy’s favorite niece, her favorite child, actually, Peggy herself being childless, never married.  Aunt Peggy put her maternal instincts to work on Juanita Rodriguez, her Sister Rosalia’s second favorite twin daughter.

Maria, Rosalia’s first favorite daughter, Juanita’s twin sister—MARIA: lives in Newport Beach and acts as an extra in many commercial ads shot in southern California and elsewhere, an irony never without sting for Juanita. “Que lastima!” Poor Juanita: as her would-be Hollywood Movie star aspirations disintegrated over the years, along with her unrealized lower expectations to be TV star, and even those semi-glamorous modeling gigs at trade shows and fairs—the elephant’s graveyard of the acting profession—failed to materialize, and now her celebrity habitat shrunken even further, to that sporadic but consistent mockery of stardom, I refer to any would-be thespian’s ignominious one-celled visual protozoan: The Extra Call List.  And—*******-- what happens next? Juanita’s sister Maria starts getting these parts, starts getting hired by filling out a ******* postcard, starts getting paid to look good in the background. *******: no professional education or instruction, no agent, and no need to **** off both the producer, the producer’s cousin Morey, the director and the director’s wife’s huge Golden retriever, Genghis--actually a mighty handsome animal--or needing to spill $4K on that Derma-brasion, Juanita inflicted on herself last year.

Juanita, as you already know, was the second favorite daughter and the second favorite twin of the family. She became the third favorite child in her three-child family upon the arrival of her slick baby brother Nico-- the Golden Child, who grew up to be a glib Merrill-Lynch stockbroker, office and residence, Beverly Hills 90112.  (Enter forcefully into the narrative, His Nibs himself, Sir Nicodemus of Hollywood, Juanita and Maria’s baby brother Nico. He speaks: “Excuse me, stockbroker my ***, as it says in a 11 point Rockwell Boldfont, right here on my gold-leaf embossed business card: Senior Large Capital Investment Counselor.”)

No, Juanita had a hard time just treading water in that Cleveland shark tank. And though she lacked nothing in the cuteness department, she had this one fatal flaw, namely, the gift of ***** and sass and a reflex to speak truth to power. Juanita: rejected by Rosalia as a threat to her hegemony as Boss of the Girl’s Club, was cast adrift on a tempestuous childhood cruel Montserrat sea, out there on the briny deep . . .  
                

                                      



High Seas: where many a tuna has a Sorry Charlie moment: “Star-Kist don’t want no tuna with good taste; Star-Kist wants a tuna that tastes good.”

Finally, Juanita is rescued, taken aboard the Good/Soul Aunt Peggy—that wayward bark Elisabeta Rodriguez, home-ported in Southside, Chicago, Illinois—the rescue at sea performed in classy, rather low-key manner; no Andrea Doria drama, but understated:

{Camera One, Helicopter above, zooms over turbulent ocean surface. Peggy, an oasis of calm, aboard the raft Kon Tiki with Thor Heyerdahl and his crew, floats by, whispering, “Going my way, Honey? Climb aboard. Have a homemade oatmeal cookie and a small glass tumbler of Jack Daniels.” Okay, no, that’s not fair. Sure Aunt Peggy drank, but never got round to offering you a drink until you were well into your 30s. Let’s just say she offered you a warm glass of milk, the mother’s milk deprived you by your mother, her sister Rosalia. Dear Aunt Peggy: a seasoned survivor herself, flawed by early childhood deafness and grotesque speech.  Yet, she had refused to settle for life in an asylum. She made a go at life.  She learned; she prospered; she flourished. And when the time came, she was there for you in the Coachella Desert, there for her feisty niece Juanita Ann.  Aunt Peggy: a loving spirit personified, became Juanita’s special confidant and counselor, her personal cheer squad of one. Juanita, of course, a former cheerleader herself--an early hint of greatness to be sure, a highlight, perhaps the highlight of her life, shown off every Halloween, still celebrated at American high schools each Fall. She is the Principal’s secretary at a huge suburban high school in Indio. Each Halloween, if the date falls on a school day, Juanita arrives for work wearing that scrupulously preserved, vintage 1966 cheerleader uniform, looking real foxy still, snug now in all the right places. Eternal Truth: Juanita has always and will always be good looking. Life with Juanita is perpetual “ooh la-la.”

So, I am on the couch that afternoon, reading more of Gramsci’s prison notebooks, specifically the philosophy he calls “Praxis.”  Completely out of the ******* blue, Juanita calls me on a RESTRICTED phone, as I said, Juanita, a torch I’ve kept burning for years, flaring up like a refinery flame--oil still very much in the present energy mix--hope springing eternal as they say, and instantly my mission in life is rekindling our lost love. Juanita’s conceived her mission prior to her phone call:  using me to keep her son from being whacked by the local Eme--the Mexican Mafia—that ethnic-pride social club that the RICO-squad-- using family tree socio-grams and other expensively-printed graphics, the one RICO keeps trying to convince us is some sort of organized crime conspiracy. The Mexican Mafia: like everything else practical and utilitarian in this world: THAT’S ITALIAN! And, if you are starting to sense a bit of ethnic chauvinism on, between & below the lines, you are barking up the right tree.
                                                           ­     
      
                                                            
(AUTHOR’S POST-SCRIPT EDIT: And, an ad for dog food right here? Not the best choice of sponsors, perhaps, at the moment. Juanita was far off from the ****** ***** that start looking not half-bad at 2:30 in the glazy morning, not anywhere near those beasts you find lingering in the airport bars you usually frequent near closing time on Saturday nights. No, I remind you that Juanita was all “ooh la-la.” In my next printing—and my Lord, there have been so many, haven’t there, Paulie “Eat-a-Bag-of-****” Muldoon? I will change out the Alpo ad, plugging in a spot for Aunt Jemima pancake syrup or Betty Crocker whipped cream, you know, something more apropos.)

Juanita, I really must hand it to you. You showed the greatest staying power, year after year as I moved further and further away from La Quinta, California. Juanita: you embraced what was good in me, ignored my flaws and strengthened me with your love for so many years. As far as you and Peggy, I guess it was a case of the “apple not falling far from the tree” one of many endearing Midwestern metaphors you taught me.  Peggy taught you, taught you to be kind and then you taught me. No matter what bizarre venue I pulled out of my ***, you showed above-average staying power, continued to visit me wherever I went, Casa Grande & Buckeye, Arizona, Appalachia, West Virginia, and even Italy, when I thought I’d try Europe again after so many years.  With each move, each time, Juanita renewed her commitment to the relationship. Meanwhile, I continued to test her, quantifying her dedication, undermining her sense of mission to disprove my worldview on the expendability of women. Surely, you know that one: the unreliability of women, women who disappear without saying goodbye. That old deeply etched conviction to never get attached to a woman, any woman, based on the empirical fact that women have been known to suddenly die, a fact seared into my still tender metal by the surprise death of my mother on 11 January 1962.

1962. It was already an insecure world, to wit:  The Cuban Missile Crisis. Nikita Khrushchev, in his time both Dr. No and Dr. Evil, namely the Premier whom we Baby Boomers saw as Boogey Man of All Time (Although Putin is showing potential, lately)—the Kennedy ****** (what else could you call it?). All these events scary, whether or not I got the chronology right . . . I remained on high alert for any threat to my delicate adolescent psyche.  My mother-Rosa Teresa Sekaquaptewa-died at 2 o’clock in the morning, screaming in agony while apologizing to my father for not having his dinner on the table when he walked in from work that prior afternoon. She’d already been in bed since noon, attended by two of my aunts--both my father’s sisters--who loved their Hopi sister-in-law, Rosa.  Also present was Lafcadio Smirnoff, M.D.--last of the house call medicine men--a dapper, mustachioed, swarthy gentleman, misdiagnosing her abdominal pain as a 24-hour virus, while she bled out internally for at least eight more hours, her whimpers alternated with screams, well into the wee hours of the morning.

I was upstairs in that dormer bedroom listening to her die. An hour later, Father Numb-nuts of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish teleported in, beaming directly into my bedroom from the parish rectory.  Father Seamus Numb-nuts, an illuminated Burning Bush . . . not quite the bush I ‘d conjured at other times, so many times alone with Gwen Wong, ******* Playmate of the Year, 1961, one of Hefner’s hot centerfolds. No, give me a ******* break, you momo! Whacking off is the last thing on a libidinous, adolescent guinea’s brain when his mama is being tortured and killed by God. Even Alexander Portnoy, Philip Roth’s early avatar would have drawn the wanking line at that unforgettable moment.

No, perhaps what I’d had in mind was The Burning Bush Golf Course where so much of Fletcher Kneble’s political mischief and government shenanigans got cooked up. You remember his books, some of the Cold War’s finest: Seven Days in May, Vanished, etc.

Or better yet, perhaps the greatest political slogan of the 20th century: “STAY OUT THE BUSHES!” Thank you, Jesse. “Thank you, Reverend Jackson,” I slip into my Excellence in Broadcasting mode, my very own private Limbaugh. Announcing my on- air arrival is El Rushbo’s unmistakable, totally recognizable bass line bumper, courtesy of Chrissie Hynde’s Pretenders band mate, guitarist Tony Butler: Dum, dum, dum-dum, Da-dum, dum-dum-dum-dum-da-dum-dum. Single, “My City Was Gone” by The Pretenders
Rush Limbaugh Song– YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=SScW9r0y3c4

I become Reverend Jackson. I emerge from the vapors, an obscure abyss of deep family pangs and disappointments, ever-diminishing public relevance and fade to black (no pun intended) and media oblivion. The only thing left is that line:  “STAY OUT THE BUSHES!” You will always own that line, Jesse--true political genius (to wit: Rainbow Coalition) Jackson that you are, despite El Rush-Bo’s virulent anti-Black animus, his predilection to mock you, Al Sharpton, Corey Booker, Barack “Hussein” Obama, and any other professional ***** in America. Isn’t it time someone came right out and tagged Mr. Limbaugh as the Father Coughlin of our time.

Meanwhile back in The Bronx, enter another man of the cloth:  It’s Seamus Numb-nuts, making one of his many well-documented spectral visitations, his splendiferous miracles and wonders. How much longer will the Vatican ignore this humble Bronx priest, this epitome of Sainthood; this reverent man, lacking only the stigmata for a unanimous consent vote? Quote the Numb-nuts: “God Works in Mysterious Ways.” An old standard to be sure, but a lovely, all-purpose bromide for explaining why evil exists in our world. Needless to say, I was underwhelmed; I lost God at that moment, consequently shooting myself in the foot--metaphorically-speaking-condemning myself to an unshielded life, life OUT THE BUSHES!  I went forth into the world without God, without that handy divine crutch, that Andy Devine metaphor for when one’s legs grow weary: a puff of smoke, a reverb twang and a nasty frog croaking “Hi-ya, Kids. Hi-ya, Hi-ya. Hi-ya.”

   Andy's Gang - Pasta Fazooli vs. Froggy the Gremlin - YouTube
► 3:55► 3:55
www.youtube.com/watch?v=H35odPm7b3w Aug 8, 2012 - Uploaded by jmgilsinger
Froggy the Gremlin -Tuba ... Andy Devine (Aug 24, 1952)

Life for me became lonely and purposeless. And probably explains my susceptibility to military discipline and a subsequent career in clandestine government service. In 1968--the very day I turned nineteen, September 25th of that year—that fateful day when I should have shot myself in the foot—literally not metaphorically--earning that coveted 4-F physical rejection, a draft deferment to be desired, that 4-F classification of unfitness for duty, a necessary loophole in U.S. conscript service law.  The Draft: last used during that great commonwealth Cold War purge, that culling out of the unwashed, uneducated children of immigrants, that cut-rate, discount, lower socio-economic ***** bank—the only bank where after you make a deposit, you lose interest, to wit: most Black, Hispanic and Poor White Trash parents.  We were cannon fodder, many of us got to be planted at Arlington and other holy American shrines, still wrapped in black or olive drab leak-proof body bags, doing our generational bit to strengthen the gene pool left behind. A debt, some would say, we owed the country and, given the sorry state of the global wicket, increasingly an obligation to the species. And if I had to predict an outcome, Fascism in America will arrive riding the white horse of the environmental, anti-nuclear Bolsheviks. One could argue that Communism has moved so far left on the political spectrum that it’s now the far right.  Concoct a legislative policy goal, accomplish it legally as the bill becomes Law, signed by the President, endorsed and blessed by The U.S. Supreme Court, the highest court in the land.

To wit: “Three generations of imbeciles is enough?” declared Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., an Associate Supreme Court Justice at the time, buttressing a majority argument harnessing the power of U.S. law as a legal means of purifying the race.  When euthanasia failed to win over American hearts and mind, the Federal Government played the war card again and again. Vietnam: undeclared and therefore unconstitutional--except for that Gulf of Tonkin ******* resolution. Vietnam: a cost-plus eugenics project, if ever there was one, although responsive, of course, to the needs of the Military-Industrial Complex.  ******* Ike: he warned us against Fascism in America. As usual, we ignored the man in charge.

Eugenics? Why didn’t the government just put all the retards on the stand, as John Frankenheimer did in Judgment at Nuremberg, a crafty Maximilian Schell humiliating a feeble-minded Montgomery Clift?  Why not, make everyone face a public tribunal, forcing all of us to testify in court, exposing our many substandard and borderline substandard cerebral deficits?  Why not force everyone to demonstrate just how ******* dumb we are, using some clever intelligence test, something l

I take pride in my roots
I take pride in my melanin
And my ancestors
All those who have persevered
To get me to where I am today.
I take pride en mi pelo rizo
Gracias a Dios..

I carry my culture in my curls to
The poetry that runs through my
Veins
rushing
pulsing
sweat on the furrow of thy lip
beading
ache of the toil in their fieldwork
sweet
azucar negra
my ancestors blood was sweeter
they still don’t want us here
but some things never change
but we are able
and no beautiful ignorant person
Will ever take that away.

