Dear 13

Let's not repeat the mistakes of your older brother.
Good and gone?
I say "Good riddance."
There was about five ends we weren't supposed to make it
through to get to you,
But now you're in the clear, hats off to you,
No catyclisms as predicted as yet.
And despite all the elections and doomsday prophecies
That fell on your brother's watch, not much
Has changed.

Alright, so I ain't asking for butterflies or wedding rings.
Lord knows what I want, and well, I wouldn't mind if your little
Sister 14 had some of those things. My resolution is
To change. My resolution is
To be me. Twelve had this little fear-mongering thing
Going on. And whoever I'm supposed to be here went
Underground. That ain't no good. I need a new era, I'm trying to sort this out,
To surface before Groundhog day. Seems like nobody asks me how I'm doing,
Really. Not in the important things. So bro, bring the
Broom, bring the rain, bring the longhaul, bring the wind, bring the
Change. You're gonna be different, you hear me?
That's what I'm saying.
Everybody knows, if you're gonna be a hero, the hero has
To change.

That's what it's gonna take to do this thing.
That's what it's gonna take to be me.
That's what it's gonna take to love someone.
That's what it's gonna take to live my dreams.

Got it, 13?

Cools, Peace.

The Sun Still Shines

A murder of crows descended on the killing fields
the grounds covered
by mourners in black muttering
racous laughter
a large forested cemetery behind fences
like a secret
they made a maze for the condemned
they cut off all their hair
machine-gunning them as they ran
through the tight trench
while loudspeakers blared a brave fanfare
like it was a video game

My hands could only shiver
cold, no climate-control
just family-planning on the
national level, empty fields
ravens and rows of barns with
terribly mundane
holocaust histories on plaques
terribly mundane
all that work it must have taken to
sort out every last gold filling
build all the resettlement camps
try to prevent escapes
all those bullets wasted
isn't that what the gas chambers were for?
to keep it simple?  just
a couple rows of barbed wire
German efficiency seemed to be used
in retelling the story
a series of incomprehensible statistics
Nov. 3rd, 1943 whole towns of people shot
on the spot they
called in extra guards and even tanks just in case
the survivors were mostly political prisoners
not Jews the instruments used
insufficient rations layers and ribs laid bare
dehumanized you have to read between the
lines; it took them a month to burn the bodies,
they had a crematorium with seven ovens in a town
that maxed out around 40,000 the gas chambers were
just empty garages, and zyklon b is just a clothes disinfectant
that happens to choke the lungs in five minutes sometimes they
just used automobile exhaust.

a ghost town
a gold rush
a genocide just outside
the Lublin city walls

There were just two stiches of
personalization, humanization of
statistics that I saw there:
First a family portrait of a wealthy
family from Lublin, 10 or so
members.  On the left, a black-
haired beauty with deep eyes.
They died separately in Majdanek, Sobibór,
Treblinka, the Lublin ghetto, and Bełżec.
Secondly, there was a single
white high heel in the barn
full of confiscated shoes.  What
kind of woman wears her best
heels to a concentration camp, or
even to forced resettlement?  Denial?
Self-delusion?  Naïvety?   Moxie?   Or did she
hope to save herself through
sensuality?  It was to no avail,
all the same.  In loud voices visitors
mutter, do I hear them correctly?
Disbelief and conspiracy.

The crows mutter mild vulgarities,
Squatting on hallowed grounds
and floating in the sunset like ghosts.

The sun still shines on Majdanek,
Cold, cruel, unflinching.

A Separation

We

Even we

We met beneath firs and twinkling lights

Earth put on her finest

Red wine, twilight sky

Everything seemed right.

It was Autumn when we married

New love under dying leaves

Laughter, across the table

Open hearts, pulsing

Vital signs, two

Eyes become one.

I posted bail.                                                   She tried to take her.

She asked me to abandon my father.                He wouldn't do what's best for his daughter

                                                                      Everything he does, he does for himself

They won't let us part.

His pride wouldn't let him confess                      What right does she have to take my girl?

