Can you color my pale leaves
Burn them pulsing red
Before they fall? Can you lick
This winter back
And rain
Rain
Rain your watersongs
Over my lips
My hands
Can you rain
Inside my chest?
Irrigation Canal Codex
Y los muchachos cling
To the cantina’s jukebox heart, sing:
We never go nowhere we never see nothing
But work: these fingers bleed every daylong day,
Aching from la joda of the harvest—
Y la muerte, esa puta que nos chifla
From the bus station balcony, from I-10,
From Imperial Ave. truck lot behind the power station,
From waterbreak delirium, from short-hoe
Genuflections down pistolbarrel fields—
And the canals green,
Pumping life into those chiles, los tomates, once
A year some poor pendejo can’t take the grease—
Heat drudge, the life of a burro, the lonesome nights
Of sweat and harsh sheets and drinks
Tattered lips pulling tequila
Till el vato’s so alucinado he thinks
He can run free, thinks
The trucks with spotlights are motherships, thinks
He sees Villa shooting cars on I-25, hears Tlaloc, god
Of storms, calling, water to water,
Rain to rain, mud to mud—feed me your tears—I
Thirst—I will feed your daughters, I will
Sweeten the fields, I will ease your heat—and
He runs
He runs
Se larga el guey
Down the alley, out
Dirt road, cuts
Under freeway, jumps
Barbwire
Where that homey last year drove his troca
Into the ditch
He’s so pedo he can’t see
If it’s stars or distant windows, he
Can’t tell if it’s roadside crosses where some bus
Drove into a delivery truck
Or if it’s a fence all white and crooked
Or a boneyard
Where his grandfathers fell apart
Beneath him, he runs—
• • •
Through Carrizo reeds, midnight sunburn,
Cane and chapulines dry as bones,
Rattling like deer hooves, like Calaveras on
The Day of the Dead, like Yaqui rattles,
Like old Death snapping her fingers and then amazing
Green
Green, cold green of the canal: sun-scummed
But icy, fresh and still steaming through back-crack
Cabbage fields, from sunrise to el poniente,
Going going green endlessly going
Verde que the quiero verde going
He dips his head to drink
And it grips him: he slips: he’s a watersnake, slick:
Drinks his way to the bed of the acequia
And spreads his dust there: he is become an offering
To the raingod and it is good: he breathes
The green into his lungs until his heart grows cool:
And he goes—
He flows west: frogs ping off his back: dragonflies
Part before him: tortugas worry his shirt tails:
He flies mouth-down, arms wide as cranes’ wings
Touching the rusted rims as he sails: miles
Slide along his callused fingers—across the land he goes, no one
Watching: he goes through the harvest: corn
Combs his hair: nights he goes, days, no patrols
Hunt him now: his lips never stop
Kissing his shadow.
And he touches earth
400 miles away, gone somewhere now
South of Calexico—almost home—
Nothing in his pockets—
Small fish
In his eyes
Like coins.
Help Me
For Sherman
100 bad jobs
before one poem published.
Another lunch break, another
greasy paper bag with another
bologna and cheese sandwich.
Invisible to women,
not enough money in my pocket
to get robbed.
Public toilet
on an otherwise
heartless California day.
An empty wheelchair
in the middle of the room.
• • •
From a stall,
a voice:
“Hey guy?”
He was twisted on the seat,
pants around his ankles
in a cloud of stink.
“Help me? I’m late. Been in here for a while.”
“Sure,” I said. “How?” I said.
“I can’t get my pants up.”
“That’s—” I said. “OK—
How?”
I bent to him and pulled up
his underpants, pulled up
his corduroys,
pulled up
his zipper, did the button
on his pants. Even
affixed his belt.
He leaned on my shoulder
skinny as a kite.
• • •
“At least you didn’t
have to wipe me, guy.”
We waltzed somehow
to his chair and I set him
in it.
“Whoo,” he said.
“Whoo,” I said.
“Sorry.”
“No, man, no—” then, he cried:
“My lunch!”
I went back in the stall: his lunch
in a greasy paper bag just like mine.
“Mom made it,” he said. “Can’t forget it.”
I grabbed it.
Mom had put a banana in there.
I felt his entire life in my hand—
his morning, his
birthday, his Christmas, his bedtime.
“Man,” he said. “Have a good day, and thank you.”
• • •
I broke out into the sun,
walking, walking, squinting—
too much sunlight out there—
and went back to work
forever.
Walking Backward in the Dark
So, the jury says, once upon a time you fed the poor.
Guilty.
You couldn’t see the ground for the wreckage.
If the women had dysentery behind their sheds
the earth turned green and red and yellow
and you couldn’t tell what was food and
what was shit and all your Jim Morrison songs
were without avail. No prayer in your head
took the smell. The only relief was the smoke.
Tijuana’s dead dogs, flat cats, starvation cows,
and highway horsekills split open
by retired Illinois Macks hauling loads of U.S. chairs
were drenched in a rain of diesel, fired
up with torches: their ribs built smoking cages
to catch your vision, charred hearts
sacrificed to carrion crows.
You couldn’t see home on burning days,
the veils of flesh-fired fog cut the sky in half.
You took them clothes on their flaming hills,
took them water in white jugs, took
frozen doughnuts and cans of donated corn.
You went in the name of whatever God you’d cobbled
together from your nightmares and your hope.
Head lice fell
by the thousands.
This was the dream.
Late from Mexico you’d rise
to the neon lightning of America, you’d rise
stinking of dogs and filthy women’s armpits, rise
&n
bsp; covered in the sweat of men who kill themselves
mining for garbage in coats made of plastic bags.
