Harvest

Lord, I am terrified of dying
My heart sputters, my lungs weak since COVID,
My confidence lost; the space heater also
Nearly did me in last year.  
And it will be a year like this one when I go.

Your combine will swing crop duster low and reap

With no thought or favoritism.  

But oh this life...
Where to begin?  

You don't charge for sunrises
And the best Bierstadts only echo sunsets

My irises snap open to:

The sun in blue over the North Pole;

The sunrise in brown at Issyk Kul; 

The view from Arthur's seat at sunrise;

The Milky Way above Mt Hood at night.

Van Gogh, the Hermitage, the Louvre,

36 countries and flags and all the we's and worries

Of cab drivers and garbage collectors and actors
Of illegal immigrants and single mothers

And Malick films.

I have tasted no less than twelve languages on my tongue

Sang in Persian and Uzbek and Russian

I have been on the radio and television

And I been taught to sing by an orphan on the spectrum.

I have been kissed; I have been loved.

I have tasted the glory of Cajun boil, horchata, and shrimp tacos

And tried everything from crickets to frogs.

I have imbibed the waves of the Pacific and the Atlantic

And floated weightless in the little dead sea in KG.

You don't speak much but

Oh my ears!   Things too wonderful to mention...

Finnish hymns and Polish poems,

Chilango y Chapin rhythms,

Callings to orphans and Kyrgyzstan, 
The letters of Chopin in Dresden,

Switchfoot at the House of Blues in New Orleans

I have heard the pains and self-doubts and sins

And the hopes and dreams of a generation.

I have been called father,

And son and brother and best friend and lover.

The smells of horse sweat and seafoam and plov

Fresh baked pies and wassail boiling

So many flower-filled fields

And valleys filled with the aromas of waterfalls.

I have brushed up against desert sands and pyramids

Anemones and dolphins and porcupines.

My hands have wiped away tears,

I have been hugged thousands of times

And my life has touched thousands

At camps, on the metro or the mashrutka.

I have written books

And sung my songs.

I have studied and taught

Seen miracles and triumphed

And failed and hurt others and learned.

I have changed the world and lived so many lives,

I have seen my dreams, fears, humiliations, and goals be realized.

And I have I held lonely people while they cry.

I am the richest man I know

Because of my friends.  

Because of these experiences.

It is so much more than I deserve;
It is so much more than enough.

So thank you.

I will cook this meal, spend more than I think I should, wash the dishes: 

To feast, to remember, 
The abundance of this life  

The harvest of the days.

Forgive me my focus on the loss and the losing

The future and past instead of the now

Because this cornucopia...

This world...

This life...

Thank you.

Very much.

 

Nothing Stops the Bleeding

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Nothing stops the bleeding

I’ve prayed, I’ve rebelled

I’ve tried all my usual medicines

Nothing stops the sting

I’ve failed myself

I was betrayed

I don’t like the man I am anymore

The waves of pain are a roar

I can’t ignore

Nothing stops the corruption

They’re selling kids

And they are shameless

Nothing stops the gossip

It doesn’t matter if I’m wrong or right

Their minds are made up

I don’t see that I’m making a difference

Fighting floods with my bare hands

Nothing stops the shaking

I’m always afraid

I’m always watched

Nothing stops the racing

Always trying to prove myself

Always trying to be something

I don’t see your hands in this darkness

I don’t see any hope for change

Stuck deep underneath my emotions

Like a building collapsed on top of me

Nothing stops the TV

Nothing stops the bombs of hate

No one stops the deportations

No one sees your face

How Long, America?

How long we gonna play this game

Like there's more than one America?

How long are we gonna send people home

To the streets?

How long we gonna keep exporting

Violence, extortion, corruption and gangs?

How much we gonna pay in the factories?