Chapter Two

“I think of art, at its most significant, as a DEW line, a Distant Early Warning System that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen to it.”                Marshall McLuhan  
  
I attended Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania because my father was incarcerated at the prison located in the same town.  My tuition subsidized to a large extent by G.I. Bill, still a significant means of financing an education for generations of emotionally wasted war veterans. “The United States Penitentiary (USP Lewisburg)” is a high-security federal prison for male inmates. An adjacent satellite prison camp houses minimum-security male offenders. My father was strictly high-security, convicted of various crimes against humanity, unindicted for sundry others. My father liked having me close by, someone on the outside he trusted, who also happened to be on his approved Visitor List. As instructed, I became his conduit for substances both illicit, like drugs, and the purely contraband, a variety of Italian cheeses, salamis, prepared baked casseroles of eggplant parmesan, cannoli, Baci chocolate from Perugia, in Tuscany, south of Florence, and numerous bottles of Italian wine, pungent aperitifs, Grappa, digestive stimulants and sweet liquors. I remained the good son until the day he died, the source of most of the mess I got myself into later on, and specifically the main caper at the heart of this story.

I must confess: my father scared the **** out of me.  Particularly during those years when he was not in jail, those years he spent at home, years coinciding roughly with my early adolescence.  These were my molding clay years, what the amateur psychologists write off with the term: “impressionable years hypothesis.” In his own twisted, grease-ball theory of child rearing, my father may have been applying the “guinea padrone hypothesis,” in his mind, nothing more certain would toughen me up for whatever he and/or Life had planned for me. Actually, his aspirations for me-given my peculiar pedigree--were non-existent as far as the family business went. He knew I’d never be either a Don or a Capo di Tutti Capi, or an Underboss or Sotto Capo.)  A Caporegime—mid-management to be sure, with as many as ten crews of soldiers reporting to him-- was also, for me, out of the question. Dad was a soldier in and of the Lucchese Family, strictly a blue-collar, knock-around kind of guy. But even soldier status—which would have meant no rise in Mafioso caste for him—was completely out of the question, never going to happen for me.

A little background: the Lucchese Family originated in the early 1920s with Gaetano “Tommy” Reina, born in 1889 in Corleone, Sicily. You know the town and its environs well. Fran Coppola did an above average job cinematizing the place in his Godfather films.  Coppola: I am a strict critic when it comes to my goombah, would-be French New Wave auteur Francis Ford Coppola.  Ever since “One From the Heart, 1982”--one of the biggest Hollywood box office flops & financial disasters of all time--he’s been a bit thin-skinned when it comes to criticism.  So, I like to zing him when I can. Actually, “One From the Heart” is worth seeing again, not just for Tom Waits soundtrack--the film’s one Academy Award nomination—but also Natasha Kinski’s ***: always Oscar-worthy in my book. My book? Interesting expression, and factually correct for once, given what you are reading right now.

Tommy Reina was the first Lucchese Capo di Tutti Capi, the first Boss of All the Bosses. By the 1930s the Luccheses pretty much controlled all criminal activity in the Bronx and East Harlem. And Reina begat Pinzolo who begat Gagliano who begat Tommy Three Finger Brown Lucchese (who I once believed, moonlighted as a knuckle ball relief pitcher for Yankees.)
Three Finger Brown gave the Lucchese Family its name. And Tommy begat Carmine Tramunti, who begat Anthony Tony Ducks Corallo. From there the succession gets a bit crazy. Tony Ducks, convicted of Rico charges, goes to prison, sentenced to life.  From behind bars he presides through a pair of candidates most deserving the title of boss: enter Vittorio Little Vic Amuso and Anthony Gaspipe Casso.  Although Little Vic becomes Boss after being nominated by Casso, it is Gaspipe really calling the shots, at least until he joins Little Vic behind bars.
Amuso-Casso begat Louis Louie Bagels Daidone, who begat the current official boss, Stephen Wonderboy Crea.  According to legend, Boss Crea got his nickname from Bernard Malamud’s The Natural, a certain part of his prodigious anatomy resembling the baseball bat hand-carved by Roy Hobbs. To me this sounds a bit too literary, given the family’s SRI Lexile/Reading Performance Scores, but who am I to mock my peoples’ lack of liberal arts education?

Begat begat Begato. (I goof on you, kind reader. Always liked the name Begato in the context of Bible-flavored genealogy. Mille grazie, King James.)

Lewisburg Penitentiary has many distinguished alumni: Whitey Bulger (1963-1965), Jimmy Hoffa (1967-1971) and John Gotti (1969-1972), for example.  And fictionally, you can add Paulie Cicero played by Paul Scorvino in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas, not to be confused with Paulie Walnuts Gualtieri played by Tony Sirico from the HBO TV series The Sopranos. Nor, do I refer to Paulie Gatto, the punk who ratted out Sonny Corleone in Coppola’s The Godfather, you know: “You won’t see Paulie no more,” according to fat Clemenza, played by the late Richard “Leave the gun, take my career” Castellano, who insisted to the end that he wasn’t bitter about his underwhelming post-Godfather film career. I know this for a fact from one of my cousins in the Gambino Family. I also know that the one thing the actor Castellano would never comment on was a rumor that he had connections to organized crime, specifically that he was a nephew to Paulie Castellano, the Gambino crime family boss who was assassinated in 1985, outside Midtown New York’s Sparks Steak House, an abrupt corporate takeover commissioned by John Teflon Don Gotti. But I’m really starting to digress here, although I am reminded of another interesting historical personage, namely Joseph Crazy Joe Gallo, who was also terminated “with extreme prejudice” while eating dinner at a restaurant.  Confused? And finally--not to be confused with Paul Muldoon, poetry gatekeeper at The New Yorker magazine, that Irish **** scumbag who consistently rejects publication of my work. About two years ago I started including the following comment in my on-line Contact Us, poetry submission:  “Hey Paulie, Eat a Bag of ****!”

This may come as a surprise, Gentle Reader, but I am a poet, not a Wise Guy.  For reasons to be explained, I never had access to the family business. I am also handicapped by the Liberal Arts education I received, infected by a deluge, a veritable Katrina ****** of classic literature.  That stuff in books rubs off after awhile, and I suppose it was inevitable. I couldn’t help evolving for the most part into a warm-blooded creature, unlike the reptiles and frogs I grew up with.

Again, I am a poet not a wise guy. And, first and foremost, I am a human being. Cold-blooded, I am not. I generate my own heat, which is the best definition I know for how a poet operates. But what the hell do I know? Paulie “Eat a Bag of ****” Muldoon doesn’t think much of my work. And he’s the ******* troll guarding the New Yorker’s poetry gate. Nevertheless, I’m a Poet, not a Wise Guy.  I repeat myself, I know, but it is important to establish this point right from the start of this narrative, because, if you don’t get that you’re never going to get my story.

Maybe the best way to explain my predicament—And I mean PREDICAMENT in the sense of George Santayana: "Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament." (www.brainyquote.com), not to be confused with George’s son Carlos, the Mexican-American rock star: Oye Como Va, Babaloo!

www.youtube.com/watch?v...YouTube Dec 20, 2011 - Uploaded by a106kirk1, The Best of Santana. This song is owned by Santana and Columbia Records.

Maybe the best way for me to explain my predicament is with a poem, one of my early works, unpublished, of course, by Paulie “Eat a Bag of ****” Muldoon:

“CRAZY JOE REVISITED”  
        
by Benjamin Disraeli Sekaquaptewa-Buonaiuto

We WOPs respect criminality,
Particularly when it’s organized,
Which explains why any of us
Concerned with the purity of our bloodline
Have such a difficult time
Navigating the river of respectability.

To wit: JOEY GALLO.
WEB-BIO: (According to Bob Dylan)
“Born in Red Hook, Brooklyn in the year of who knows when,
Opened up his eyes to the tune of accordion.

“Joey” Lyrics/Send "Joey" Ringtone to your Cell
Joseph Gallo, AKA: "Joey the Blond."
He was a celebrated New York City gangster,
A made member of the Profaci crime family,
Later known as the Colombo crime family,

That’s right, CRAZY JOE!
One time toward the end of a 10-year stretch,
At three different state prisons,
Including Attica Correctional Facility in Attica, New York,
Joey was interviewed in his prison cell
By a famous NY Daily News reporter named Joe McGinnis.
The first thing the reporter sees?
One complete wall of the cell is lined with books, a
Green leather bound wall of Harvard Classics.
After a few hours mainly listening to Joey
Wax eloquently about his life,
A narrative spiced up with elegant summaries,
Of classic Greek theory, Roman history,
Nietzsche and other 19th Century German philosophers,
McGinnis is completely blown away by Inmate Gallo,
Both Joey’s erudition and the power of his intellect,
The reporter asks a question right outta
The Discrete Charm of the Bourgeoisie:
“Mr. Gallo, I must say,
The power of your erudition and intellect
Is simply overwhelming.
You are a brilliant man.
You could have been anything,
Your heart or ambition desired:
A doctor, a lawyer, an architect . . .
Yet you became a criminal. Why?”

Joey Gallo: (turning his head sideways like Peter Falk or Vincent Donofrio, with a look on his face like Go Back to Nebraska, You ******* Momo!)

“Understand something, Sonny:
Those kids who grew up to be,
Doctors and lawyers and architects . . .

They couldn’t make it on the street.”

Gallo later initiated one of the bloodiest mob conflicts,
Since the 1931 Castellammare War,
And was murdered as a result of it,
While quietly enjoying,
A plate of linguini with clam sauce,
At a table--normally a serene table--
At Umberto’s Clam House.

Italian Restaurant Little Italy - Umberto's Clam House (www.umbertosclamhouse.com)
In Little Italy New York City 132 Mulberry Street, New York City | 212-431-7545.

Whose current manager --in response to all restaurant critics--
Has this to say:
“They keep coming back, don’t they?
The joint is a holy shrine, for chrissakes!
I never claimed it was the food or the service.
Gimme a ******* break, you momo!
I should ask my paisan, Joe Pesci
To put your ******* head in a vise.”

(Again, Martin Scorsese getting it exactly right, This time in  . . . Casino (1995) - IMDb www.imdb.com/title/tt0112641/Internet Movie Database Rating: 8.2/10 - ‎241,478 votes Directed by Martin Scorsese. With Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone, Joe Pesci, James Woods. Greed, deception, money, power, and ****** occur between two  . . . Full Cast & Crew - ‎Trivia - ‎Awards - ‎(1995) - IMDb)

Given my lifelong, serious exposure to and interest in German philosophy, I subscribe to the same weltanschauung--pronounced: veltˌänˌSHouəNG—that governed Joey Gallo’s behavior.  My point and Mr. Gallo’s are exactly the same:  a man’s ability to make it on the street is the true measure of his worth.  This ethos was a prominent one in the Bronx where and when I grew up, where I came of age during the 1950s and 60s.  Italian organized crime was always an option, actually one of the preferred options--like playing for the Yankees or being a movie star—until, that is, reality set in.  And reality came in many forms. For 100% Italian kids it came in a moment of crystal adolescent clarity and self-evaluation:  Am I tough enough to make it on the street?  Am I ever going to be tough enough to make it on the street? Will I be eaten alive by more cunning, more violent predators on the street?

For me, the setting in of reality took an entirely different form.  I knew I had what it takes, i.e., the requisite ferocity for street life. I had it in spades, as they say. In fact, I’d been blessed with the gift of hyper-volatility—traced back to my great-grandfather, Pietro of the village of Moschiano, in the province of Avellino, in the region of Campania, Italia Sud. Having visited Moschiano in my early 20s and again in my late 50s, I know the place well. The village square sits “down in the holler,” like in West Virginia; the Apennine terrain, like the Appalachians, rugged and thick. Rugged and thick like the people, at least in part my people. And volatile, I am, gifted with a primitive disposition when it comes to what our good friend Abraham Maslow would call lower order needs. And please, don’t ask me to explain myself now; just keep reading, *******.  All your questions will be answered.

Great Grandfather Pietro once, at point blank range, blew a man’s head off with a lumpara, or sawed-off shotgun. It was during an argument over—get this--a penny’s worth of pumpkin seeds--one of many stories I never learned in childhood. He served 10 years in a Neapolitan penitentiary before being paroled and forced to immigrate to America.  The government of the relatively new nation--The Kingdom of Italy (1861)--came up with a unique eugenic solution for the hunger and misery down south, south of Rome, the long shin bone, ankle, foot, toes & kickball that are the remote regions of the Mezzogiorno, Southern Italy: Campania, Basilicata, Calabria, Puglia & Sicilia. Northern politicians asked themselves: how do we flush these skeevy southerners, these crooks and assassins down South, how do we flush the skifosos down the toilet—the flush toilet, a Roman invention, I report proudly and accept the gratitude on behalf of my people. Immigration to America: Fidel Castro did the same thing in the 1980s, hosing out his jails and mental hospitals with that Marielista boatlift/Emma Lazarus Remix: “Give us your tired and poor, your lunatics, thieves and murderers.” But I digress. I’ll give you my entire take on the history of Italy including Berlusconi and the “Bunga Bunga” parties with 14-year old Moroccan pole dancers . . . go ahead, skip ahead.

Yes, genetically speaking, I was sufficiently ferocious to make it on the street, and it took very little spark to light my fuse. Moreover, I’ve always been good at figuring out the angles--call it street smarts--also learned early in life. Likewise, for knowing the territory: The Bronx was my habitat. I was rapacious and predacious by nature, and if there was a loose buck out there, and legs to be broken, I knew where to go.
Yet, alas, despite all my natural talents & acquired skills, I remained persona-non-grata for the Lucchese Family. To my great misfortune, I fell into a category of human being largely shunned by Italian organized crime: Mestizo-Italiano, a diluted form of full strength 100% Italian blood. It’s one of those voodoo blood-brotherhood things practiced by Southern European, Mediterranean tribal people, only in part my people.  Growing up, my predicament was always tricky, always somewhat bizarre. Simply put: I was of a totally different tribe. Blame my exotic mother, a genuine Hopi Corn Maiden from Shungopavi, high up on Second Mesa of the Hopi Reservation, way out in northern Arizona. And if this is not sufficiently, ******* nuts enough for you, add to the child-rearing minestrone that she raised me Jewish in The Bronx.  I **** you not. I took my Bar Mitzvah Hebrew instruction from the infamous Rabbi Meir Kahane, that’s right, Meir “Crazy Rebbe” Kahane himself--pronounced kɑː'hɑːna--if you grok the phonetics.

