Singing at the Gates
Page 4
THIS VOICE WITHIN ME
This voice within me waits in line,
and after my anger and laughter go to sleep,
it is earliest to awake,
and stands in front like a peasant
in a bread line, or a bearded bard
at a slum soup kitchen.
I open my eyes on the gray and snowy world,
still drowsed in darkness and dreaming,
and I see him down there all alone,
and call to him, accompany me,
listening to the sounds of waking life
around us, I smile softly at my cellmate.
LOOKING
I feel something in me
move—
one movement in particular
crawls out of the dark in me,
a dead hand on bloody drugged knuckles
unfolding,
coming to life.
To hold in its palm,
lines of my heart’s untouched essence,
and the callousness I wear,
when nothing else will light
my path,
or marry them, two separate ones to me.
EXCERPT FROM LETTER
TO WILL INMAN, 5 MAY 1977
There are mountainous regions we have yet to map out within
our voices, the themes . . . are sometimes great signs
pointing the way . . . they are not domesticated—
they are tribal songs to be shared by all . . . no one
can keep them for themselves. because humanity
spins through them, not individually but as a
whole nation/tribe lofted up or ground down to
fine powder in the wind, water, fire and earth,
the poems are signs that tell us things. if we
place them side by side, we see they point to a
direction. they have broken from the circle of
today’s petrification in the cities and have left a
gaping hole in the fence. if they patch the hole
up so none of the slaves will get ideas about free-
dom, trust that i will be behind there to barrel
thru again. and i am not afraid of the hunting
parties and passels of critics that will tag at my
heels. we can lose them easy enough. but they
will be blind in our world. . . .
FROM
SWORDS OF
DARKNESS
THE YOUNG MEN
ARE LAUGHING
This morning, by the wall, laughing.
I stand ten feet away from them, listening, looking
out in the undisturbed street.
Willy the wild man will open his pawn shop soon.
There’s Red skipping down the steps, looking for a fix.
Wizard bums a smoke from Nacho, and calls to Delon for another smoke.
The men all laugh. Voices go back and forth: Ese bato / Eh Tommy /
Danny comes down with a bag of banana cake.
Wizard’s working out a deal, saying, “I’ll pay half now
and half later.” Wedo calls to Chuck, ain’t no more cake.
And big John whistles at a woman passing.
Sunlight pours into the streets. A few cars
ride low, pass slow. Deals are made for Sunday night, on the corner.
Someone whistles. The men all laugh.
A man up at the window yells, We’re trying
to sleep up here chumps! Pay no mind. Big John says pass me
your cup. A little whiskey goes around.
Say man, C’mere man. John, let me av piece
dat cake, says Charles Ray. Everybody’s talking. Their shirtless
trunks, shirts slung over one shoulder, in the sun.
A trash-can top cracks the human voices on the street. Dogs and
cats. And Charlie moved back, just around the corner, did you
know?
Old songs drone from windows. Beenie got ten years.
What you say you gonna do, man? What’s the story, man! Say Tiny
we ain’t got no electricity / eh! Against the wall, the men laugh.
Saturday morning. Some will move out of this
neighborhood today, some will move in, where the Health Dept.
blurbs our water has to be purified, and Flaco got his tape deck
ripped off, and Big Blue turns to a Christian after dusting two cops,
and Whale couldn’t go to his pop’s funeral because his sister
stole his money, and Rose in Polock’s eye is a young sweet boy
of twenty-one that just moved in.
The only Eagles flying here are tattooed on arms.
And old black Dean dawns his pure starch-white porter’s uniform
and dignified, walks to work around the boozed-up sidewalk gangs.
Aug. 27, 1977
A DESIRE
Out of the barbwire, the walls, the timeless days,
a desire forms in me, alongside my heart like a rock:
I stood with both feet squared and firm on the ground,
a ground made of rock, and I pounded that rock, until,
from the blast of my Will Power, a sliver of rock
sank into my heart, going deeper and deeper and deeper,
and no matter how I move, still, I cannot evade the pain of my weakness.
A desire is in me, as strong as any rock, as sharp as any:
it was the wall’s hard hands, the barbwire’s sharp nerve,
and Time’s cruel endurance, all working in hand,
the pumice of a death, refining it, molding it,
and when I slept, it rose furiously from within me,
my flesh the hilt of its blade
that went down in me, so far, this silver root
of a new beginning; my tongue a steaming hot petal
in the cold new morning.
