The lizards are skittering along fencelines--blue-bellied, hearts in throat
pulsing weedy arteries,
and the plumed partridge, in pairs, each has a mate,
blend into the gray dead tumbleweeds
and bushy sages along the arroyo--
have you tasted sage? We call it the sacred blanket for grandmother, (peyote),
but its bitter to the tongue,
yet many a time when I was driving and couldn't keep my eyes open,
I'd always have some on me and chew it, stick my head out the window,
caress my hair in the light drizzle as I prayed.
And prayer, thankfulness is what it's all about.
I come up on the mesa and thank the black birds on the mesquites,
thank the nameless flowers sprouting red and white and blue in the heat,
thank the creator for all that's come down
on these poor shoulders, wobbling my knees with such sadness
that an operation is needed to repair the splinter bone caps.
Strangers my ass-- you might be a stranger to yourself,
but I'm not--
I been digging stone out of my heart such a long time,
biting each one to make sure I ain't throwing away gold,
no need to wear a tie to impress a white boy
and fancily flirt with a white woman,
no need for that shit, I've got friends all colors,
demanding honesty which few can give
but a rare pocketful offer,
and I mix `em up in my blood, their words
the pebbles in a creek bed shimmering and glinting
with their own beginnings to be human beings,
`cuz so distant from their roots,
one becomes mean and ill-tempered and if you visit
English museums in London,
you'll find their gods are men of commerce and banking,
what a fuck-up legacy to have, huh?
I'd rather be bunking with cigarette butts in a ho-n-pimp hotel
than point to the bank as my green-feathered tribal village.
Yeah, girl, what we need to do is sit down
and powwow--
leaving behind this heated pool and beautiful Mexican garden of mine,
leaving my dawn-early strolls as I water each sage and perennial,
each pinon tree, each evergreen that hollers to me
how sweetly life can be lived and nourished
and how there's room for everyone--
even you and me, at the table,
even others of my peoples coming back to this Turtle Island
swindled from us, pillaged and stricken with mayhem
under the guise of Manifest Destiny--
they come nonetheless, crossing the miles of choppered-air
bulleted distances,
carrying beat up grandmothers, slashed with army bayonets,
childrens' heads crushed by INS gestapo boots,
they come heeding a deeper call than yours and mine
,
buried in Mother Earth,
concealed from those who would betray Her,
the poverty pimps, the wanna be great poets, the famished for fame,
the strutting and sliding, the smoking and singing,
they come in silence, humble, back to their roots,
to the Land Of Seven Cave, The Land of The Crane,
Our Motherland, Our roots,
and no one understands that was written in Mayan codices,
cannot be stopped,
smelling of earth drenched in blood,
stinking of sweat in rich growers' fields,
reeking of pesticides, of hunger, of slavery, of being beaten brutally
and still desiring basic integrity by showing it to others,
color never mattered it never did
and still doesn't,
I love the color black, man you outta see me in a black
turtle neck,
sleek pants that snug up around my sweet ass,
how my brown limbs flow with swan-like grace on the air,
how my arms fit another sister's and brother's sad arms
for the rocking and cradling and loving,
color never mattered,
except to the colorless,
the lost tribe seeking their roots,
seeking their sacred colors,
their beads and feathers and songs,
now screaming in hatred death doom dungeon torturing and twisted
chemically induced self-destruction,
never trusting, seldom fair, often manipulative,
they dress in the fanciest suits to conceal their colorless anemia,
they cunningly score a win by cheating where they can,
they incessantly adopt and take what they don't have respect for
except to turn a nickel into a dime,
so woman, you are full of bursting beauty,
tired of them telling me
and for a very brief time
just got to accept the grief,
and the time for explanations
and no, no, no,
©CopyrightJimmy Santiago Baca
despite the false reliance on plaques, knock-kneed innocence,
pretentious deference,
you breath and your breath by virtue of your wonderful soul
gives black-jeweled veils to every maiden under the moon,
breathing
gives every maui-warrior a gut-filled arrow-killing God-cry
of victory where he be, you be, I be,
all convoluted up in a fireball of love and courage and sublime spontaneity
hurling and soaring through the heavens above banks
and Major Daly's
and the six 'o clock news--
woman, being who we are and living as we live
ain't no flip of the switch and whammo we got
Bay Watch lives--
who the fuck wants it--
shit,
our lives are never going to be resolved,
never going to find peace,
and why should they,
we are poets and warriors, racists and pacifist,
and to say we're not racist is to deny we ever lived,