Ensenada T-shirts the factory pays 90 pesos a day that's less than

Five bucks a day just an hour and a half cross the border

(And we talk about $15 an hour as a just wage)

And the Governor of Baja Sur is talking to the farm workers

From Oaxaca, says get back to work

If not you'll get deported

How long we gonna deny

That this is our mess?

How long we gonna build walls on the lines

In our heads?

How long will we say that it's "free and fair trade"

For trickle-up profits to keep workers enslaved

The corporations come in, they have free reign

They buy the elections and they own the terrain

I have this friend who rode the train all the way

From Honduras as a teen

Just following that money stream

No capital, no money, and death in the streets

I met this girl in Guatemala, she was cute as could be

Unfortunately some gangster, he thought the same thing

Asked her to be his he said please

And when she said no he shot out her face

She was fifteen

You know where street gangs started? 
Good old LA.

In Mexico City, this girl shows up she's been raped

The coyotes said "this is Texas" and left her on the street

She paid 3 years' wages to come to the States

And there were so many people I met in the 

Soup kitchen in Guate

Who had just been deported

This system kills people.
This system destroys families.

The best Americans I know are illegals

They work hard, they invest,

They sacrifice for their families

This is how it works:

The gringos sell the guns and buy the cocaine

Wal-Mart pays the bribes and corrupts the state

California deports the Dieciochos and MS13

And Americans hire illegal so they keep on coming

It's simple supply and demand, baby.

We want everything we want; we want it cheap

Law and human cost be damned, it's for the money

Economic growth is a lie if the people don't have a stake

And that's hard to have when your country is ruled by

 8 families

I'm an American citizen

But I ain't earned it,

If we're going to treat countries like colonies

They are citizens the same

And if Dole and Chiquita and Firestone gonna run countries

If they're gonna bully nations to get paid

Well, than who am I to blame their citizens for running away

Who invaded who?
The Marine Corps has toured every place here to Panama

And that's not to mention the thugs from the old CIA

But its unjust businesses who run the extortion ring
And mega-corporations shout out free trade

Because they are making a killing exploiting the weak

That's not to mention US farm subsidies

So tell me, what's a living wage?  

How much are you worth?
I guess that depends on your passport.

How long we gonna play this game

Like there's more than one America?

How long are we gonna send people home

To the streets?

How long we gonna keep dumping the surplus

Of our gluttony on our neighbors' fragile economies?

Look I know one thing:

Love your neighbor as yourself.

America can be proud, she's a good neighbor to

Countries that are far away,

But if you think the United States is or was great

You obviously haven't read Central American History.

I look around, and I see Americans.

Somos Americanos,
And we're all in this shit juntos, waist-deep

And you know, the rich families in Guate, they build their

Walls bigger and bigger and put broken glass on top,

They send their kids to private schools

Because they want to keep out the city that's outside their gates

And the racist Estadounidenses are doing the exact same thing

But everything just perpetuates and nothing will change

Until we all, rich and poor,

Take some pride in our city

Our continent, our people,

Nuestra América,

And we tear down the walls

Break monopolies and the "too-bigs"

And the people are free

I'm an American citizen

And I believe every person from here to Panama

Has earned that right in blood
You can't treat countries like slaves

You can't say we're not the same.

You wallies,

You should be afraid, but not of Latinos
You know there's a cure for that fear, it's called Spanish class

No you shouldn't be afraid of poor people

You should be afraid of justice, that America, one day will pay

Do you think God doesn't hear the cries of the mother deported away from her children?
Do you think God doesn't hear the cries of the worker denied his wages?
Do you think God doesn't hear the cries of the exploited?
Do you think God doesn't hear the cries of the poor?

And to the Donald Trumps, to the ones who feed off of racist fear

Who stir up hatred to get a response

Who manipulate with stereotype and hate

Your fall will be swift and you will be judged 

With the same measure you extended to those outside the system

Thus says the Lord

How long we gonna play this game

Like there's more than one America?

How long are we gonna send people home

To the streets?

How long we gonna keep exporting

Violence, extortion, corruption and gangs?