A desire heavy with furious flames throwing its dark shadow
on the lightness of life,
and all life seemed a glass window, and a flame there,
breathing against the thick glass,
churning its painful flames against the glass,
against flames against each other,
churning out shadows in creamy waves,
the cold wind avoiding the flames, beneath my eyes,
beneath my eyes were the flames and I filled with shadow.
The desire, the flame, pulled at the night;
the sleepy-skinned, soft and warm space of night
it drew into its sprawling glow of fingers.
And the night falling into its fiery palm,
untangling from contours of stars and moon,
ripped from the sky filling the fire
with a fragrance of it being all there was, all powerful—
my destiny, my only care. This pulsing desire
for new life, new ways of thinking, of seeing my humans,
unleashed a love-freedom in me, a freedom so free,
it took apart all I was, and put me together,
into all that I was not.
I TURN MY LITTLE FAN ON
Air blows across my face.
I could be in any number of places.
I could be any number of people.
Air blows across my face.
Eyelids on my tawny face, flecked with sweat,
closed, half moons, unburned and tender,
my eyelids down now, as I rest my eyes,
seated here, on a summer morning, in a cell.
I awoke early enough t
o see the sun
spearhead through the bars,
ooze over tier screens, a ritual paint
smeared on a humble hut of mud:
biblical blood on my door of steel.
A plague ferments in the air,
violence, insanity, treachery.
Lord God, I’d like to call to you now.
Silence, my Guardian Angel,
you step over the fallen mindless bodies,
their souls and hearts
thorns on barbwire that tangle up your wings.
Silence, you are like a wild animal
caught in a trap. When I first approached you,
you snarled with pearly teeth of pain,
your wings bristled,
your husky yellowed claws flared.
Nonetheless, I came forward and set you free.
I thought we would go our separate ways,
but when midnight sets in,
I hear you scratching on the closed door
of my heart. I open it.
You have become my family.
Through the torn sleeves of my soul
you lick my wounds.
Air blows across my face. I open my eyes,
look out my cage door at the heavy faces.
I could pick out a million places
where I’d like to be now. I could be anyone,
anywhere. Air blows across my face. I am on
the beach at Corpus Christi.
It is a nice day.
Lord God, I’d like to call on your hand now.
WALKING DOWN TO TOWN
AND BACK
Along dry slabs and pebbles,
hot rasping birds and broken shrubs,
the lazy shuffling horses
parchly munching leaves,
their hooves in soft malt dust;
lubberly, nothing disturbs
this sun clobbered land.
Walking to Belen, past dry clay
crumbling river banks, over
a cracked tar highway, no longer used,
and in the same with the railroad tracks,
buried in weeds and sand.
My father used to kill the bulls here.
A lot of children would catch blood
gushing from the neck, and drink it.
We wanted to be as big as our fathers,
big shouldered, big hearted,
with arms strong to hold a cow down
or wrestle it by the thick brawny neck.
Walking now, in the sun . . . that was eighty-nine years ago.
There is a bar here now. A few Indians and Chicanos,
the same people, different tribes, shoot pool and laugh.
I don’t know how, but we have endured.
In the mirror my sun-burned face, wrinkled now,
wonders how we endured. I wipe my lips,
and offer my glass for another fill-up.
Hours later, when evening rolls down the Sandias,
a black stallion rolling in red dust,
and water is pungent with alfalfa in the air,
I stand for a moment and smell, thinking of fields,
outside the bar, the sky dark blue.
Walking home, I smell wood burning somewhere.
My heart kicks like a young calf at the hot iron brand
of memories, my frightened eyes and black singe of old days,
marked on my heart, belonging to them.
I was wild as canyon water then, just a boy,
smoking marijuana under an old capsized wagon.
My father came by on his horse, “Let’s go!” he hollered.
I didn’t want to go, I was waiting for a friend,
to go to a dance. My father reached down,
pulled me up with one arm,
threw me behind him on the saddle, and off we went!
We rode out to an old woman’s house
who had seen Our Virgin Mary.