because this system and every institution in this country
teaches subtle, invisible can't touch but it's there racism,
off into brotherhood and sisterhood
can't even begin to be my brother and sister
until they deal with their own racism,
the hot n cold, the sweet n bitter,
the fat and thin of it,
ain't in Whitman or Emily's poetry,
it 's in our lives NOW
and our reaching is a way of saying we're tired of it,
gotta make something else happen,
gotta stop living and accepting the betrayals
and the nonsense that we can't live in peace
and love `cuz
coming from a homeboy, and a million and million
like me,
there's no winning,
not having the luxury of living in a quaint woodsy idyllic way
not having the money
nor the means to do so,
we find ourselves on the freeways speeding by others
who flip us off, who look at us and seethe with hatred
at me for having my ole `49 Pan head harley lowrider,
I'm coming up and passing them,
coming up and contributing my jewels to the land,
to the children,
coming up and offering better education,
art, dance, language,
and woman, THAT'S the REAL WORLD,
not the Taos Poetry Circus shit, not the crowds
gulping beer and clapping drunkenly,
not the fancy hotel soap and fragrant laundered clothing
we wear,
the truth is if you put your finger in my
sweet bronze-brown flesh you're gonna come up
with cups of the sweetest wine and most savory bits of heart-food
'll make yo mouth pucker as if you bit a juicy golden peach,
what's good and what's bad,
tired of the doubt about who we are,
tired of teachers teaching what they don't practice,
tired of the starched manners and lies of politicians,
tired of measuring a woman's worth or a man's strength
by the curves on her body and his,
listen to Oldies But Goodies
humming them as I do on long prairie ride across the badlands,
going to my village
where richness is measured by your integrity and how you supported your family
and poverty by your lies and no good word,
I wanted to be like them white folks,
but that burned quicker than the white paper
around a puffed-in cigarette,
and I was left with ashes,
yet, still, the heart-coal burned in the dark
with all the ardor and vehement desire to be me,
and all it took was a stand, take a stand,
no matter where you are,
no matter what road or paved yellow brick dream,
no matter what path a goat's or a queen's carriage softened with strewn petals,
you can stand and be who you are,
the tragedy,
the hurt,
the betrayals,
the unbelievable anguish of being me, you, us,
and make songs outta of the blues girl,
and you, better n most,
can sing them so as to make even
Snakebelly rise out of his grave behind a Louisianan prison dog pound,
and burn the ear off them fucking hounds
the noses off their fucking faces,
slash their tongues,
and have that fat little squat warden chewing his cowboy hat brim in
anxiety,
cuz there ain't no caging up the blues,
imprisoning the song in peoples' hearts,
none of that shit,
no mam,
and I what sing to the world
is get up off that bullshit
that I haven't experienced the clubs and cages and bloody streets,
`cuz if not you than yours will,
a son, a daughter, no one escapes
another man's hatred, another woman's bigotry,
we all suffer it
down the road a bit, we meet what we most tried to hide from,
we encounter it
when answering the door,
the bill collector arrives and hand us the bill,
in one way or another,
is gone, vapid and sordid self-flattery because we handle language so well,
I don't hear the cactus explaining his-self,
nor the mimosa tree chattering in the front yard why it is
the color it is,
nor the water as it streams down hill
telling me it has to do so,
just is,
just as we are and have been,
once we cut the shit we've been taught to believe
and get on our knees and hands and scrape up what we threw away
a long time ago,
put back together that old egg-shell angel and prop it
on our shoulder,
by the winds and magic of our hearts,
it's start flapping wings and blessing us
again,
until there ain't no room for the I'm confused chants,
for the yeah what about me snivels,
for the fear that comes from talking out loud
in places and in front of people
that pay your salary,
fuck them,
fuck their noose around me neck
I chewed right through that piece of limp frayed rope,
I seen through their words and found a nest of fanged lies,
I touched their flesh and it was colder and chilled
than a ice-tray in the frig,
no room for nothing
except my beautiful sister, beautiful woman that you are,
to love yourself and sing your songs
that come from a river way below the stone and the fancy clod feet of the rich,
that black molten fire that is the tongue of all birthing origins,
that song that kept us alive,
that protected us against the predators,
full of fleas and smelling of shit song,
the one that our mothers a thousand years ago
hummed when they carried us
in a time when dinosaurs grumbled the blues....
Jimmy Santiago Baca Standing and Breathing