How much we gonna pay in the factories?


In response to this:

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-42613178

Bellas Artes

I went to the museum

I rode the metro

And admired all of the fine arts:

The art of walking

The technique of sitting

The beauty of a yawn

Harmonied laughter

Lines of colour

Curling smoothly beneath laughing eyes

There are brushstrokes

In the arcs of walking feet

The swish of jeans

Falling waves of falling hair

And the way we position ourselves

Around each other on the train

Beauty and desperation

Splashes of red and blue

The shade and shape

Of a nose or cheekbone.

The First Heaven: Oklahoma Storm

The peace opens when the winds

Section drones down to a dull moan

The thunder clap applause rumbles off

Like a freight train

The eye, eyes up, run outside

When-the-alarms-go-off Oklahoma

Feel the West, the weight, the

Breeze of the Rockies, heat of the plains

Lift up your sails

We will build sailboats of popsicle prayer

Sticks with a cross on top

Hoping that You'll take us up

Walking around in this cielo

The first heaven

This wholly ground

Beneath our kicks

Caught up in the rapture, the great

In between

The virga score stretched across

Horizontal lines the tracks

The moan

The hop-a-train temptation let's see

Where we go

We're all the fall leaves

Newspapers flopping around the Metro

Faded headlines dimly calling for

Attentions affections

The silence

Are you not interested in me?

See you not my

Grand humanity?
Or am I past my date of issue?

I fear it

I may fall in love or judge

Or find empathy

I'm a head-on-the-shoulder but also
A shoulder-to-the-plow

Shoulder of the road passing by

No place to rest a( )head

Chasing

While the storm breathes passion

And barometric pressure

Did we forget it?

Numbing games, numbing jobs

Numbing drugs, numbing loves

Nothing as sweet as the rain on the skin

The dancing lights reflecting on

Slick streets and windshields

It makes my heart pirouette inside me.

Lines

I seem to have forgotten my lines...

Walk with me parallel a while

Pickup perhaps then I'll remember

I have no steady, no gyroscope to keep me up

At night the sleepcycle rides

     circles under my eyes

I haven't decided how to draw us

All of us--everyone we meet--

Intersect at certain points,

Moments of meaning

Millions of points where we touch, hold hands

Share a song, kiss, secret, or glance

Sometimes we run parallel for a time

Walking a bold line through space time

As everything spins we manage to keep step

But it's all temporary

Our made-in-China shoes scuff the graph

     paper as we approach infinity

And what nonsense is that

A closeness, a net?, a communion, or an empty

     space, a universal alone eternity?

I scribble along fast like a polygraph lie as I, trying

     not to forget to breathe

Trying not to veer wildly like my chestbeat

     and double back, cross myself,

My God I've been here before

I was hoping we could tie the knot

But the telephone line was not long enough

You ride along another axis now,

Existing, loving, singing, unseen

I always dreamed of your trajectory

Plotting it out, stoking you to dream

Your truck spiraled out

A flat line, an ellipsis

Of rocks in the desert, memorial gardens

I take pictures

Make five-year plans

See lines in everything:

Handprints, walls, sunsets, trees

Each barcode a stanza,

Every vine and weed draws shapes

And you and me

We part here, branching out like

     family trees approaching infinity

And although like particles we may

     collide, we will never occupy the same

     space and time

At best our lines run tangent

But not yet, I reach

You're out of reach

You're gone

And I'm still writing on writing on moving out past the sea

Living, yes, writing reading speaking moving always moving

She Doesn't Stop Dancing

She doesn't stop dancing
A spin, a smile,
A shuffle,
A plate, an order,
She twirls out
Corner diner
Fast food and pop music on the TV
Red seats with black-starred tables
Simple Döner
But this,
This was ballet
A song on her lips,
A smile on her face
And I wanted to go back to my own
Food service days
The rhythms of orders up
And orders taken
The pulse of work the rush