Bloodmud was caked on your running shoes.
Too tired to run. Undone by days and days
talking to people
with no teeth.
Home, your sweet rock-and-roll boys, so pretty
with their Bowie hair and their painted girlfriends,
All your best friends so dangerous with their Marlboros,
doing their all-night hang at the doughnut shop
you peeled a sheet of skin off the back
of a child boiled by overturned cooking pots
of lard
after their gigs at strip bars and bowling alleys.
Coffee and bear claws.
What were you supposed to tell them?
That Elvis Costello was cooler than Joe Jackson?
That you knew where the immigrants were born?
A Gibson SG smokes a Les Paul any day, man,
but a Les Paul is ten times better
than a Strat if you’re even thinking about
“Dazed and Confused”?
Ian Dury and the Blockheads buttons
she tried to abort her own fetus with a wire
on black leather jackets.
You didn’t even try to sleep.
It was too quiet.
3:00 a.m.
Television in those days signed off—showed bleached tape
of American flags, test patterns—
that Indian chief in the middle looking lost
like you. You had meant to learn to dance.
You, Emperor of Maggots.
• • •
That night you knew.
that night it hit you
you were walking
invisible
the abandoned miles of bedtime
Clairemont Drive: duplexes looking small as a fossil
John Lennon shot in the head.
You’d been holding down a crying girl
as a doctor scrubbed scabs off her face
as blood lipsticked her mouth before you found out.
Walking. Clocking.
Quarter mile.
Half mile.
Mile.
Ahead, almost black against the greater black,
that man, facing you,
moving away.
You squinted, sped up: he backed away.
You had to catch up to him—it was all in that
crazy son of a bitch hurrying backward into midnight:
it was all there, in him, and when you got close,
started to say something, he spit at you,
backed away running.
• • •
You
Stopped.
No moon. No stars. Maybe a Camaro
with glasspacks raced a Boss 302 Mustang
to the red light.
You had a notebook in your back pocket.
It was too dark to write
what you needed to say,
The Coward’s Prayer:
I have to get away from here.
Roadmaster ’56
For Chicano Soul
Tio Chente rolled out
Low and slow
In gabardine, fedora
High-belt trousers
And calcos
The color of his face
Color of his fenders
And his doors, roof
Yellow as his eyes
No smiles
Ever, loco, smiles
Blew the Aztec vibe
V8 high priest
Never gone over 50
Pinches miles
An hour. Brodie
• • •
Knob on the wheel
See-thru orange
In case he needed to
Spin out the Buick
But tio Chente never
Turned back
Not once
Cruising from TJ
To Korea smoking
Dominos unfiltered
Old vato only
Wanted to be buried
In his ranfla
His stone saying:
Roadmaster.
Poema
Ya fue escrito
Que moriré
Mi vida pasará
Como venadito
Por estas montañas
Tan ajenas
Pero antes
De dejarte
Quiero escribirte
Versos pequeños
Poemas
En la nieve
Que te dirán adios
Cuando salga el sol
Tecolote Canyon
and I wasn’t the only one who wrote poems—lowriders and
cops, gang bangers gas station attendants—everybody in every
alley that year that place wrote poems / I was
riding in a midnight car w/ Big T: I loved his prison tattoos:
over his mouth eyes mind days: they seemed so romantic: clang:
clang: must have
rusted his nights all night: clang: slam: lock: down:::loved the
way he cried when he
read his poems: loved his cell block muscles: man, those are
some big fucken muscles:
aint nothing to do for ten years but pull-ups, jack, what you
think: he made me feel like
I was bad, superbad like poetry itself was bad-ass / Big T, come
out somehow from—he
didn’t call it anything romantic, The House or The Stony
Lonesome, called it
prison.
• • •
can you dig that, sprung free by poetry itself—rode verse into
daylight: paroled by odes.
the warden puzzling out T’s indio haiku, seeing evidence of
rehabilitation therein, good
behavior after six or so years of shit behavior now walking the
Basho path the Crazy
Horse road, according to section X of document XX, item XXX,
locks creaked open /
and we were headed home, my Bro and me, after some reading,
community solidarity—Chicanos, Marxist ballet folklorico
warrior women, professors, cookies and watery
punch—better for T if the cerveza stayed in its coolers: down
Tecolote Canyon, deep
behind white houses civilians sleeping where coyote preaches,
owls slip on their feather
gloves, steal night: I was so down w/ my homeboy, I started
picking at his locks / digging
a little escape hatch in his soul so I could peek into that great
cell block of poems:
• • •
poetry
heart:
so T- man, tell me—vato—were you really in for life?
oh yes.
well what happened exactly?
exactly?
I killed a man.
what did you think
happened?
wait, you killed a man?
I shot him
in the head.
the canyon was curtained in coast fog—not another car on that
road, and I said: but
what
what
I mean
what—
• • •
and he said:
what does it feel like
to kill a human being?
is that what you need to know?
are you just curious, carnal,
or are you writing a poem?
or are you planning
to take out some mother
fucker? because I’ll tell you
if you really need to know—have I
ever lied to you?—yeah
I’ll tell you
all about it.
no, no bro, that’s o
kay
I didn’t mean to pry—you don’t
have to tell me.
I know I don’t
have to do shit,
• • •
but you asked
and I’m
going to tell you.
you know how it feels to kill
a man?
it feels good.
he kneels
and begs
for his life,
and you hold
the gun
to his head
and you think
of all the blows
and all the pain
and all the whippings
and all the hunger
• • •
and you put
two
rounds
right
in his skull
and watch
him
die.