In light of the previously addressed “impressionable years hypothesis,” I wrote a poem about my early years. It follows in the next chapter. It is an epic tale, a biographical magnum opus, a veritable creation myth, conceived one night several years ago while squatting in a sweat lodge, tripping on peyote. I

Listen here listen here
The world is so **** *******
Maybe all these terrible things are happening because it’s trying to be renewed
Our president is so whack
He keeps stabbing innocents in the back
Praising Arnold Schwarzenegger by acting as if he’s the terminator
Pero his wife’s an immigrant too
American dream who

We pretend to honor the OG’s who created this land
But now your trying to get them all banned
claiming them all to be rapists and murderers
Be humble sit down i'm tired of all these racial slurs

He says “We cannot aid Puerto rico forever”
But really we need to be working on this together
Puerto Rico is just a metaphor for how this president sees all Latinos and people of color
He does not see us as his equals, nor does he sees us as his fellows

Having the mindset being male and white
Is the only possibility of being right
Were all humans , we all fit in the same race.
We should not be considered by the color of our face
Yet somehow the white get all the praise
Why are we still stuck in this racist faze

Since 1963 when Martin Luther King said in his speech
“It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But 100 years later the ***** still is not free”
To this day even if they try not to say
The ***** is still treated so falsely.

Take a moment now to open up your eyes and stop all the self lies
Get rid that hate to open up the gate to a whole new perspective
A much more un discriminative kind
Then maybe just maybe the world wouldn’t be so **** *******

Ardiente juventud, tú que la herencia
Recoges ya del siglo diez y nueve,
Y que el maduro fruto de la ciencia
Llevas al porvenir con planta breve;
Tú que en la edad viril, la limpia aurora
Verás del nuevo siglo, en que, alentado
Por el rico saber que hoy atesora,
Tu espíritu esforzado,
Al saludar gozosa el sol naciente,
Honrarás las conquistas del presente
Con las sabias lecciones del pasado:

Atiende aquí a mi voz; vibre mi acento
Como un canto triunfal en tus oídos;
Y en noble sentimiento,
Como al sonar de bélico instrumento,
Los generosos pechos encendidos,
Al escucharse de la lira mía
Las toscas pulsaciones,
La acompañen en rítmica armonía
Latiendo vuestros nobles corazones.

Madre es la Patria, que confiada espera,
Al contemplaros, de su amor ufana,
En la marcial carrera,
Su porvenir, su nombre y su bandera
En vuestras manos entregar mañana;
Y, escudos de la ley y del derecho,
La mente con la ciencia engalanada,
Las patricias virtudes en el pecho,
Podréis decir que irradia vuestra espada
Aquella luz que en África una noche
Vieron brillar de César los guerreros
Como lenguas de fuego en sus aceros.

Que no siempre el aliento de la guerra
Fue engendro del rencor y la venganza;
Ni el odio y la matanza
Sobre la faz de la extendida tierra
Han llevado las huestes victoriosas
Que, cual fieros torrentes desbordados,
Destruyeron naciones poderosas
En los heroicos tiempos ya pasados.

El saber, las costumbres, las ideas;
El rico idioma que a mezclarse llega
Con ignotos idiomas escondidos;
La extraña actividad que se desplega,
Al formar vencedores y vencidos
Nuevos pueblos, y razas, y naciones,
Con más altas tendencias,
Con más nobles creencias,
Y más rico caudal de aspiraciones:

Esta la guerra fue. ¡Cuán grande miro,
Sobre la deslumbrante Babilonia,
Su poderoso imperio alzando Ciro!
¡Y al hundirse la asiría monarquía,
De sus escombros de oro y alabastro
Surgir una era nueva, como un astro
Derramando la luz del nuevo día!

El espíritu helénico ¿a quién debe
Su más alto esplendor? Se alza primero
Como lejana luz brillando leve;
Lo trasforma en un sol la voz de Homero;
Y su inmortal fulgor, grande y fecundo,
Viene a alumbrar la historia,
Cuando Alejandro, en alas de la gloria,
Lo extiende en sus conquistas por el mundo.

Predilecto del genio y la victoria,
Por donde quiera que la firme planta
Asienta el hijo de Filipo, un templo
Para honrar el progreso se levanta.
¡Oh caudillo esforzado y sin ejemplo!
Su triunfal estandarte
Pueblos, reyes y obstáculos desprecia,
Porque lleva con él la fe de Grecia,
La voz del genio y el poder del arte.
Y al calor de la lucha y de las armas,
Y a la sombra del águila altanera
Que hacia el Oriente sus legiones guía,
Cifra imperecedera
De inmensa gloria, nace Alejandría.

¡Augusto emporio del saber humano,
Irguióse altiva entre la mar y el Nilo,
Siguiendo el trazo que con diestra mano
Supo copiar Dinócrates tranquilo
Del manto militar del soberano!

Ved: las romanas picas aparecen
Anunciando a la tierra
Que otros gérmenes crecen;
Que en la ciudad de Rómulo se encierra
El porvenir de cien generaciones,
Que llevarán, en alas de la guerra,
Fuertes y victoriosas sus legiones.
Y bajo el sol ardiente de Cartago,
Y en la margen del Támesis sombrío,
Y del Danubio entre el murmullo vago,
Y al pintoresco pie del Alpe frío,
Con César y Pompeyo soberanas,
Llevando al mundo entre sus garras preso,
De la victoria al encendido beso,
Se han de cernir las águilas romanas.

Y al cruzar esas huestes, anchas vías
Se abren para el viajero;
Despiertan en los pueblos simpatías,
Del mercader audaz rico venero;
Surcan tendidos mares los bajeles,
Y, nuevo Deucalión, Roma dejando
Su camino regado de laureles,
Fantásticas ciudades van brotando;
Y, el polvo que levantan los corceles,
Al disipar los vientos,
Dejan ver, como huellas de su paso,
Soberbios monumentos
Desde do nace el sol hasta el ocaso.

Después de tantos siglos de victoria
Roma también inclina su bandera;
Y los últimos fastos de su historia
El triunfo son de muchedumbre fiera
Atravesando con feroz encono
Los lejanos y estériles desiertos,
Y en numerosas hordas conducidos
Por caminos inciertos.
Cual de mares que están embravecidos,
Su espuma salpicando en las arenas
Las gigantescas olas,
Llegan a sepultar playas serenas:
Así vienen, ardientes y terribles,
Hunos, godos, alanos y lombardos,
Vándalos, francos, suevos, burguiñones,
Galos y anglo-sajones;
Y de ese hervor de muchedumbre extraña
Surgen nuevas naciones:
Inglaterra, Alemania, Francia, España.

Del escondido seno de la Arabia
Brota un incendio nuevo que devora
Al mundo ya cristiano;
Brilla la media luna aterradora;
Lanza un grito de guerra el africano;
Y Europa, en otro tiempo vencedora,
Trémula mira la atrevida mano
Del hijo del profeta,
Que, incontrastable, vino
A clavar su pendón sobre los muros
De la imperial ciudad de Constantino.
Su irresistible empuje
Hace rodar el trono de los godos;
Al paso del islam la tierra cruje,
Y al cielo de la ciencia tres estrellas
En tan sangrienta y trágica demanda
Asoman luego espléndidas y bellas:
Son Córdoba, Bagdad y Samarcanda.

Y en esa larga noche tenebrosa
Del espíritu humano, en la Edad Media,
Esos astros de luz esplendorosa
Guardan el sacro fuego
Que el mundo entonces desconoce ciego,
Y que otra culta edad mira asombrada,
Cuando su noble admiración excita
De Córdoba la arábiga Mezquita,
Y la soberbia Alhambra de Granada.

Siempre tras de la guerra,
Más vigorosa llega la cultura:
Así sobre la tierra
La negra tempestad ruge en la altura;
Tremenda se desata
De su seno la hirviente catarata;
El formidable rayo serpentea;
El relámpago incendia el horizonte;
El huracán los ámbitos pasea,
Infundiendo el terror del prado al monte
Y aquella confusión que, estremecida
Y acobardada ve Naturaleza,
Es nueva fuente de vigor y vida,
Y manantial de amor y de belleza.

Recordadlo vosotros, cuyo pecho
Desde temprana edad honra la insignia
Del soldado del pueblo y del derecho;
Y no olvidéis jamás, si acaso un día,
Siguiendo con valor vuestra bandera.
Lleváis o resistís la guerra impía
De nación extranjera,
Sin consentir jamás infame yugo,
Que la espada esgrimís del ciudadano,
No el hacha del verdugo:
Que el pendón que enarbola vuestra mano,
Es la antorcha de luz, y no la tea
Del incendiario vil: que los desvelos
De esta patria, tan tiernos y prolijos,
Es hallar en vosotros dignos hijos
De Hidalgo, de Guerrero y de Morelos.

No olvidéis que mecióse vuestra cuna
En el mismo recinto
Sobre el cual resistieron los aztecas
A las huestes del César Carlos Quinto;
Y que el indio jamás huyó cobarde,
Ni al ver flotando espléndidos palacios
En el revuelto mar, de audacia alarde;
Ni al ver cruzar, silbando en el espacio,
El duro proyectil; ni ante el ruido
Atronador del arcabuz ibero;
Ni al conocer el ágil y ligero
Corcel, que, resoplando entre la espuma
De sus hinchadas fauces, parecía
Hundir el virgen suelo que regía
Con su dorado cetro Moctezuma.
Recordad que a los golpes de la espada,
Y de las lanzas a los botes rudos,
Nunca temió la raza denodada,
Cuyos pechos desnudos
Puso ante los cañones por escudos.
Recordad que este pueblo, cuando siente
Herir su dignidad, fulmina el rayo,
Lo mismo en las montañas insurgente,
Que en los baluartes bajo el sol de mayo:
Que, en páginas de luz dejando escritas,
Glorias que nunca empañará la niebla,
Hidalgo fue un titán de Granaditas,
Y fue un gigante Zaragoza en Puebla:
Que merece en la historia eterna vida
La guerra al invasor osado y fiero,
Cual merece la guerra fratricida
La maldición del Universo entero:
Que una docta experiencia
Dicen que dan el triunfo ambicionado,
Más que las toscas armas del soldado,
Las invencibles armas de la ciencia;
Y, sabios y prudentes,
Al recoger la enseña sacrosanta
De esta patria, que hoy ciñe vuestras frentes
Con el lauro debido a vuestro celo,
Veladla siempre con amor profundo;
Y así cual brilla el sol sobre la esfera,
Mire brillar en vuestra mano el mundo,
Libre y llena de honor, nuestra bandera.
Dad de firmeza y de heroísmo ejemplo;
Nunca luchéis hermano contra hermano;
Amad la patria: y hallaréis por templo
El corazón del pueblo mejicano.

Whilst installed in the Blackhouse,
RumputiN's and vlad the impaler's latest
craven political attack on the military,
Against Admiral McRaven, who headed up
the capture of Osama, is just more raving.
This is clear to everyone since they,

the bi-headed underworld crown of
the bipolar axi of global supposed power,
RumputiN, republican capitalist materialists,
vlad the impaler, totalitarian socialist
materialists, put our military on TX's SE
border with Mexico, even though the "caravan"
which was 40 days away, was projected
to be arriving at the SW part instead,

A political stunt to get republican politicians
between 1/2 and 1 % more votes in the Midterms,
While it worked for the criminal gaining of votes,
The military is doing next to nothing there,
And should be allowed home by Thanksgiving.
Meanwhile, Trumpler said, the "Admiral didn't
do so well, since it took so long to capture
Bin Laden", when it was king george and his ****,
cheney, who ordered Osama to be allowed to escape
from Bora, Bora to Pakistan for safe keeping in

Abbottabad, "5 miles S. of Pakistan's Westpoint".  
You see, Bushs and Bin Ladens had been in business
for decades, and in the M.E. business is thicker
than blood, Bush could no more **** Bin Laden than
he could his own flesh and blood.  It's well known
that he received wedding invitations to Osama's kids
weddings, etc., for years, so, Trumpler blaming
McRaven and O'bama, when they caught him in the 2nd year
of his Presidency, is just more precious examples of our
king kong sized terrible two's use of 1st conclusion,
superficial, linear thought stragedy to attack everybody,
in attempts to silence, cower most if not All, in vain.

These attacks by Trumpler are also misdirections, to take
the news cycles off: his party's extreme losses and evident
voter crime they did, like in GA, where Abrams "couldn't
concede in her Governor's race for that would mean it was
proper...", it wasn't because Gov. Elect Kemp determined that
"...it wasn't a free, fair election, ...democracy failed in GA".
Also, his illegally installing Whitaker, a criminal the FBI is
investigating, to acting Attorney General, to preside over the
Mueller investigation (cover-up for: it doesn't use the RICO act
and asked for him to answer a take home test months ago, he
hasn't even handed in yet, while "...We(e),...", got our last
take home tests in 1st grade).  As well as his wasting a 1/2 a
billion of your tax $ on further militarization of our S. border.
His false, lame attacks against democratic leaders are unending.

On the letter by 16 democrat politicians who signed onto "the
leadership fight against Pelosi (for the republicans), Ocasio-
Cortez, Elect, says, "what's the point of changing just to...,
we might get a more conservative leader, for signers aren't diverse,
14 are male, very few people of color, progressives aren't signing."
I agree, why would the non-repubs get rid of their strongest
political leader going into impeachment time and 2020?  The supposed
left said "Hillary wasn't perfect", and helped to install him, when,
if you didn't vote Hillary you voted for the bi-headed, RumputiN/vlad
the impaler, head of the global oligarchy and bi-polar global axi of
supposed power to dictate the extermination to extinction of humanity,
large mammals, for the corp structure's convolution's devolutionary
direction + 'la machine''s, sociological programming (machining) human
(into not) being, individually, which is the social challenge of our
day, as the convolution's dictating cult of personality is almost all
and the socialist's extemist lie that "there's no reality without
their agreement", is the political one.  Don't be undone, be one well.

Penelope was angry with me,
earlier this week I had ripped up
a story that I’d been working on for
a long time.

The story was about an ex-con, with a heart of gold,
he wandered around Nevada and righted a few wrongs
along the way.  

The coolest thing about him was his name and the fact that
he was a little banged up.

