Identity
Who among us is a beast
that never dies?
Who among us is a lover
that never cries?
Who among us is a dreamer
that always lies?
I am your wound
I am your eyes
I am your bed
(I am your shadow
that runs across
the ground
and no obstacle, no rock
no chasm, no mountains
can keep me from being at your feet)
{1 April 2019]
2
To the One Percent
You cannot wash
away your wars
You cannot bury
your crimes
You will never finish
mourning your losses
We will make furrows
over every inch
of the earth
our hands roots that reach
into the tomb of everyone,
called the land
So that everyone we love
every neighbor
every co-worker
every migrant man, woman, child
who is missing
turns the sun inside out into our shadow
The light’s flayed skin wrapped around
the shoulders of the wind
To comfort us from you.
You cannot murder
the sun
You cannot swallow
the earth
You cannot overthrow
the clouds
You cannot.
Our song thunders
in our sleep
Our sleep is an armed movement
Our sleep is serial justice
You die in our sleep
and we wake up to our dream…
[April 1, 2016]
3
Six Sky Resurrection [ancient ransom note]
On the day
8 Ben 16 Kayab
Six Sky of Río Azul
was buried.
Most likely during the year 450
Then in the late 20th Century
Looters took
the vessel
from her grave
Now Six Sky sits under a glass display
(anxiously awaiting liberation)
at the Detroit Institute of the Arts.
The looters kept no record,
but the people will always remember
In December 1985
140 small pieces of
gold
jade
obsidian
and
turquoise
were taken from
the National Museum of Anthropology
in Mexico City | Tenochtitlán
the thieves
sent
a message:
these priceless precious stones
are being held for ransom
Now, the Maya Zapatistas are paying the ransom
freeing Indigenous past and present
from the neo-liberal kidnappers, the grave-baron-land-robbers,
the military industrial complex of generals, soldiers, paramilitaries,
police, battalions, secret police, political parties, non-profits, politicians
and toastmasters of capital.
Six Sky
has been
resurrected,
scattered
between Detroit and Tenochtitlán
Seattle, Oakland, Matamoros,
Chicago, Toledo, New York
Organized into a community army
armed with the colors of the earth
their weapons are our ancestors
who have secretly taken over the underworld
putting ski-masks on the sun and moon
Gestating flesh and blood onto the skeletons of our dreamers
In the butterfly of our women
flutter two banners, two flags, their lips chanting
we shall dream
we shall win
we shall birth
we shall love
we shall shatter
we shall clench our hearts
we shall cry in community
we shall sing off the face of the enemy
we shall batter the helmeted soldier,
laugh at his bayonet
we shall stop the bullets, the bombs, the fires
And the new people
that Six Sky dreamt
in her deep sleep
in the year 450
emerge, rise, fly, speak with an earthen tongue
when we will swallow the sky
to become pregnant with clouds, rain, butterflies, milpas, babies,
chidlren-ancestors, who slept in our arms
and made thunder rise
from the maize, the frijol, the women, the men,
the elders, the still-born, the invaders, the raptors,
who remembered then:
Six Sky was resurrected in the sixth sun….
[1984-2012, unfinished words of mariposas | c.s]
April 1, 2013
4
To be human
If I was human
I would be a woman
Whose fists would be tenderness filled with thorns.
I would worry about nothing except my daughters
I would love freely
The man who would make me laugh at philosophy
The man who would not hurt ants or my tears.
If I was human
I wouldn’t fear unemployment
I wouldn’t fear the distance that keeps me from her
I wouldn’t fear anything except not being able to love in the rain of winters without hope
If I was human
You would be happy, more fearless than you already are
You would be able to live where the sun sets & rises without losing your place.
You would say:
Your wrinkled skin, your battered lungs do not matter
Only that your heart pounds in my hands
Only that your smile is a machete to wield against my darkness
That your scars are the DNA of my pleasure
If I were human
Utopia would be now
Wherever we go, wherever we are…
April 1, 2014
5
Vladimir Mayakovsky, pachuco
Mayakovsky
yo me muero por ti
por el amor
por ella que ha vuelto por mi
liberaremos a la naturaleza
la poesia enjaulada en el futuro
donde eres el guardian de la ternura cuata
que sale de nosotr@s l@s que tenemos que morir
para que no muera el amor
; te pongo una exclamacion de hoz
un martillo para amartillar tus constelaciones
hacerlas
caracoles
conchas
que
explotan
de
mi
lengua
nahuatlizada
mi ruso calo
mis placas y c/s
mi futurismo enraizado em rebeldias
mi corazon amarillo
que uso de broche
y mi lenguaje una corbata inutil
para las que no me entienden
Mayakovsky
hijo y bisabuelo mio
migrante de la palabra amor
pachuco de la esquina
con la Lili, la flor xochitl
de futuro enmaranado en la montana rusa
donde alabo la luz, la sangre y tus rimas eternas
que han renacido en mi
re-encarnado en mi locura por la ternura descontrolada
si me enamoro de ella
con su voz raspada
sobre mi piel tatuajada
mis versos que deshago y destruyo
porque los escribo con la sangre de los que han sufrido
y yo sufro por ellos
para que la sonrisa se instaure como un discurso de victoria
donde las armas se rinden a la poesia
y ella me reconoce
me lleva a ser naturaleza entre sus brazos
llenos de sombras bajo las esterllas
y las serpientes explotan del zacate
serpiente de agua
zumban luz y canto
y nos abrazan para que él viva…
[April 1 1992]
6
Utopia
Where is hope
Where is liberation
Where is self-determination
Where is our utopia?