If you hadn't left, none of this                             Is this how love ends?

Should have ever happened                               Like a unborn baby smashed by a truck?

                                                                      Like a sum of money passed hand-to-hand?

They denied us our divorce                                                       

Here we are, together, apart.                             The divorce papers have all been filed

Every day a broken dream                                 All it needs is a spark

                                                                       Kindness is forgetting

Erasing what was                                             Erase that love    

Now I can go...and if she doesn't come?                                                                       

Dare I go on alone?                                          Here in the mirror I see my father

?                                                                    Each piece of me lost, forgotten

                                                                      Run over by a fault of memory

All I want is for them to be together

Somehow they want me to choose

Elect one of piece of my heart and

Push the other away into the dark

All this time I've done my part to try

Recognizing I was the only one keeping

All of us in the same country, the same city

There's a tear inside of me, and I don't know how

I will ever mend or completely banish this piece of my blood

Or love, how do you expect me to believe in a nonsense like Love

Now we are apart even when we're together, betrayed by the ones...by love.

I

m

b
e

i

n

g

B     R      O     K    E     N

I                                          N

T                          W                      O

                                                                        .

An Inquiry into Greatness

After mewithoutyou and Dulce Vargas

Great raven, strong beast
I am but a fox, of this I'm sure,
Vain would I seek to reach such heights
Even if wings were also given me

Moreover, you're a great wit, the
Envy of every chicken and finch

Tell me, good sir, from whence your wisdom?
Have you got a book out?  Where can I get one?
Even a fox has need sometimes, of some outside voice

Cawing a clear line, so someday he too may
Obtain that coveted prize
Oh that sweet morsel for which we'd die--but
Killing is such a beastly art
It becomes not gentlemen as ourselves.
Every bird has his secret, tell me friend, what's yours?
!

James Meredith

"To understand the world, one must first understand a place like Mississippi.” --William Faulkner

First 14 months in the courts.
Then the president called the governor,
The governor waffled, passed the buck said,
"You just don't understand the situation down here."
Mr. President.

They sent in 127 US Marshalls, who then deputized another three to four hundred,
Then JFK nationalized the Mississippi guard, since the governor wasn't using them.
It was raining bricks and birdshot,
Even tried to take the front door with a bulldozer and a fire truck.
The tear gas almost ran out, 79 of those original 127 were wounded,
And as Bobby Kennedy put it, if just one of those guys had gotten trigger-happy,
Would've been a whole mess of bodies.
The click of rifles of a company of US Army regulars from Fort Bragg, and a yelled order
To fire when fired upon, cleared the early morning air.

"Did you find anything 50 years ago that I should be celebrating?"

We celebrate civil rights as a fait accompli,
Ribbon-cuttings "glossing over the magnitude of Mississippi's
Resistance to...an obvious human right."
As if hatred and fear of difference
Aren't endemic to the human species.
As if it could never happen again,
As if there are good guys and racists,
As if I don't see and smell colour,
As if I'm not a racist.

James Meredith believed he had citizenship rights,
Rights as an American,
As a human being.
He had little patience with the promoters of black rights.
When he decided to do a march against fear,
To encourage Mississippians to vote,
He did it alone,
And got shot by a sniper.

"Mississippi has so humiliated me, They ain't never acknowledged that there was a war."

Freecell

The purpose of the game is to end up alone.

It's easier to blame this on a paralyzing past
It's easier not to say anything.
It's easier to fall in love with everyone you meet

It's easier not to be here
It's easier to self-sabotage
And watch it all fall down.

The purpose of the game is to lose.

It's easier to write a poem.
It's easier to talk it out and keep avoiding
It's easier to find another way to procrastinate my life.

It's easier to not engage.
It's easier to passively let loneliness lead
To self-pity.

Self-pity makes you feel glorious
For ending up alone.

It's easier to let your failures control you.
They told you it was okay to be afraid.
They taught you to be afraid.
And now you are.
Oh, now you are.
It's easier to second-guess everything.