In my head, he was kind of an older guy, a ***,
kind of greasy, you know, shifty, reckless, a guy
maybe you could relate to, and he walked with a cane.

Big deal, right?

Penelope didn’t think so; I mean she was smart enough
to know that this story wasn’t my ******* magnum-opus
or anything, but she got ****** because I flipped out, started yelling
about how I was a no good sonofabitch, couldn’t write for ****,
and should give it up and take up ******’ basket-weaving or something.

She tried to tell me that I was being a ******* and that I was a good writer;
pointing out that I’d made it into rags like “Clues”, “Dime Detective”, and that once
I’d even been published in “Web of Mystery”.

But I wouldn’t listen and I told her that she was full of ****, and a pain in the ***,
and that she could do better than a hack like me, and I told her to get the hell
away from me or I might lose my ******* mind and strangle her.

So, she did.  She packed a bag, got in my car, and took off for her cousin’s house upstate.

Now, here I was, without my car, without more than maybe twenty-five bucks to my name,
and without the girl of my dreams.

I was just about to throw my typewriter out the window when the phone rang…

“Penny?”
“Nope.”
“Who is this?”
“It’s me, ya dumb ****!”
“Who the **** is ‘me’ and what the **** does ‘me’ want?”
“It’s Dale, ya *******!”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah!”

Dale proceeded to tell me about how he’d just been picked
up by both “Amazing Stories” and “Tales From The Crypt” for a
six month run of short fiction in each and he then tells me that
they’ve seen fit to advance him two-hundred dollars each.

“Eat ****, Dale,” I say, and hang up the phone.

About thirty minutes later there’s a knock at my door.
It’s not Penelope, unfortunately.
It’s Dale.

“I don’t wanna eat ****, Chuckie-boy.
I wanna eat a steak.”

I tell Dale to go get a **** steak and that I’m not planning on going anywhere.
He won’t take no for an answer, so the next thing I know, we’re loaded into his jalopy and heading downtown.

The first place we go is Rico’s.  

Rico’s has pretty good food and they know what to do with a KC strip,
so Dale’s pretty jazzed.

“Chuck, you getting’ a steak?”
“Nah, I was thinkin’ about the club sandwich.”

While we ate, Dale told me about how he’d gone about the writing of the pilots
for his two series of short stories, about the correspondence between himself and the
editors, about sending in edits and revisions, and about finally getting his acceptance letters,
signing the contracts, and getting the checks in the mail.

I listened, sure, but mostly I let my thoughts wander to how Penelope and I had done, and been doing, much the same for the past several years.  
I would mail manila envelopes back and forth to “Mystery and Suspense” and she would do her monthly allotment of sentiment scribbling for The Renaissance Greeting Card Co.

Neither of us were hacks.  We got some checks in the mail, same as Dale, and more often.

What chaffed was that Dale had gotten a contract for a run of stories.

Dale had gotten what I wanted. And, I couldn’t handle it.
I had forgotten about all that I had done, all that I had achieved,
I had dismissed all of those manila envelopes, all of those little checks, I had forgotten how they’d added up, how they’d kept me alive, fed me, sheltered me, how they’d sustained me.

And in the dismissal of those envelopes and all the good they’d done me, I’d managed to dismiss the only other things that had done me any good at all.  I’d dismissed myself as a writer, and I’d done the very same to Penelope.  

What a fool I was.

When we’d finished, Dale paid the check and asked if I wanted to go to Auggie’s *******
and have a look.

I said that I didn’t.

I thanked him for the meal and asked if he’d mind dropping me off at home.

I told him that I had a lot of work to do on a rewrite,

and that I had a telephone call to make.

*

-JBClaywell

©P&ZPublications; 2016

Que lenguaje mas hermoso
el que produce palabras de alegria
como es el te amo, te quiero y te adoro.

Dicen que los latinos somos ruidosos,
llenos de energia y poca cordura,
pero es que no entienden que el español
no tiene limites, no tiene volumen, solo frescura.

Grita tus palabras indigenas,
huracan, coqui, fotuto, Boricua,
esas palabras tainas tan bellas
que usamos cada dia.

Porque tienes miedo cuando te sale el "Spanglish"
si los gringos no pueden pronunciar ni "Porto Wico"
asi que curate con un  "bad english"
porque nunca tendras que procuparte por decir RRRRico como un chino.

Mi lenguaje no puede morir
porque dentro de sus palabras
estan las llamas de un Neruda,
la negrura de un Llorens,
la fortaleza de un Albizu.

Oh cuanto te amo, te quiero, te adoro Puerto Rico
por enseñarme el español que uso para enamorar a tus hermosas mujeres.
Oh cuanto te amo, te quiero, te adoro Puerto Rico
por eseñarme el español que uso para luchar contra los que ya no te quieren.

Everyone Has a Story… Here’s Five.


Part I: Cousin

I remember
That daze I felt those days
Those days that were fixtures
In my life at the time
But like all good stories
They come to an end
Sometimes abruptly

I was on the island,
At the very top,
Looking down from our mountain,
It was night time,
And the lights shined clearly,
Little holes from the bottom of heaven were penetrating the world,
As they did so I peered on,
Never truly understand what heaven was,
This was my element,
The curiosity which was placed in me,
Since the birth of my being,
Has never been one for being quenched,
Even if my parents tried to beat it out of me,
After a time they kind of hit a fork in the road and decided to go right,
But at the last second I side stepped and ran my behind to the left,
Because the right side isn't always the right way to go,
I felt that their minds died some time ago,
But I was a kid, in the hoods of Puerto Rico,
Only visiting, never witnessing,
The day to day realities,
That came from living so rapidly.

I met my cousin for the second time the days before that night,
He took me under his wing almost immediately and I was happy to follow,
He was a tall man, tattooed from head to toe,
I thought the second I laid eyes on him, that this was my role model
As a lover of Hip-Hop I thought this was how everyone should look,
He would cuss, and spit, and drink, and have several women on deck,
While rolling a couple of joints,
This was the MAN!

However, this view didn't last for very long,
Because on that night,
I witnessed the devil for the first time,
I crawled from beneath my covers,
That my mother had so carefully put into place,
As a safeguard against the realities of the world,
That would come true in my childish fantasies of the boogie man,
The only bad I knew was what was told to me by the news,
People falling left and right cause of wars and other endless fights,
But in my mind they could be brought back to life by the Dragon *****,
Unfortunately Goku wasn't here this night,
I snuck through the house silently,
As the noise would be drowned out by the singing of coquis,
My bare feet hit the humid pavement following the rush down the stairs,
I only wanted to see my view,
The view of heavens holes peering through the vast and dark sky,
It was located at the edge of a cliff that looked over a ravine and then the wilderness,
At the precise moment I stopped to realize my will,
My dream was disrupted by a voice,
Followed by a sound that sliced through my mind and deflated my childish intuition,
A sound that penetrates my adult mind and echoes in the silence to this day,
Muffled screams echoed out after I heard the gunshots ring,
Beneath the sounds of the forests singing,
My heart was pounding slowly,
I was strangely calm rather than panicky and fearful,
Not that I was a brave child, but I remained curious,
Until I saw the blood…
It was then that I saw the dimly lit lamp beneath the moon light,
Resulting in the two bodies casting elongated shadows against the dank Earth,
Followed by a larger body standing over them,
One body was completely still,
While the other one was rocking back and forth,
The terror that took me was shear and raw,
The only other time that I had witnessed such a fear,
Was through the appearance in a pig’s eye,
As my grandfather drove a machete through its heart,
I heard the second shot ring out,
In the same amount of time that it took me to blink,
The other man had been murdered just the same,
And before I knew it the gun was pointed at me,
I stared back and started shaking,
This had to be pure fiction,
But no, this was reality,
I turned to run, but stopped when I realized who it was,
Looking up at me as he exited the thicket and the shadows,
Was my cousin, my role model,
He cocked his head up and looked at me with concern,
But said nothing,
As I ran home breathlessly,
Under the holes into heaven,
That had been put there by bullets,
My childhood was finished…

And I'd never see him again.


Part II: Brother

I remember
That daze I felt those days
Those days that were fixtures
In my life at the time
But like all good stories
They come to an end
Sometimes abruptly

As a child,
I thoroughly enjoyed,
Playing around outside,
I enjoyed getting into play fights,
I loved feeling like I could overwhelm any opponent, but I couldn't.
My brother was way stronger than me,
He had the height advantage,
And best believe he had the weight advantage,
But still, I thought I could manage,
It never really crossed my mind that my brother was a bit off,
To me he was a big kid,
A quiet companion,
My best friend,
My heart.

That was more than enough,
Until one day I went too far,
See my brother had one toy that he loved,
It was string; he'd tear up clothes to make string,
He'd cry up storms at department stores if he didn't get his string,
He'd hit my mother and punch my father if he didn't get string,
I just always thought the exception was me,
I was his play mate, he smiled at me,
Something quite rare for my big brother to do as a result of his condition,
And the medication he was taking,
You see when a child has autism they kind of want to do their own thing,
They want to be on their own,
Enjoying whatever it is they enjoy doing on their time,
But I had a child's mind and a child's ego,
His toys were mine too,
Share with me,
Play with me,
Look at me,
ME, ME, ME!
So he punched me right across the face,
I went flying into a sliding paneled glass door and began crying,
When my mother entered the room,
She asked what was going on and tried to calm me down,
I wouldn't listen so she told me shut up before the neighbors called police,
And we were both taken away,
Being that my mother was a single parent, I believed her,
With that being the case, I closed my eyes and didn't look at my arm,
Nor the blood slowly dripping down it onto my fingertips,
Down to the floor below,
I didn't play much anymore after that,
I was too childish to blame myself,
So the fault was his.

The fault would end up being mine,
As this action being a culmination of things done by my brother,
Led my father and my mother to do what I thought was unthinkable,
They chose to let him go,
Giving him to a group home,
My young mind couldn't even begin to comprehend the pain they felt,
But to me all I could see was two adults giving up on their son,
I saw love and hope dissipate right in front of my eyes,
He was playing with his string in the back seat of the car,
While I sat beside him just watching him,
Saving every movement of his,
And his joy into my memory banks,
To be left to gather dust; because the pain was too much to harness,
But with respect I chose to re-open the chest,
And hold my brother in my arms once again,
Before he was ripped away from me,
And given away to the monstrous people,
That wouldn't let him hug his mother nor me,
I didn't care if this is what was needed to be,
I was losing my brother!
My blood!
My playmate!
My best friend!
My only friend!
My HEART!
It didn't matter that he hit me,
It don't matter if he hit my mother or father,
Because the beating my heart was taking was too much,
For my slim frame and still developing body to handle,
As such my growth was stunted and I gained heart problems,
On top of the asthma,
Autism meant nothing to me,
He was everything!

But it ended with me sleeping alone,
At home he was gone.


Part III: Father

I remember
That daze I felt those days
Those days that were fixtures
In my life at the time
But like all good stories
They come to an end
Sometimes abruptly

I never felt much towards you,
I was taught to love my mother solely,
As she was the one always there to heal my bumps and bruises,
The only memories I have of you from my childhood,
Are of you feeding me God awful food and teaching me to ride a bike,
But I forgot how to ride a bike,
And I could cook what you cooked on my own,
Burnt hotdogs, and pasta, and cereal never really fazed me,
Every other memory is a blur,
Your love was like a line or two painted upon a Mona Lisa of love,
That I had gathered from the various sources of inspiration in my life,
I could always gain appreciation for them,
But not for you.


As I entered my adult years,
You tried to make up for it,
I knew you had pent up guilt inside from not seeing me,
Yet you bought presents and rose up the seeds of another tree,
Seeds that I don't blame,
I only wanted to smell the same flowers that you gave them,
So you were trying to give them to me while I could still smell them,
But that sense was long gone along with my sense of sight,
Literally my vision was fading, but my mind was expanding,
As I was witnessing the world around me quite clearly, and the soul within me,
Just wouldn't release me, from the overwhelming feeling of needing you,
A father figure I could depend on,
A monument for what a man should be, and truly believe in,
As it comes to issues of morality, love, and loyalty,
Up until this point you had only taught me resentment,
Resentment leading to hate,
But I wanted to honor you in place,
So I hide the parts of me that you don't care to see,
I hide my relationships,
I hide my true feelings,
I hide my poetry,
Because if you found those things,
I would no longer be free,
And I refuse to submerge my soul into slavery,
Just for you to feel like you rose up the brightest son,
When truly the darkness is where I was brought up and where I belong,
Moonlight is the only thing I can touch with my pen,
As I compose the paintings residing in my head,
Of wordsmiths and demons battling,
Because words are my angels,
And they have always been there in every instance,
Whenever I've needed a piece of wisdom,
Or a calming presence that would come from the essence,
And recollections of stories of glory,
Stories that helped me forget you,
I love you, and hope our relationship can bloom,
But I no longer wish to speak on you.


Part IV: Mother

I remember
That daze I felt those days
Those days that were fixtures
In my life at the time
But like all good stories
They come to an end
Sometimes abruptly

I was taught to feel love towards you,
And it still remains as strong as ever,
From when I was a child,
Your sacrifice made my life exactly what it is,
Exactly what I needed it to be in order to grow and explore my soul,
To reach for my dreams,
You have always given to me,
Even on your last two cents,
Both would be for me,
You were my mother goose,
Even if I seemed like a young rooster,
Because we were always so different,
You always wanted to mold me into your vision of me,
While you instilled in me many things which cling tightly to me,
You've made someone completely different from what you expected,
I hold different views and truths that are separate from you,
Which is fine, but for a time it would keep me from being who I desired to be,
Because you could never cut the umbilical cord.