Her husband had died, and back from the funeral,
thousands of snakes converged upon her house.
Baking in the front yard, as soon as she opened
her door, they all swiveled alive toward her.
For three days, until exhausted and off guard,
she fell asleep: when the snakes, in one writhing heap,
began creaking open the bolted door,
their odious smell, their slimy swishing of bodies,
twining around each other making a big dark ball,
wriggling at the opened crack.
The windows were black with crawling snakes,
small speckles of sunlight between their clotted undulating.
She took her dresses, all the wooden furniture,
anything that would burn and she piled them up—
the door burst open!
With a stick from the fireplace she lit her belongings,
the mass of snakes fell to the floor, scattering in clusters,
twisting themselves in the flames, their mouths flared,
the flames engulfing them!
But through the acrid smell and black curling burning snakes,
came others, their tails in flames, their swaying heads in
flicking vicious agony, closing over flaming snakes,
blackening burning weeds, or grapes stomped underfoot,
oozed insides, red pink and bloody, burning bright slosh—
she threw a clay pot of gunpowder in!
Bits and pieces of snake splattered on the wall,
over her face, smooth, grainy blasted rippings,
rattles, seethes, and sighs in the glare of explosion,
a violent wrenching of bodies battering the wall,
and then a settled silence.
In the stink and putrid slime and squirming death coughs,
from a point in the middle of the smoke,
dilated a growing light, a bluish growing edge,
overpowering; then silence, and Our Virgin Mary in the smoke,
light green surrounding Her.
She gently floated in light out the broken door.
When we got there,
about fifty people were huddled in prayer.
My father jumped off the horse, quickly knelt in the hot dirt,
and began to mumble prayers with the sign of the cross.
I ran over to the water tank below the windmill and drank water.
People were singing and weeping in the huddle of bent heads.
I sat under a tree, angry because I couldn’t go to the dance.
I went to sleep smelling the sweaty horse,
and hearing mumbling prayers in the hot sun.
My hands up to my throat, I could hardly breathe;
when I awoke, pins of light straight through my eyes,
through my breast to the very core of my heart!
Clumsily trying to get up one knee,
I saw as I clutched my breast, Our Virgin Mary . . .
the horse spooked and reared away galloping,
I shaded my eyes, and finally on two trembling legs,
followed Her to where the people were gathered.
The people cried out when they saw the light around me,
“A miracle! A miracle!”
I see the burned charred house now on my way home,
the water tank empty and eaten away with rust.
In the moonlight, on his horse, I see my father,
coming after me, and a snake moves through the brush
at my boot . . . on my way
home each night.
People come out here to get away from the city.
They drink in their cars and pickups out here,
and when I pass only a shadow by them,
they hear me talking and think I am a drunk.
RUDE
Life is so rude to me. Leaves my head
spinning like a hurled lid of a grease can,
wwwwoooorrrringgg to a stop on cement;
creaked-up wood my bones, as it drives its green vines in me,
carves another year on me,
battered by life like a rug at its front door:
its heavy foot too quick, slides,
and life lands on me, breaking a leg.
I am shook out, hung on a line of tree boughs,
and there ants and butterflies crawl over me,
spiders usurp my knots and twines
with silken nest for dew and eggs.
All this, living among drug addicts and blood,
among bottles of whiskey splintered in streets,
trashcans upended by black children playing warriors;
Life is rude, rude as a knifeblade.
Life is a cord dangling with a death charge
while it sprays out light and sparks,
this cord plugged into us, taped up with drugs
and money wrapped around it,
clamped by laws, silver shining laws;
we are all electricians,
looking for the short in the line,
tearing out our walls and insulation.
I have often seen that certain glow
in a man’s eye,
and rings of energy flow from a woman’s hand
into mine, often that glow
is what we call endurance and love,
is why we do what we can’t understand;
that glow is the sea where our treasures come to rest,
spilling out the gold coins and gems,
as the green tongues of our dreams shoot out
like a frog’s in the grass bottom of sea,
swallowing the wingless treasures buried in sand of the past.
Life is rude, is that rude guest we hope
will never appear in our homes,
knocking like a stranger for a piece of bread,
stranger blown in by winds and snow,
traveling across America on an empty belly,
the one you hope will never come to your door,
looking in your eyes, without a word