Sitting in this freecell, fourth floor apartment
Door locks inside
Writer's block
I am an avoidance.
I am a monster.
The longer I stay in the shadows
The longer I stay in the shadows.

This is another hand dealt of a game you can only lose
Because you will always win alone.

Santo Niño Dios de Las Vacas y Mulos y de mí y Otras Tonterías así

 Originally written in Spanish.  English Version below.

Santo Niño Dios,

Ah, por Amor

Dios mío

Mierda en tu pañal

Tomando leche de mamá

Qué tontería tener un Dios así.

Bebecito Dios,

Ay, mi mente,

Ay, mi amor,

¿En qué te convertí

¿Cómo te trato

Como un fin de semana,

Una amante que visito

En las posadas afuera,

En noches desesperadas

Grito tu nombre.

Tengo mis cantos y un poco de mirra

Para darte, aplacarte.

No llores por favor.

No uses esa voz conmigo.

Santo Niño Dios

Por mí, por favor,

Duerme bien allí

En tu pesebre, en tu

Lindo pasado, tu paraíso con ángeles

Dándote luz perfecta para

Tus fotos de calendario.

Al bebecito, no despiertes.

No le sacudas, bebecitos

Son frágiles, como fe                                                                         

Ay, mi amor,

Qué lindo eres,

Qué seguro,

Qué irreal,

Qué infantil,

Ahí en el pesebre

No meces nada como mesas

Ni barcos, ni te metes con vidas. 

Bebecito Dios,

Ay, ¿cuántas de mis cajas

Quebraste ya?

Trabajé bien duro en hacerlas.

Eres demasiado grande para tu pesebre ahora

¿Cómo puedo aguantar espacio adentro

Por el bebecito quien creó el espacio?

Eres pequeño como una palabra, Adánico,

Una bomba que me convierte en una sombra

En la banqueta, gracias por la invitación al banquete

Pero no hay lugar, no, no hay espacio para ti para mi

Entre nosotros, un abismo de infinitos

No, no hay, no hay espacio, estaré borrado

En la luz en que brilla este bebecito,

Ay, por amor,

Ay, Dios mío

La sangre

Una corona de espinas es mi regalo

Feliz cumpleaños.

Sigues muriendo, sigues amando,

Aun sin sentirte.

¿Cómo puede ser?

Tener

Un Dios así.

English Version:

Sweet Baby Jesus of the Mules, me and Other Tomfooleries

Sweet baby Jesus,

Oh my love,

Oh my God,

Shit in your diaper

Sipping milk from mama.

What foolishness, a God like this.

Saint Baby God,

Oh my mind,

Oh my love,

What have I turned you into?

I treat you like a weekend

Lover that I visit in roadside inns

On a desperate night

I scream your name.

I’ve got my songs,

And a little myrrh,

To regift you, placate you,

Please don’t cry.

Don’t use that tone.

Sweet baby Jesus,

For me please

Sleep well there

In your past tense manger bed,

Your paradise with the angels

Shining the perfect light

For your calendar photo shoot.

Careful, don’t wake the baby.

Fragile, do not shake,

Babies are fragile like faith

Oh my love,

You’re so cute,

So safe,

So infantile,

So unreal

There in your manger

You don’t mess with tables

Or topsails or meddle with people.

Saint Baby Godcito,

How many broken boxes are we

Up to now?

I spent a long time on those.

You’re getting too big for your manger,

How can I make inner room for a baby who made

Outer space?

You’re small like a word, Adamic,

A bomb that leaves me transfigured as shadow

On the sidewalk; thanks for the invite,

But there’s no room, no, no space for you, for a shepherd boy like me,

We stand apart by infinities,

In the light that shines on this baby so bright.

Oh love,

Oh my God,

Blood.

For you, I have this spiny crown,

Happy Birthday.

You keep on loving, you keep on dying,

Even though I don’t feel you.

How could it be

A God like this,

A baby?

Thanks to Adriana Polanco for her Spanish grammar/sense check and her artistic editing/suggestions.