In fact, it was wrapped around my neck,
The death of me was coming slowly,
Due to the inhibitions of my creativity,
You loved that I would write, but you hated what I was writing,
Hip-Hop, home to me, was looked at as purgatory,
You couldn't see why I would want to listen to these stories,
Stories of struggling and hustling and juggling jobs, drugs, women, and friendships,
These ships were all sailing gallantly through my mind; the wordplay was so sublime,
And the fact that the words blended with their worlds were so unkind,
Appealed to me, but you were blind,
This changed my perspective,
However what really taught me to be a man,
Was when you began pushing opposing women out of my life,
I would be deep in love, buy-a-ring love,
But one thing would be enough to trigger a string of insults,
And a manikin-like regard for the person of whom I adored,
This was too much for me, you were systematically ending my dreams,
I thank you for your love and for everything that you continue to do for me,
But the cataclysm that was forming in this poets mind,
Was becoming too much to bridge,
If this feeling was to be ongoing,
So as a desperate act of love and care,
I left you behind,
But the love is forever there,
I'm a man because of you,
Your heart will forever reside with me on my journey,
You’ve no need to be frightened,
I’ve got you, I’ve got us,
My senses have been heightened.


Part V: Lover

I remember
That daze I felt those days
Those days that were fixtures
In my life at the time
But like all good stories
They come to an end
Sometimes abruptly

We met after a string of accidents,
Accidents that nearly cost me my life,
These were love losses, blood losses,
Things I’d never thought I could recover from,
The experiences had me going numb,
Until you found me… or did I find you?
It's hard to tell it just seemed like we were two lost souls,
Looking to quell our young hunger for the opposite ***,
Each and every day was spent together,
First on the stoop in front of your sister’s house,
The place where I first kissed your mouth,
Second on the park benches,
This is where hours flourished from minutes,
Third was along the streets of the world,
You were my diamonds and my pearls,
Indestructible and irreplaceable,
Once you met the paper you were there forever,
With that ink blood that flows through your veins,
A fellow poet whose love would stain my mental,
Instrumental in gifting my simple world with a new understanding,
It wasn’t how I imagined, but God laughs at notions of planning,
I finally found out what it meant to be in love,
I never had two people show me what it was,
Honestly the many descriptions of hate,
Is what would be seen at the gate of my consciousness,
As such, I believed this same fate would await me,
It was once the singular feeling with which I could relate,
But the euphoric hands you laid on me,
Made me lose an awake thought process,
As I was in a lake filled with your waters,
That would flow to rivers,
Followed by seas of your loving,
Seas consummating your body,
As I laid on the beach,
Believing it to be a dream.

But it wasn't, and it shouldn’t have ended,
In reality, love has ways of being reprimanded,
I was so lucid, and the picture was candid,
It was the simplest of pleasures that I'd ever been handed,
I learned right away the right things to do,
To flow from my heart and work my way into you,
To take care of my lips,
A rough kiss can't ******,
Nor find proper pleasure,
Along a woman's surface,
You’d allow me to peruse your mind,
Sending shivers up your spine,
As I embarked on my conquest,
Explorations of lustful aspirations,
Symbolizing and synthesizing,
Each and every stroke,
Representing a new letter,
In the alphabet of love,
Allowing our tale to unwind,
To combine the breathlessness of our exploits,
With our hearts desire for choice,
Which declined to lend voice,
To the greater work to be done,
The acquisition of newer positions,
Are symptoms of the journey,
Keep going, never surrender,
Be tender and conquer,
Mental foreplay is stronger,
Than any physical touch.

Love of a poet both bold and stoic,
Is a simplistic view of unfolded vibes and rhythms from the inside,
This could never subside to anything less than genuine spirit of heart and signs,
Among the winds, trees, stars, because you are the art,
You are Moses parting the red sea of my subconscious,
You are the dark sphere which encircles me,
You are the light that penetrates me,
You are harmonic melodies and sweet remedies,
You are rude symmetries and cool symphonies,
You are a lesson learned and an angel untouched,
With exception of me,
Hushed whispers or high pitched screams,
Mean nothing, without the mind following the body to finality,
The fluidity of our ****** motion,
Is a reflection of our mental state,
I seek not to pass through you,
I seek to become one with you.

That's how I feel about poetry,
That's also how I feel about ***,
That's how I feel about you,
You showed me the way,
You are my soul mate,
One with the words I write,
And the memories that I seek the convey,
You are the sun pouring through with the rain,
You are my miracle, one year my junior,
Fifty years older under the skin,
Deep within, your soul, my solar,
Not an eclipse, but a shimmering glow,
Always for my love and never for show.

I fall in love with people's honesty.
Their smile.
Funny jokes.
Tears.
Scars.
Passions.
Eyes.
Dreams.
Their spirit.

Word to Marley Soul.

Five steps in my growth,
Five indispensable cogs of my sou

Two Bulgarian poets entered “The Second Genesis” – Anthology of Contemporary World Poetry – India’2014
Poems of the Bulgarian poets Bozhidar Pangelov and Mira Dushkova are included in the Indian project “The Second Genesis: An Anthology of Contemporary World Poetry”. Bozhidar Pangelov’s poems are: “Time is an Idea” and “…I hear” translated by Vessislava Savova; as for Mira Dushkova’s poems – “Beyond”, “Sozopolis” and “The Girl”, they were translated by Petar Kadiyski.


For the authors:
Bozhidar Pangelov was born in the soft month of October in the city of the chestnut trees, Sofia, Bulgaria, where he lives and works. He likes joking that the only authorship which he acknowledges are his three children and the job-hobby in the sphere of the business services. His first book Four Cycles (2005) written entirely with an unknown author but in a complete synchronous on motifs of the Hellenic legends and mythos. The coauthor (Vanja Konstantinova) is an editor of his next book Delta (2005) and she is the woman whom “The Girl Who…” (2008) is dedicated to. His last (so far) book is “The Man Who…” (2009). In June 2013 a bi lingual poetry book A Feather of Fujiama is being published in Amazon.com as a Kindle edition. Some of his poems are translated in Italian, German, Polish, Russian, Chinese and English languages and are published on poetry sites as well as in anthologies and some periodicals all over the world. Bozhidar Pangelov is on of the German project Europe takes Europa ein Gedicht. “Castrop Rauxel ein Gedicht RUHR 2010” and the project “SPRING POETRY RAIN 2012”, Cyprus.
Mira Dushkova (1974) was born in in Veliko Tarnovo, the medieval capital of Bulgaria. She earned a MA degree from the University of Veliko Tarnovo, and later on a PhD in Modern Bulgarian Literature, from Ruse University Angel Kanchev, in 2010, where she is currently teaching literature courses.
Her writing includes poetry, essays, literary criticism and short stories. She has published several poetry books in Bulgarian: “I Try Histories As Clothes“ (1998), „Exercise On The Scarecrow” (2000), „Scents and Sights“ (2004), literary monograph “Semper Idem : Konstantin Konstantinov. Poetics of the late stories“ (2012, 2013) and the story collection „Invisible Things“ (2014).
Her poems have been published in literary editions in Bulgaria, USA, Sweden, Hungary, Croatia, Romania, Turkey and India. Some of her poems and essays have been first prize winners of different Bulgarian contests for literature.
She has attended poetry festivals in Bulgaria, Croatia (Zagreb) and Turkey (Istanbul and Ordu).
She lives in Ruse – Bulgaria.

For the Antology “The Second Genesis”:
In the anthology titled „The Second Genesis“ are published the poems of 150 poets from 57 countries. All poems are in English. The Antology consists of 546 pages. “The Second Genesis” includes authors’ and editors’ biographies and three indexes: of the authors; of the poem titles and an index based on the first verses. It is issued by “A.R.A.W.LII” (Academy of ‘raitɘ(s) And Word Literati) – an academy, which encourages literature and creative writing and realizes cultural connections between India and the other countries. Four times a year ARAWLII publishes in India the international magazine for poetry and creative writing „Prosopisia“. Its Chief Editor and President of A.R.A.W.LII is Prof. Anuraag Sharma. He is also author of Antology’s Introduction.
Participating Countries:
Albania, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Albania, Great Britain, Germany, Greece, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, India, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Spain, Italy, Jordan, Canada, Cyprus, China, Kosovo, Cuba, Macao, Macedonia, Niger, Norway, Pakistan, Palestine, Poland, Puerto Rico, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, USA, Singapore, Syria, Serbia, Taiwan, Tunis, Turkey, Fiji, Philippines, Finland, France, Holland, Croatia, Montenegro, Czech Republic, Chile, Sweden, Switzerland, Scotland, South Africa, Japan
For the editors:
Anuraag Sharma – editor and president of A.R.A.W.LII
Poet, critic, author of short stories, translator and playwrighter, Anuraag has to his credit the following publications: “Kiske Liye?”, “Punarbhava”, “Audhava”, Dimensions of the Angel: A Study of the poetry of Les Murray’s Poetry “Iswaswillbe” – a collection of short stories, “Setu” (“The Bridges”). He has also co-editor the volume of conference papers: ”Caring Cultures: Sharing Imaginations. Some of his recent publications include: “A Trilogy of plays”, “Mehraab” (“The Arch”) – translations of selected poems of four Canberra Poets, “Papa and Other Poems”, “Sau Baras Ka Sitara Eik” – translation of Andrew Parkin’s “A Star of Hundred Years”, “As if a wooden house I am”- translations of Surendra Chaturverdi, “Satish Verma: The Poet” and “Tere Jaane ke Baad Tere Aane as Pehle”. He is also editor-in-chief of two international journals – “Lemuria” and “Prosopisia”. Currently he is working as a Professor in English at Govt. College “Kekri” Ajmer, India.

Moizur Rehman Khan – co-redactor, project manager, secretary of A.R.A.W.LII
He studied Urdo and Persian Literature in college and later on competed his master degree in English literature from “Dayanand” College, Ajmer, India. He completed his research dissertation under the supervision of Anuraag Sharma on “Major themes in the poetry of Chris Wallas-Crabbe”. He is a creative writer. His poems and articles have been published in various magazines and journals. Currently he is teaching English at DMS, RIE, Ajmer, India.
References for the Antology:
“No middle no end, the poems in The Second Genesis have been speaking to you long before the beginning and will continue without you…don’t worry, its binding has long since unglued, its pages, worn and disheveled, will always be speaking to you, they’ve been compiled this way, to be read out of order, backwards, shelved or scattered in an attic between the coffee and greasy finger stains…The Second Genesis is the history of the Book where you become its words, ink and pulp.”
Craig Czury

“The Second Genesis is at the crossroads of a new poetic becoming. a poetry claiming its second beginning not only for art but the heart pulsating and feeding the entire body. This anthology is a successful fusion of unique, inimitable and polyphonic poetry, a well-organized improvisation with a solid and flexible structure.”

Dalia Staponkute

“The Second Genesis, a compendium of world poetry which is also a poetry of the world, suggests so much a new beginning as it does a recognition of the ongoing creation that continues to animate our collective existence. Our precarious era requires a global affirmation that we are all in this together. Poetry has always said as much, and here it says it again, in the idioms of our time.”
Paul Kane
**
“Visionary and international, The Second Genesis, introduced and edited by Anuraag Sharma, sparkles with poetry of insight, intelligence and feeling and is an indispensable reminder of our human aspirations and experience in the early 21st century. Poets from nearly sixty countries rub shoulders in this ambitious and wide-ranging collection, and their poems resonate and mingle in a multi-layered voice. It is the voice of our humanity.
In his Introduction, Dr. Sharma points to the invaluable importance of poetry in what he calls our destructive Lear era:
Beyond the Lear Century, across the 21st Century lies the island of Prospero and Ariel and Miranda and Ferdinand – the region of faith, hope and innocence, the land of virtue, and all forgiveness sans grievances, sans regrets, sans curses. The doleful shades lead to pastures new.
We must weigh our hopes. The Second Genesis is at hand….”
Diana Sampey

This plot of ground
facing the waters of this inlet
is dedicated to the living presence of
Emily Dickinson Wellcome
who was born in England; married;
lost her husband and with
her five year old son
sailed for New York in a two-master;
was driven to the Azores;
ran adrift on Fire Island shoal,
met her second husband
in a Brooklyn boarding house,
went with him to Puerto Rico
bore three more children, lost
her second husband, lived hard
for eight years in St. Thomas,
Puerto Rico, San Domingo, followed
the oldest son to New York,
lost her daughter, lost her “baby,”
seized the two boys of
the oldest son by the second marriage
mothered them—they being
motherless—fought for them
against the other grandmother
and the aunts, brought them here
summer after summer, defended
herself here against thieves,
storms, sun, fire,
against flies, against girls
that came smelling about, against
drought, against weeds, storm-tides,
neighbors, weasels that stole her chickens,
against the weakness of her own hands,
against the growing strength of
the boys, against wind, against
the stones, against trespassers,
against rents, against her own mind.

She grubbed this earth with her own hands,
domineered over this grass plot,
blackguarded her oldest son
into buying it, lived here fifteen years,
attained a final loneliness and—

If you can bring nothing to this place
but your carcass, keep out.

I feel like I have the right
to cuss like a sailor
because I am the descendant of one.
I can remember the stories my mother used to tell,
of the man who made perfect pancakes.
It was all I knew about him besides the other story
about their first kiss in the rain,
then she married him.
And when I braid my hair
I am Pocahontas,
because if my great-grandfather whom I've never known.
I wish I'd been there
when my family lived in Morocco or Puerto Rico,
I wish I was foreign.
Even though,
it takes forever for my mother's files to go through anything
because she is not U.S. born.
I think I just want to know what box to check
in the race section of applications.

i like my women
like i like my
life:  crazy
as **** and
under siege.

i am not satisfied
until that woman has
to put her drink down
because she needs
her whole body to
hate me.

i won't gamble with
anything except my life.
A real man plays
Russian Roulette by
handing the woman the
one bullet,
and using the other
five himself.
On himself.

it is better odds
of survival for the man.