My utopia is a root, seeds, wind,
dirt underneath the fingernails
my utopia is my lover, my family
my community of misfits, my people
scattered across horizons that swallow us
in shredded pieces
My utopia is a committee, a poetry
reading, middle school radicals
who are “freakin’ beautiful,” who
know what is right
who abhor what is wrong
who are impatient, important
and most of the time don’t care
about what you or I think about
them
My utopia is a grandmother who lived
My utopia is a grandfather who worked
To death
My utopia is fields of maize, milpas,
migrant laughter, alcoholic Indians
who are the dirt, land and seed
and are trashed every day
My utopia is a jam session with
warehouse workers, hospital aides,
a secretary and a quadaplegic
in a garage in the middle of
a reservation
My utopia is a prisoner named
Gwarth-ee-lass
My utopia is the blues, the
corridos, my sones, my huasteca
desplazada all the way to Michigan
Matamoros and back
to the homelandless home
My utopia is my grandchildren
and ancestors named after them
My utopia is barbacoa with tortillas de maíz
on Sundays after church
with hundreds of cousins, aunts,
uncles, grandma, grandpa, eating,
singing, playing volleyball without
a net or a volleyball
or a wacky game of baseball with spontaneous
rules and homerun zones that excluded
my grandma’s garden of tomatoes, chiles, flowers,
spices and calabazas (if you hit
a homerun into her garden it was an automatic three-outs — so it took skill
to hit the ball)
My utopia is you and I surviving
to share and pass on the dream
of a house where there’s room for everyone
My utopia is now alongside you
And your loved ones and my loved ones
My utopia is the clouded sky,
the dissected celestial canopy
of stars, constellations, swirling
galaxies, the throbbing sun,
the crying woman moon, the gestating
hips and thighs of space.
the crooked Mississippi,
the ancient wound of time-going-backwards-
grand-canyon, río grande, río bravo,
the smoke of the filterless camel cig
that my grandfather puffed on
in the midnight of a Lomas Coloradas
fields of sorghum, a plot of maíz,
frijoles, calabacitas and water-
melon and the abundant
clatter of tasty white-wing
doves that we would kill by the dozens
with a 22 followed
by a shotgun blast
My utopia is
being you,
being
together,
a certain journey of
love and tortillas with queso
or butter dripping down the side
of your hands and forearm,
licking the mixture of hot dissolved
cream and sweat
My utopia is the solitude of being away
from my family and utopia breaks down,
implodes in my language and I
rage against mortality and praise
the pope for declaring that hell and purgatory
do not exist
My utopia is my mother
not in heaven but in earth
My utopia is my grandmother
not in heaven but in earth
My utopia is my grandfather
not in heaven but in earth
Solar, lunar, terrestrial
All on earth
My utopia is the ungovernable
natural world, the land, the soil up-ended,
flayed dust her face
peeled off by the diesel tractor
My utopia is you and I and
our skin, the story of
the longest walk,
the deepest memory,
earth, wind, waters, seeds, plants, natural
creatures, who are still our guides
our utopia of the first kiss
My utopia is in your arms, your
womb, your bitter smile, your
forced laughter, your evaporated
sun, your bones, your skeleton
the scaffolding of my utopia
[April 1, 2014]
7
Utopia
My utopia has been barbed-wired
fenced off. My utopia’s air, wind,
waters, seeds, plants, soil, lands
and the DNA of our big bang are being gentrified
privatized, moved south across
suburbs and borders,
where labor power is cheapened and
hunger deepened. My utopia
is up for sale, the dot-com
new money with the old skin of
racial aristocracy is outbidding
our ancerstors, even buying our way of being,
ridiculing themselves
belittling humanity
one neighborhood at a time
My utopia is illiterate yet is the voice
of all the creation stories
of our peoples
My utopia is carried on the backs
of ants.
My ants carried me into the guts
of the land, fed me maize
seeds and I sprouted human
My utopia does not forget the land
and her peoples, my utopia
is pigmented in dust particles
dancing on the sun-rays of
campesino mornings and south-
west horizons
My utopia laughs at my dumb
jokes and pities me when I
am drunk on despair because
everything has changed and
erased me once again
My utopia is limitless, there is
room for everyone’s dreams and
laughter
My utopia will not forget you
Will you remember
the land?
Do you have
a land?
Do you need or want land to be?
My utopia is the landless
who trample across fields
sowing light to brandish against
the neoliberal garbled night
My utopia is electricity and
salmon resistance, extinguished Toltecs
and refugee Mayans
My utopia is black skinned
liberators,
Zapatistas
and the migrant earth herself
on her own journey, as we
make-believe ours…
[April 1, 2015]
