A morgue is an unhappy place regardless of time or place.
The somber few that haunt the halls often project the surroundings dreadfully.
While walking the gray tiled rooms it’s known too that we shall one day wear the toe tag.
But mortality gives way to reality and jobs are done with quiet respect for passed souls.

And then there’s the Juarez Morgue...
A hot July day and a drive through Mexican customs brought a meeting with police officials.
A body in their possession, they thought, would bring transportation home.
Calloused officials with shiny gold 45’s aglow, spoke rhythmic Spanish in their police code.

A “******,” said one and this should be fun a ride with those looking more like hit men.
A car loaded with “Madrinas,” in tow and AR 15’s laid in seats in a row.
How odd thought he in a land purportedly free and fright on passerby faces.
Cocky bravado speaking radio slang,
did drive towards the Juarez morgue.

A couple miles out a turn in and out did place them in a neighborhood quiet.
But a familiar smell in a nose did swell, and wonder of how that could be valid.
Putrefaction it was, the odor rose above as the children played gleefully nearby.
How could it be when he could not see the edifice emitting the smell?

A small octagon building, small air conditioners in four windows.
Could it be that this was the morgue?
The desert sun bright and heat overbearing.
My God this is a place of death among many living, what a fright!

The escorts did enter, the detective slowly met the front door.
He was quite pensive when sliding from light to the dark.
His eyes gone black his vision insufficient, as he started to be able to see.
A wet sounding step and a curious glance, did place his feet in crimson water.

Disbelief as the room came into focus, he saw well the visions of what belong in hell.
Bags of bones stacked they were, a femur and skull, the fully decomposed welcomed.
Four porcelain tables and bodies disabled lay upon with nary a stare.
Just shortly behind bodies piled feet high forget a tray or a gurney.

Overcome by it all he began to stall, and try to gather his thoughts.
Rank smell in his nose sent him scrambling for his cigar.
The smoke unable to cover what he did discover, his heart fell hard to his knees.

How inhuman it was to see rampant disregard for the dead.
No scalpels used to cut the Y,
a kitchen knife he could cry.
Sewed up a corpse, with rough twine of course, he regretted where he did stand.
His spine became metal his mind did reel and a new wrinkle appeared on his brow.

On some summer nights when heat fills the air, he does look up to the moon.
His mind travels back to the withering stacks, and the odor still gathers in his nose.
The years have passed by and he doesn’t know why, the memories will not fade.
Restless sleep, fallen heart, many more new wrinkles have taken there place.

A war there has broken out,
and factions viciously ****.
He can’t help but wonder what has happened in Juarez.
The tractors and the bodies they plow.
No building this time a long ditch in the ground scores of people pushed into a long trench.

He walks each day with what he has seen, which cannot be unseen.
Wrestling with himself in the bed, and covering his head.
The dead they do come to visit still.
The Morgue in Juarez left it’s print in the mind of a young fellow.

Indulge the last line if you have some spare time.  Dios bendiga los muertos de Juarez.

You can feel it spinning
                                         fast
the Chinese, Japanese, American and European junk
orbiting at several thousand miles per hour could
                                                           ­                             punch
a hole in your armor, future. Thanksgiving passes, then Christmas.
A nuclear detonation, we absorb that fact. The scientist in us
delays sadness by recording observations. What is is,
sorrow's for tomorrow.

By reducing probabilities to near zero I hope to avoid sorrow.
In yr suburb.
In history when there were many fewer people we still found reason
to cross space, explore, trade and war. Now
                                                             ­                 overpopulation
may not be the problem but food and water shortages
get our attention.
                              I have Korf's fears.
And hear what I want to hear.

Some hear singing, some hear speeches or complaining.
Martin Luther King sang his complaints, dreamed of a brotherly nation
which came to pass, spinning fast, past Thanksgivings, past jailings
into reconnaissance, small wars, drones, renaissance, inventions.
At the border,
                         where the Juaristas fought Maximilian:
Benito Juarez (1806-1872) Zapotec Amerindian who served five terms as president of Mexico. He was the first Mexican leader who did not have a military background and also the first full-blooded indigenous person to lead a country in the western hemisphere in over 300 years. For resisting French occupation, overthrowing the Empire, and restoring the Republic, Juarez is regarded as Mexicoxs greatest and most beloved leader. 

Each soldier chooses what war at what border, or just
                                                            ­                                   shows up
spinning with the planet.
The neighborhood and surrounding nature is orderly.
But always there is implied force, violence holding it together,
                                                       ­                                                       chaos
is contained
kept out of the playground, government buildings, childrenxs games
but lies within
the force maintaining order, a spinning tumor, a gyroscope of
                                                              ­                                                inertia.
The force of the spinning, the speed of the force bring one to one's
      death
seasons, weather, earth.
                                         While the emperor's being beheaded
enduring seeds are discovered and invented, cross-fertilized and bred.
Corn, yams, potatoes, sunflowers, rice.
                                                           ­       Food is life and a good study,
useful discipline
                           daily meditation.
                                                     ­   The fighting man protects the farmer
and the farmer feeds the fighting man.
They elect the governor
                                        who serves the people. Peace out.

Peace and war are transitory manifestations of spinning
electrons, planets.
                               The sun's a nuclear detonation, essential
to spring and planting. Food is life. Seeds endure
if man goes to his daily discipline. If woman is man.
Birth and death
                           together are orderly, the border can be known,
voluntarily. How we live together, by prayer or force,
is our story.

Knowledge
from laboratory to starry corridor keeps us very
                                                            ­                         versed.
Did Juaristas consider the rights of animals not to be eaten?
Not during that spinning.
                                              And perform the history that surrounds us.
All that can be done
is written in the spinning:
"The people of the land, the Indian farmers of North America - like their counterparts in Mesoamerica, the Andean region, and the Amazon - have continuously cultivated maize, beans, squash and other crops for more than five thousand years. One of the salient features of their traditional farming systems is the high degree of biodiversity. These traditional farming systems have emerged over centuries of cultural and biological evolution, and they represent the accumulated experience of indigenous farmers interacting with the environment without access to external inputs, capital or scientific knowledge. In Latin America alone, more than 2.5 million hectares under traditional agriculture in the form of raised fields, polycultures, agroforestry systems and the like document indigenous farmers' successful adaptations to difficult environments."

I do not know why you moved to this side  
long ago, before your city became a **** zone  
maybe you knew something I did not  
you knew many things I did not, which I discovered
when you politely corrected my grammar  
though it was my native tongue,
and one you learned reading our newspapers,
watching our television
listening, more carefully than most,
to what the gringos said  
you told me tales of the arena,
usually after dinner, on your back porch  
when the shadow of the mountain covered our houses
like a quiet blanket, blocking out the blistering heat
of the desert day  
you would offer me a soda, always  
before my questions began  
your civility was strange to me at first,
the adults in my family barked and cackled  
your words rolled out like sweet liquid  
and left me wanting more  
I never asked why you had no woman,
you were as handsome as any man I knew  
later, years later, years of name calling later
I guess I understood,  maybe
that was why you left your home  
though the blind blood of bigotry
ran freely on both sides of the Rio Grande
and I knew you to be courageous
for when you told me the stories,
as the desert sky became violet and cool,  
and the few cicadas began their song,  
you boasted not of your dangerous dance
in the packed dirt of the ring,
but of the art it took to silence the beast  
the lost look in its red *** eyes
and the silent sadness you felt  
as the crowd cheered
another beautiful death