Since our political system has been laid bare, after RumputiN was installed
in the Blackhouse, it's beautiful complex of lack of complexity, in a word,
conspiracy of conspiracies, has moved me and "...we(e),..." to have as a few
of my favorite things be far more reaching questions, out of necessity. Like,
without acknowledging, and demanding others do the same, that it's been
purposely engineered to be a criminal injustice system instead, how can one
even have a real conversation that would lead to potential for real change
of it taking place in reality, if you don't know who you were, where you've
been, how on God's green Earth can you expect to know who..., where you are
and what's going on, necessary to start thinking about changing anything,
even yourself, as well as directing who you will be and where you will
be going, etc.?  Swine slaughtering lower-middle-class to poor men en masse,
mostly of color, instead of just doing the usual liquidation of their ases
and assets, are just serial murderers masquerading as cops, and what goes
around comes around, no?  If you're not taking bullets you're making them.  
Also, people are fed up with felonious RumputiN and his rootin' tootin'
organized crime family spree from the Blackhouse, which should be prosecuted
using the RICO Statute instead of just being elaborately covered up by Mueller
for he's not using it and he's handing out immunities like soldiers candy to
Iraqi kids, duh.  I would add some salient pointless points, beyond the 'empty
boat' of Zen, and 'useless tree' of the Tao, we can understand the burden
placed on our shoulders by our ancestry not exercising their responsibilities
as they should have, and thereby it's Siamese twin sisters, their freedoms,
Withered like unused muscles as well, as a panultimate challenge, saving
humanity, literally. Also, understanding Jung's "80 % of all actions, thoughts,
feelings we have, that we acknowledge, or don't, perceive or don't, are
compensatory towards our pasts", necessitates an integral understanding of
Satre's existentialism' meaning of angst, as experience integral to life, not
opposed to it, but, rather, central to it, and a nexus of it.  This is more
than an embracing of gestalt's, Perls', moment, now. Moving away from sophist
perspective, we also experience the meaning of life is struggle, which comes
through all our meaningful work, succinctly. Further, what is life beyond that
foci is also, the where, when, who, how, and sometimes why too (but never Y2K)
of life; beyond our masks and ego fulfilling stories, schtick, lines, etc..
Do we struggle, not just as lifelong students, with the impossible, not just
the improbable.  Yet, it's actually more layered than that in a much larger
dimensional paradigm than 4 dimensions.  Yes, the effects of our causes in any
action usually have effects that undo our causes as we act them out, intend,
present them, etc..  Yet, those more superficial, linear, first conclusion
layers are not less effective, per se, as the complexity of Karma, Dharma are
beyond our normal comprehension. What is the root of thought, feeling, the root
of feeling, being, the root of being, the extent to which we struggle with what
it is, no?  For, as the following twig of poetree gleans: Soul//
As my breath
is the one, prana,/
And the life's pulse, pala,/
Reaching angelic source, sura,/

So is this mind, manas, a
/  Flowering unfoldment,
/ Unendingly touching
/ The eye
that would it see,/  
Unbeckoning unto thee./
As well, this Bodhi, a temple,/

Of the four and fifth, nur,/  
So entered by atma, a ray of thy sun,/  
Thus being
winged, and
/  As such with wind,/
Flying only in dharma's dance,/
Is returning
to, Brahma, you./  For, there yet, by thy grace, go I./  
We are not who we think
we are, we are, rather, the extent to which we struggle to evolve to be some-
things, spirit, soul, Bodhi, etc., on the path of study that could and should
be one, you, me, forever asked and never answered.  Yet, even if we lived as
prayer, our light only adding to the well of light, our every step in grace,
leaving no footprints that followed none, echoing in all ways, always,
sometimes, like pulling teeth, "...we(e),...", must stalk our words from our
insides 'til we wrangle them, like cats, to the tip of our tongues, no?  For,
"Words weren't meant for cowards..." and we must "be brave...", Happy Rhodes.
We can't allow ourselves the luxury of taking our supposedly 'golden silence'
all the way to the bank, as your average bear does.  These are the end times,
we successfully struggle, to abolish global defacto-slavery by the non-renew-
able energies' corporate structure's machine and it's convolution, against
the global oligarchy's premeditated mass-****** of 7.5 billion people, or
humanity's extinct.  Gandhi, "(supposed) science is the root of all opression"
and, "...we(e),..." must be the change we want in the world".  Is not life
relation, are we not responsible for one another, are not all threads in
the fabric of life needed, as is the evoliutionary ones' mendings, for we
can't allow it to be torn asunder?  If not here, then where, if not now, when,
not you, who? Viva la evolucion.  Indivisible, illimitable you, GOTV.

Puerto Rico is my wonderful homeland
It is the island with the glaring sands
Where everyone can always get a tan
The land where the music comes from the tremendous bands
The temperature is always sunny and hot
The land where I was baptized as a tot
It has endless beaches and gorgeous woman
Puerto Rico is my island paradise

Those poor, misunderstood teachers,
Counting down days till retirement.
Like grunts in The Nam,
Waiting for a reprieve like it was a
Papal dispensation or a Presidential pardon, or
Last minute stay of execution from the Governor.
Teachers: dying a slow death
On the same lame stage day after day,
Performing amateur comedy,
Hosting their very own Karaoke Club;
Filling barely enough seats in the joint
To crack their daily job satisfaction nut.
The kids who do show up for class are too bored,
Or too apathetic to stay awake,
Heckle you or walk out.
Most teachers hate their jobs.
So many teachers, so many miserable mooks
Wishing they had some other job, any other job,
Like plumber or astronaut,
Mortgage broker or CIA assassin,
The last two with similar personality & career profiles
On The Myers Briggs Type Indicator MBTI® Step I Interpretive Report. Anything’s got to be better than being
Trapped in a 40 by 40 foot box all day,
Stuck in some Dungeons & Dragons classroom
All day with 40 chaotic, evil, teenage
Gary Gygax-ed kids, used to entertainment
Of higher quality and sparkle.
The cardinal sin of teaching:  Thou shalt not be boring!

Teachers complain constantly about how bad the money is,
Having to work almost 185 days a year,
Whining about only getting 8 weeks off in the summer &
Every freaking holiday on earth known to man.
Snap out of it: you get paid what may be one of
The last livable, middle class salaries in America,
Not to mention health and defined retirement benefits, &
You’re still kvetching.
Meanwhile, Good Teachers—
Those deliriously happy few,
That small rare band of subversives,
Maybe you can count them on one hand &
Still feel lucky you had that many—
I’m talking about the good teachers,
Who view teaching as an art form,
Atypical teachers with both brains and heart.
These are the teachers that make the difference.
These are the vital early role models we need
To encounter when we first leave home as toddlers.

I can still hear you, Mr. Feeny:
“I want you to go home this afternoon and open a book! I don’t care what you had otherwise planned, I order you, nay, I command you. Go home and open a book.”
Books are sine qua non.
Good teachers start out by reading a lot of books—
That’s the brain stuff.
It is life lessons of the heart, however,
That really counts,
Stuff they’ve learned the hard way,
The pain they’ve felt personally,
Particularly while young themselves.
That’s where the heart comes from.
And for **** sure they never read about it
In whatever passes for textbooks in
Most graduate schools of education,
Largely lame crap masquerading as academic rigor
In the diploma mills serving the education profession these days.
I taught in 15 high schools across the American southwest &
I’ve known some really breathtakingly dumb,
Essentially illiterate teachers.
Even at the highest institutions of higher learning,
The average educator of teachers is
Rarely known for intellectualism.
With the possible exception of Diane Ravitch,
Jonathan Kozol, Paulo “The Brazilian” Freire--&
Maybe that Marxist hold-out, Eric “Rico” Gutstein--
Instructional staff at most university
Graduate Schools of Education are not
Taken seriously by the rest of the academic faculty.
What was your source of heart, Mr.Kotter?
I can assure you, it was not something you
Picked up at a teacher in-service, Gabe, &
Welcome back, by the way.

If you remember one thing about
Teacher licensing, remember this:
Albert Einstein, at the height of his fame &
Intellectual prowess, could not walk in
Off the street from out-of-state, or
Anywhere else in the universe, &
Qualify for a secondary single subject
Preliminary license to teach physics.
Not in any public high school classroom in
California or in the state of New Mexico.
He simply lacked the requisite education,
Hadn’t taken the plenitude of pedagogic courses,
Expensive college credits in such vital subjects as:
Methods of Teaching Science for Dummies;
Educational Technology for Idiots;
Band Aids & First Aid;
Tae Kwan Do for the Inner City;
Teaching & Testing the Test Takers;
Touchy-Feely 101, 201 & 301;
Understanding Special Kids:
Gifted Kids, Not-so Gifted Kids,
Kids with Attitude & Kids with ADD;
Curriculum Simulacrum;
ELL/Cross-Cultural Learning;
Self-Esteem for the Worthless; &
Last but not least, Foundations of Education:
Sarcasm & Humiliation for Fun & Profit.
And I didn’t even mention taking & passing
That sublimely subtle CBEST or NMTA/NES,
Teacher licensure tests,
Essentially 8th Grade literacy exams
Quite a few applicants take 3 or 4 times
Before earning a passing score.

Blame society?
Blame the parents?
Blame the politicians?
No, teachers:
Blame yourselves.

guilt me like a cancer
manipulate me like a taurus
if i was the first verse, you’d skip to the chorus
i tape glue and sew but you’re the one who tore us
ripped me into pieces and i made myself
something new
i recognized myself
you’re lost not knowing what to do
play dumb like a pisces and lash out like a scorpio
if you’d give me up for anything
it would be half an oreo
maybe four quarters or a dollar
but you could never change
had a heart for everyone but i was never in your range
impulsive like an aires confusing like a gemini
you my day 1 and i love you turns into there cant be a you and i
you “never wanna make me cry” but can never keep your **** dry
eyes red like im high
you “never want to say goodbye” but the second things dont go your way you fly
but you could never be the bad guy?
act out like a capricorn stubborn like a leo
how you beat yourself up but wanna be everyones hero?
your double life is really a triple
i should call you trio
if ‘paid in full’ was my life you would be rico
how my own girl crossed me?
then made it my fault that she lost me?
then told everyone she tossed me?
don’t care like aquarius outted me like a libra
you beat around the bush when i made it black and white like a zebra
how i told you tell me the truth and you made up a story
you cant lie on someone who loves you
and bask in glory
i paved the way for you and you act lost like dory
and i still found you
careless like sagittarius critic like a virgo
how you tell me to “never leave” but you go?
how you use the water you drained me of to grow
you’re not who your instagram shows
i see through you, commando
you cant flex on me if you know what i know

She never made it
To Morocco
Rode ’cross the desert
With her Bedouin lover
Shopped for bargains
In the Souks of Rabat
Sipped mint tea
From a frosted glass.

She never went sailing
In a catamaran
And on a moonlit beach
Made love in the sand
Or drank espresso
In a café in Lima
Or danced the flamenco
In Puerto Rico.

She married a man
Cause no one else offered
Had three kids
And moved to the suburbs
Wrapped up her dreams
In brown butcher paper
Tied them with twine
And shelved them for later .

She never made it
To Morocco
Her life was four walls
Plastered in stucco
And she sighed as she thought
Of the things that she lost
The dreams that she wrapped
And shelved in the past.

Oídos con el alma,
pasos mentales más que sombras,
sombras del pensamiento más que pasos,
por el camino de ecos
que la memoria inventa y borra:
sin caminar caminan
sobre este ahora, puente
tendido entre una letra y otra.
Como llovizna sobre brasas
dentro de mí los pasos pasan
hacia lugares que se vuelven aire.
Nombres: en una pausa
desaparecen, entre dos palabras.
El sol camina sobre los escombros
de lo que digo, el sol arrasa los parajes
confusamente apenas
amaneciendo en esta página,
el sol abre mi frente,
                                        balcón al voladero
dentro de mí.

                            Me alejo de mí mismo,
sigo los titubeos de esta frase,
senda de piedras y de cabras.
Relumbran las palabras en la sombra.
Y la negra marea de las sílabas
cubre el papel y entierra
sus raíces de tinta
en el subsuelo del lenguaje.
Desde mi frente salgo a un mediodía
del tamaño del tiempo.
El asalto de siglos del baniano
contra la vertical paciencia de la tapia
es menos largo que esta momentánea
bifurcación del pesamiento
entre lo presentido y lo sentido.
Ni allá ni aquí: por esa linde
de duda, transitada
sólo por espejeos y vislumbres,
donde el lenguaje se desdice,
voy al encuentro de mí mismo.
La hora es bola de cristal.
Entro en un patio abandonado:
aparición de un fresno.
Verdes exclamaciones
del viento entre las ramas.
Del otro lado está el vacío.
Patio inconcluso, amenazado
por la escritura y sus incertidumbres.
Ando entre las imágenes de un ojo
desmemoriado. Soy una de sus imágenes.
El fresno, sinuosa llama líquida,
es un rumor que se levanta
hasta volverse torre hablante.
Jardín ya matorral: su fiebre inventa bichos
que luego copian las mitologías.
Adobes, cal y tiempo:
entre ser y no ser los pardos muros.
Infinitesimales prodigios en sus grietas:
el hongo duende, vegetal Mitrídates,
la lagartija y sus exhalaciones.
Estoy dentro del ojo: el pozo
donde desde el principio un niño
está cayendo, el pozo donde cuento
lo que tardo en caer desde el principio,
el pozo de la cuenta de mi cuento
por donde sube el agua y baja
mi sombra.

                        El patio, el muro, el fresno, el pozo
en una claridad en forma de laguna
se desvanecen. Crece en sus orillas
una vegetación de transparencias.
Rima feliz de montes y edificios,
se desdobla el paisaje en el abstracto
espejo de la arquitectura.
Apenas dibujada,
suerte de coma horizontal (-)
entre el cielo y la tierra,
una piragua solitaria.
Las olas hablan nahua.
Cruza un signo volante las alturas.
Tal vez es una fecha, conjunción de destinos:
el haz de cañas, prefiguración del brasero.
El pedernal, la cruz, esas llaves de sangre
¿alguna vez abrieron las puertas de la muerte?
La luz poniente se demora,
alza sobre la alfombra simétricos incendios,
vuelve llama quimérica
este volumen lacre que hojeo
(estampas: los volcanes, los cúes y, tendido,
manto de plumas sobre el agua,
Tenochtitlán todo empapado en sangre).
Los libros del estante son ya brasas
que el sol atiza con sus manos rojas.
Se rebela el lápiz a seguir el dictado.
En la escritura que la nombra
se eclipsa la laguna.
Doblo la hoja. Cuchicheos:
me espían entre los follajes
de las letras.

                          Un charco es mi memoria.
Lodoso espejo: ¿dónde estuve?
Sin piedad y sin cólera mis ojos
me miran a los ojos
desde las aguas turbias de ese charco
que convocan ahora mis palabras.
No veo con los ojos: las palabras
son mis ojos. vivimos entre nombres;
lo que no tiene nombre todavía
no existe: Adán de lodo,
No un muñeco de barro, una metáfora.
Ver al mundo es deletrearlo.
Espejo de palabras: ¿dónde estuve?
Mis palabras me miran desde el charco
de mi memoria. Brillan,
entre enramadas de reflejos,
nubes varadas y burbujas,
sobre un fondo del ocre al brasilado,
las sílabas de agua.
Ondulación de sombras, visos, ecos,
no escritura de signos: de rumores.
Mis ojos tienen sed. El charco es senequista:
el agua, aunque potable, no se bebe: se lee.
Al sol del altiplano se evaporan los charcos.
Queda un polvo desleal
y unos cuantos vestigios intestados.
¿Dónde estuve?

                                  Yo estoy en donde estuve:
entre los muros indecisos
del mismo patio de palabras.
Abderramán, Pompeyo, Xicoténcatl,
batallas en el Oxus o en la barda
con Ernesto y Guillermo. La mil hojas,
verdinegra escultura del murmullo,
jaula del sol y la centella
breve del chupamirto: la higuera primordial,
capilla vegetal de rituales
polimorfos, diversos y perversos.
Revelaciones y abominaciones:
el cuerpo y sus lenguajes
entretejidos, nudo de fantasmas
palpados por el pensamiento
y por el tacto disipados,
argolla de la sangre, idea fija
en mi frente clavada.
El deseo es señor de espectros,
somos enredaderas de aire
en árboles de viento,
manto de llamas inventado
y devorado por la llama.
La hendedura del tronco:
****, sello, pasaje serpentino
cerrado al sol y a mis miradas,
abierto a las hormigas.

La hendedura fue pórtico
del más allá de lo mirado y lo pensado:
allá dentro son verdes las mareas,
la sangre es verde, el fuego verde,
entre las yerbas negras arden estrellas verdes:
es la música verde de los élitros
en la prístina noche de la higuera;
-allá dentro son ojos las yemas de los dedos,
el tacto mira, palpan las miradas,
los ojos oyen los olores;
-allá dentro es afuera,
es todas partes y ninguna parte,
las cosas son las mismas y son otras,
encarcelado en un icosaedro
hay un insecto tejedor de música
y hay otro insecto que desteje
los silogismos que la araña teje
colgada de los hilos de la luna;
-allá dentro el espacio
en una mano abierta y una frente
que no piensa ideas sino formas
que respiran, caminan, hablan, cambian
y silenciosamente se evaporan;
-allá dentro, país de entretejidos ecos,
se despeña la luz, lenta cascada,
entre los labios de las grietas:
la luz es agua, el agua tiempo diáfano
donde los ojos lavan sus imágenes;
-allá dentro los cables del deseo
fingen eternidades de un segundo
que la mental corriente eléctrica
enciende, apaga, enciende,
resurrecciones llameantes
del alfabeto calcinado;
-no hay escuela allá dentro,
siempre es el mismo día, la misma noche siempre,
no han inventado el tiempo todavía,
no ha envejecido el sol,
esta nieve es idéntica a la yerba,
siempre y nunca es lo mismo,
nunca ha llovido y llueve siempre,
todo está siendo y nunca ha sido,
pueblo sin nombre de las sensaciones,
nombres que buscan cuerpo,
impías transparencias,
jaulas de claridad donde se anulan
la identidad entre sus semejanzas,
la diferencia en sus contradicciones.
La higuera, sus falacias y su sabiduría:
prodigios de la tierra
-fidedignos, puntuales, redundantes-
y la conversación con los espectros.
Aprendizajes con la higuera:
hablar con vivos y con muertos.
También conmigo mismo.

                                                    La procesión del
año:
cambios que son repeticiones.
El paso de las horas y su peso.
La madrugada: más que luz, un vaho
de claridad cambiada en gotas grávidas
sobre los vidrios y las hojas:
el mundo se atenúa
en esas oscilantes geometrías
hasta volverse el filo de un reflejo.
Brota el día, prorrumpe entre las hojas
gira sobre sí mismo
y de la vacuidad en que se precipita
surge, otra vez corpóreo.
El tiempo es luz filtrada.
Revienta el fruto *****
en encarnada florescencia,
la rota rama escurre savia lechosa y acre.
Metamorfosis de la higuera:
si el otoño la quema, su luz la transfigura.
Por los espacios diáfanos
se eleva descarnada virgen negra.
El cielo es giratorio
lapizlázuli:          
viran au ralenti, sus
continentes,
insubstanciales geografías.
Llamas entre las nieves de las nubes.
La tarde más y más es miel quemada.
Derrumbe silencioso de horizontes:
la luz se precipita de las cumbres,
la sombra se derrama por el llano.

A la luz de la lámpara -la noche
ya dueña de la casa y el fantasma
de mi abuelo ya dueño de la noche-
yo penetraba en el silencio,
cuerpo sin cuerpo, tiempo
sin horas. Cada noche,
máquinas transparentes del delirio,
dentro de mí los libros levantaban
arquitecturas sobre una sima edificadas.
Las alza un soplo del espíritu,
un parpadeo las deshace.
Yo junté leña con los otros
y lloré con el humo de la pira
del domador de potros;
vagué por la arboleda navegante
que arrastra el Tajo turbiamente verde:
la líquida espesura se encrespaba
tras de la fugitiva Galatea;
vi en racimos las sombras agolpadas
para beber la sangre de la zanja:
mejor quebrar terrones
por la ración de perro del
labrador avaro
que regir las naciones pálidas
de los muertos;
tuve sed, vi demonios en el Gobi;
en la gruta nadé con la sirena
(y después, en el sueño purgativo,
fendendo i drappi, e mostravami'l
ventre,
quel mí svegliò col
puzzo che n'nuscia);
grabé sobre mi tumba imaginaria:
no muevas esta lápida,
soy rico sólo en huesos;
aquellas memorables
pecosas peras encontradas
en la cesta verbal de Villaurrutia;
Carlos Garrote, eterno medio hermano,
Dios te salve, me dijo al
derribarme
y era, por los espejos del insomnio
repetido, yo mismo el que me hería;
Isis y el asno Lucio; el pulpo y Nemo;
y los libros marcados por las armas de Príapo,
leídos en las tardes diluviales
el cuerpo tenso, la mirada intensa.
Nombres anclados en el golfo
de mi frente: yo escribo porque el druida,
bajo el rumor de sílabas del himno,
encina bien plantada en una página,
me dio el gajo de muérdago, el conjuro
que hace brotar palabras de la peña.
Los nombres acumulan sus imágenes.
Las imágenes acumulan sus gaseosas,
conjeturales confederaciones.
Nubes y nubes, fantasmal galope
de las nubes sobre las crestas
de mi memoria. Adolescencia,
país de nubes.

                            Casa grande,
encallada en un tiempo
azolvado. La plaza, los árboles enormes
donde anidaba el sol, la iglesia enana
-su torre les llegaba a las rodillas
pero su doble lengua de metal
a los difuntos despertaba.
Bajo la arcada, en garbas militares,
las cañas, lanzas verdes,
carabinas de azúcar;
en el portal, el tendejón magenta:
frescor de agua en penumbra,
ancestrales petates, luz trenzada,
y sobre el zinc del mostrador,
diminutos planetas desprendidos
del árbol meridiano,
los tejocotes y las mandarinas,
amarillos montones de dulzura.
Giran los años en la plaza,
rueda de Santa Catalina,
y no se mueven.

                                Mis palabras,
al hablar de la casa, se agrietan.
Cuartos y cuartos, habitados
sólo por sus fantasmas,
sólo por el rencor de los mayores
habitados. Familias,
criaderos de alacranes:
como a los perros dan con la pitanza
vidrio molido, nos alimentan con sus odios
y la ambición dudosa de ser alguien.
También me dieron pan, me dieron tiempo,
claros en los recodos de los días,
remansos para estar solo conmigo.
Niño entre adultos taciturnos
y sus terribles niñerías,
niño por los pasillos de altas puertas,
habitaciones con retratos,
crepusculares cofradías de los ausentes,
niño sobreviviente
de los espejos sin memoria
y su pueblo de viento:
el tiempo y sus encarnaciones
resuelto en simulacros de reflejos.
En mi casa los muertos eran más que los vivos.
Mi madre, niña de mil años,
madre del mundo, huérfana de mí,
abnegada, feroz, obtusa, providente,
jilguera, perra, hormiga, jabalina,
carta de amor con faltas de lenguaje,
mi madre: pan que yo cortaba
con su propio cuchillo cada día.
Los fresnos me enseñaron,
bajo la lluvia, la paciencia,
a cantar cara al viento vehemente.
Virgen somnílocua, una tía
me enseñó a ver con los ojos cerrados,
ver hacia dentro y a través del muro.
Mi abuelo a sonreír en la caída
y a repetir en los desastres: al
hecho, pecho.
(Esto que digo es tierra
sobre tu nombre derramada: blanda te
sea.)
Del vómito a la sed,
atado al potro del alcohol,
mi padre iba y venía entre las llamas.
Por los durmientes y los rieles
de una estación de moscas y de polvo
una tarde juntamos sus pedazos.
Yo nunca pude hablar con él.
Lo encuentro ahora en sueños,
esa borrosa patria de los muertos.
Hablamos siempre de otras cosas.
Mientras la casa se desmoronaba
yo crecía. Fui (soy) yerba, maleza
entre escombros anónimos.

                                                Días
como una frente libre, un libro abierto.
No me multiplicaron los espejos
codiciosos que vuelven
cosas los hombres, número las cosas:
ni mando ni ganancia. La santidad tampoco:
el cielo para mí pronto fue un cielo
deshabitado, una hermosura hueca
y adorable. Presencia suficiente,
cambiante: el tiempo y sus epifanías.
No me habló dios entre las nubes:
entre las hojas de la higuera
me habló el cuerpo, los cuerpos de mi cuerpo.
Encarnaciones instantáneas:
tarde lavada por la lluvia,
luz recién salida del agua,
el vaho femenino de las plantas
piel a mi piel pegada: ¡súcubo!
-como si al fin el tiempo coincidiese
consigo mismo y yo con él,
como si el tiempo y sus dos tiempos
fuesen un solo tiempo
que ya no fuese tiempo, un tiempo
donde siempre es ahora y a
todas horas siempre,
como si yo y mi doble fuesen uno
y yo no fuese ya.
Granada de la hora: bebí sol, comí tiempo.
Dedos de luz abrían los follajes.
Zumbar de abejas en mi sangre:
el blanco advenimiento.
Me arrojó la descarga
a la orilla más sola. Fui un extraño
entre las vastas ruinas de la tarde.
Vértigo abstracto: hablé conmigo,
fui doble, el tiempo se rompió.

Atónita en lo alto del minuto
la carne se hace verbo -y el verbo se despeña.
Saberse desterrado en la tierra, siendo tierra,
es saberse mortal. Secreto a voces
y también secreto vacío, sin nada adentro:
no hay muertos, sólo hay muerte, madre nuestra.
Lo sabía el azteca, lo adivinaba el griego:
el agua es fuego y en su tránsito
nosotros somos sólo llamaradas.
La muerte es madre de las formas…
El sonido, bastón de ciego del sentido:
escribo muerte y vivo en ella
por un instante. Habito su sonido:
es un cubo neumático de vidrio,
vibra sobre esta página,
desaparece entre sus ecos.
Paisajes de palabras:
los despueblan mis ojos al leerlos.
No importa: los propagan mis oídos.
Brotan allá, en las zonas indecisas
del lenguaje, palustres poblaciones.
Son criaturas anfibias, con palabras.
Pasan de un elemento a otro,
se bañan en el fuego, reposan en el aire.
Están del otro lado. No las oigo, ¿qué dicen?
No dicen: hablan, hablan.

                                Salto de un cuento a otro
por un puente colgante de once sílabas.
Un cuerpo vivo aunque intangible el aire,
en todas partes siempre y en ninguna.
Duerme con los ojos abiertos,
se acuesta entre las yerbas y amanece rocío,
se persigue a sí mismo y habla solo en los túneles,
es un tornillo que perfora montes,
nadador en la mar brava del fuego
es invisible surtidor de ayes
levanta a pulso dos océanos,
anda perdido por las calles
palabra en pena en busca de sentido,
aire que se disipa en aire.
¿Y para qué digo todo esto?
Para decir que en pleno mediodía
el aire se poblaba de fantasmas,
sol acuñado en alas,
ingrávidas monedas, mariposas.
Anochecer. En la terraza
oficiaba la luna silenciaria.
La cabeza de muerto, mensajera
de las ánimas, la fascinante fascinada
por las camelias y la luz eléctrica,
sobre nuestras cabezas era un revoloteo
de conjuros opacos. ¡Mátala!
gritaban las mujeres
y la quemaban como bruja.
Después, con un suspiro feroz, se santiguaban.
Luz esparcida, Psiquis…

                                 
¿Hay mensajeros? Sí,
cuerpo tatuado de señales
es el espacio, el aire es invisible
tejido de llamadas y respuestas.
Animales y cosas se hacen lenguas,
a través de nosotros habla consigo mismo
el universo. Somos un fragmento
-pero cabal en su inacabamiento-
de su discurso. Solipsismo
coherente y vacío:
desde el principio del principio
¿qué dice? Dice que nos dice.
Se lo dice a sí mismo. Oh
madness of discourse,
that cause sets up with and against
itself!

Desde lo alto del minuto
despeñado en la tarde plantas fanerógamas
me descubrió la muerte.
Y yo en la muerte descubrí al lenguaje.
El universo habla solo
pero los hombres hablan con los hombres:
hay historia. Guillermo, Alfonso, Emilio:
el corral de los juegos era historia
y era historia jugar a morir juntos.
La polvareda, el grito, la caída:
algarabía, no discurso.
En el vaivén errante de las cosas,
por las revoluciones de las formas
y de los tiempos arrastradas,
cada una pelea con las otras,
cada una se alza, ciega, contra sí misma.
Así, según la hora cae desen-
lazada, su injusticia pagan. (Anaximandro.)
La injusticia de ser: las cosas sufren
unas con otras y consigo mismas
por ser un querer más, siempre ser más que más.
Ser tiempo es la condena, nuestra pena es la historia.
Pero también es el lug

Stray dogs
Roam in the night
Looking for food
Looking for water
Maybe they too roam across my mind.
From San Juan
The saint feast parade spreads
Across the isle of enchantment.
(As their license plates claim)
Remember your sunscreen
As you are in the belt of Cancer
Even as the weather shifts
Dynamically
Hour to hour
Minute to minute
Day to day.
I came here to challenge the waves
But they challenged me instead
And I walked away
Battered
And ******
But balanced.
I had time to consider the plantain
And that it seems to be used in
Everything.
I roamed the streets of San Juan
In between their three towering
Sea kings
Guarding the city
For centuries.
Oh San Juan!
Jewel of the Americas
Respectfully following
the code of the indies
For 500 years you have stood
Defeated once
But unconquered.
(I think theres a lesson in that)
I kissed the freshwater
In the forest of the Anvil
And tread precariously amongst
the stones
Amidst graffitied groves of bamboo
And the calls of coqui.
So Puerto Rico,
With your history,
Your culture,
Your food,
Your beauty,
My only question is
Why arent you a state?
But then I remember
That the president is racist
And full of hate.
But I want you one day
To fully join us
In the flawed
But proud
U S of A
Stray dogs
Roam in the night
And maybe
Stray dogs will follow me home.

the co-pilot, seated on the left, would scowl
the pilot was more amenable to small talk,
on this, our free ride: Miami to San Juan

the brother-in-law gave us a choice,
Puerto Rico or Equator
the ten or so days of our sleeping
on their living-room floor
were fun, the first three days
and he, a Miami airport guy,
offered one of two free flights

having chosen San Juan,
and not caring about the blood-thirsty Bermuda Triangle,
there we were :
in a C-24 cargo plane with its load
of five race horses, well stalled, well fed,
large, leather, hay-full pouches easily
accessible in front of each stall; one in front
and four others; two behind the first
and two others behind these; far
down, in the tail section, sat a man—
his job, caring for the horses

I don't know much about cargo planes
as a matter of fact, it may have been a C-26
but C-24 twirls my eyebrows more—
and I didn't expect it to be so cold up there

soon enough, I found out
we wouldn't arrive in jet-preen time,
perhaps in seven hours, or more

my love, cushion-comfy on the floor
next to the captain, stared, as I did,
to the ever-present, mountainous stars
housed not in mere magnificence but in abstract vision
you will learn much, staring at us,
we both knew we heard
by the briefest glance at each other's eyes

hour after hour fleeted,
my lovey fast asleep, captainside:
the first boom didn't startle
but the horses knew better
soon enough, the yoke started to jump
pilot and co-pilot, 30-year veterans,
tried to reveal only Calm
but the co-pilot started talking to
San Juan—I was to discover we
were, perhaps, forty minutes from the airport
then: neigh-EEEE, the horses
crazied themselves, each kicking
his stall—for, by now,
the one boom had transformed into:
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!--constant BOOMS
and the yoke seemed to fly off
the captain's hands

at one point, as the co-pilot rose,
I could swear he briefly pulled his hair,
as he went behind the cockpit—searching, searching

he found what he was looking for:
a 20-gallon can of fuel—but it could
have been only 10 or 15
my baby was still fast asleep—the horses,
by now, had gone berserk—the caretaker, at the very
end, seemed to be having a spiritual experience,
ready to enter heaven; I may have seen an angel's
hand on the ready


speedily, the co-pilot unwound the cup
of a thermos and handed it to me
I was thinking: they will never find our bodies
and almost dared to awaken lovey;
how she kept on sleeping was a case of
supernal intervention

and lo and behold, the co-pilot placed
a finger on a tiny hole, leading to the fuel tank
and ordered: hold the thermos cup and don't shake—
I'll fill it and you pour the fuel into the hole

there we were:
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!--constant BOOMS
heee-heee-heea—horses
voicing their concern
and with the first cup-full, I didn't spill
a drop—but there were more than two
hundred—perhaps three hundred to go

every time more than 7 drops skipped
the little hole, both the co-pilot and I
deathrattled in nightmares of unclogging vascular tease

we were twenty minutes away,
by this point, and the plane
started to hum
it must have been more than 280 thermos-cup
loads, the little hole accepted—and
perhaps 3 or 4 spilled down

was, perhaps, 3:00 A.M. when we landed
my love started to awake as
the wheels hit the runway

the airport was quite empty
of passengers or, almost, anyone
I wasn't in a great hurry
to tell lovey

mostly, clearly, I remember
us passing the pilot and co-pilot, inside,
after a while, sitting on chairs facing a closed snack bar

such blank looks I've
never seen, before or after;
a crippled fuel gauge pin
almost killed the horses
~~
..Dec. 24,2012..© 2012 Spiros Zafiris
..channeled; spirit Ram; reaching into
the poet's mind
~~

Cherry , huckleberry , and peach Indian summer bouquets
glide across honey- brown sugar loam
They rattle , crackle and dance at the cue of fragrant ambergris winds , gather in splendid sheltered havens , attending by cackling red-winged mavens
Sing to me airborne madrigals , Cooper angels , Pileated conductors of the oakwood , choreographed lapping lakesides , the scrub of White Pines
Land of the pumpernickel shadows , of cinnamon needle carpet
cast adrift in the very breath of artist , lover and songster* ..

Go Tito, Go Tito
Go Tito, Go Tito
Go Tito, Go Tito
Mata los timbales
Go Tito

Go Tito, Go Tito
Go Tito, Go Tito
Go Tito, Go Tito
Mata los timbales
Go Tito

Oye como va...

the neighbors voices climbing out of windows left and right.

Is that you Tito?
Put down those pots and pans.
Make better use of those hands.
Don't you know those hands were made for working?
Follow your father to his factory grave shift,
Make razorblades to sell.
We'll always have hair on our faces.

Is that you Tito?
Knock off that racket.
Here I am trying to sleep
And you've got my feet to moving.
The night was made for dancing Tito,
And dancing was made for Harlem,
But that's bastante on a Wednesday mijo.

The young king packs up his studio,
Whistling dixie like she's never been whistled before.
Twirling the melody from royal lips,
Showing her how to use those God given hips.
Where did you find that groove you in your neck?
And do the words Puerto Rico still give you the chills?

You have walked on too many streets in New York City
And the Afro-beat is shacking up with the Cuban.
You can hear their children playing in the barrio allá,
And aquí they're blowing horns of imagination.
Make those wooden sticks tap your telegram, Tito.
Let the world know about this message brewing inside you.
They hate.
They yell.
They love to see you dancing,
But your ankles told you that wasn't right for you.
Your hands never have been able to keep still.
Maybe it's because they feel the future.
Do you realize where your bridge will lead?

You are the future Tito.
Do what you got to do to be where you got to be.
Play in Uncle Sam's band but don't you go to Normandy.
Follow your hands back to the big apple,
Take a bite out of this place they call Juliard.
When you sleep at night are they still screaming…
Go Tito, Go Tito
Go Tito, Go Tito
Go somewhere where the floor is on fire
With the fusion of jazz and samba.
Make it bigger Tito until it looks like it did in your dreams.
Pick up those sticks and mata los timbales.
Have the decency to wink when they name you king.

What is it that you mixed in that ***?
Your alchemy giving birth to new species.
Have mercy Tito.
Your music is feasting on the ears of the public,
Your hands are drumming on the ecosystem.
They call it salsa, and you laugh
Because they can't taste the carne.
Shine those pots and pans.
Tip your hat to Spanish Harlem,
Where windows stay open to let the dreamers dream big
And the red brick walls are soaked with memories.
Babarabatiri Tito,
Teach the world how to dance.

Go Tito, Go Tito
Go Tito, Go Tito
Go Tito, Go Tito
Mata los timbales
Go Tito

Oye como va...

a legend.

an isle
of wealth
reclusively habitat
if credible
view of
turkeys when
feeding themselves
upon trumps
and there
is coming
this inhabitated
third world
now arbitral
very watchful
of nature
where it
has delved.

Fitz
Fritz
Fido
Sandy
Spencer
Chaplain
Bernard
Jesse
Snoopy
Charlie
Charles
Fred
Freddy
Bones
Remmy
Ren­a
Reno
Tony
Julian
Julie
Frisco
Meghan
Addison
Robby
Buddy
Rudy
F­riedrich
Fredrick
Bernie
Rudolph
Adolf
Ferdinand
Rose
Cassie
Cassidy
Lee
Balto
Little *****
Allen
Alvin
Jake
Demi
Randy
Alex
Richard
Alexis
Kenneth
Ken­ny
Chris
Jose
Josey
Rodger
Moe
Joe
Emilio
Walt
Emily
Emma
Maddie
­Anna
Jafar
Aladin
Jasmine
Genie
******
Amber
Gracie
Ramen
Gordy
G­ordon
Jordie
James
Bucky
Huff
Manny
Sam
Samantha
Mary
Marie
Tila
­Rita
Cathy
Tammy
Mickey
Cam
Amelia
Rene
Jeb
Dan
Bagel
Tommy
Donut­
Bubbles
Blossom
Buttercup
Mark
Cody
Andy
Cristo
Andrea
Whiskers
­Mike
Bill
Billy
George
Geo
Joy
Mitch
Trigger
Tigger
Stephen
Archi­medes
Anya
Duncan
Nitro
Crash
Bub
Crystal
Egor
Bernadette
Cammy
T­immy
Antonio
Natasha
Natalia
Ivan
Abbey
Abdul
Carly
Aaron
Omega
F­inn
Nina
Debby
Tomato
Tabby
Artie
Archie
Noah
Kyle
Alfie
Alfred
Conrad
Conner
******
G­unner
Fry
Fries
*******
Constance
Connie
Frank
Fran
Candice
D­andy
Lucy
Lou
Louis
Quincy
Doogle
Dubie
Dakota
Ace
Casey
Barry
Te­rry
Trenton
Gabe
Laurie
Cornelius
Kabob
Sky
Skylar
Rufus
Louie
Ba­rton
Kimmy
Angel
Capri
Basil
Cy
Ruby
Emerald
Eleanea
Elenor
Barth­olomew
Jazz
Dreamer
Thunder
Topaz
Amethyst
Salsa
Meril
Dodo
Toto
­Eric
Barbera
Hannah
Katie
Zoey
Ben
Pinto
Squanto
Columbus
Columbo
Porgy
Bess
Clark
Savannah
Ken­dra
Marco
Leise
Toby
Trevor
Tresten
Treven
Adrienne
Caleb
Carlyn
­Ricky
Gibby
Donny
Han
Solo
Hans
Gabby
Dirk
Spot
Sebastian
Dee
Sco­oby Doo
Shaggy
Polly
Reginald
Burger
Steak Sauce
Ethan
Bradberry
Lucky
Fergie
Cheese
Boxer
Napoleon
Snowball­
Gerald
Jeremy
Benji
Gemma
Pal
Mal
Preston
Jack
Jackson
Molly
Mac­kenzie
Alexie
Alicia
Dora
Olivia
Salvador
Beast
Beauty
Oliver
Dal­e
Rim
Marley
Diego
*****
Bobby
Ralston
Zeke
Rooney
Plato
Cole
Nep­tune
Sailor
Frida
Rico
Dali
Veronica
Victor
Copeland
Swift
Riley
­Tubs
Lassie
Yo-yo
Harvey
Lemonade
Coke
Pepsi
Tanya
Camille
Token
­Laser
Beam
Seamus
Dorthy
Ian
Moby

I actually tried that poetic
Rico suave **** with a girl.
We were both naked
Lying in bed, her messing with the hair
On my chest and me lying there
Trying to come up with an excuse
as to why she couldn't stay
or why I had to leave.

I like her enough,
but the way
she looks at me,
she's inviting something bad.
She's so lonely in her eyes.

She twirls one hair in a pink fingernail
and looks up at me.

She says to me:
"Give me some poetry."

I says to her:
"You've got green eyes like the Mediterranean, I think I could mine
something out of you, your eyes are just that full of something beautiful."

It sounded fake
and corny as **** coming out of my mouth.


I hated her for even asking me
To sell out like that.

But she smiled a hungry,
ravenous smile, because she hadn’t had love
or even flattery
In a while and she was
hungry for that kind of poetic
Hollywood *******.

I'm a sucker for
girls going weak for me,

and me going even weaker for them.

It's a form of humiliation
and a bad way to end something good
like we had.

Hoje apetece-me penetrar no fundo da vossa escuridão,
E desde já, uma palavra ao leitor passageiro de viagem,
Estas palavras, são minhas e de quem as consegue ler,
Não são para ninguém, a menos que as consiga querer!
A todas as almas negras da minha vida, peço calma,
Não podereis ter sabor de vitória, nem de mim glória,
Sendo pobre que nem riacho sem peixes, ou rico de gral,
Como pobre, sou feliz porque respiro o cheiro do amor,
Do amor que me consola e que como eu se sente rico!
Se fossem de riqueza os meus bolsos, eram as coisas mais simples,
Que teriam lugar em minha vida, pois só assim me deitaria feliz!
Por isso nem que o corpo me tirem, nunca nem assim me venderei,
Nunca a vós darei almas negras, o desdém de perder a minha honra!
Por mais pobre que sejam minhas vestimentas, há coisas que manterei,
Minha integridade e valores de amor verdadeiro, por amigos e meu amor!
Eles conhecem-me a mim e eu conheço-os a eles, e de vós a ideia não mudarei!
Por isso, dediquem-se a ter uma vida de utilidade, deitem-se à noite ignorantes!
Acordem de manha, pensando em vossas vidas, porque eu estou vivendo,
Apesar de pensarem que quero gritar e me despedir, é mentira agora e será.
Será assim, sempre, porque o destino de minhas mãos, depende de eu querer,
Daquilo que me dedico, eu sei fazer, e por isso faço para as merecer!
O céu agora é escuro, distinto do meu coração verde de esperança,
Não desejo a meus inimigos, pior do que aquilo que quero para mim,
Porém, eu sei que o homem, não faz justiça tão atempo, como a de Deus!
E agora vou dormir, continuar sonhando com os sonhos que de dia já vivi,
Sei que vou acordar na lembrança de alguém, de quem eu amo e me ama também!

Autor: António Benigno
Código de autor: 2013.07.15.02.05