who kiss their asses while adjusting grins,
luring audience approval with politically correct quips.
I want to tell you:
don’t lie! If you’re going to read a poem
about a kid getting his head blown off,
don’t raw jaw your cotton-tipped tongue
to gain the sugary aplomb and donut favor
of English Department heads, who like you
and never scavenged food from dumpsters, who like you
and never stood in welfare lines, who like you
while gleaning misery topics from The New York Times.
I want to tell you:
if you’re going to preach what you don’t follow,
testify to what you haven’t lived,
hoola-hoop your way like a pride-plucked hen
doormatting your heart for moneyed admirers
whose concerned faces ooh and ahh faked empathy,
know that poetry deserves better than that
hee-hawing, educated, hillbilly-mule
whinnying for the crowd response.
I want to tell you:
while you do your sheepish, poor-me routine,
your victim-in-distress sighing,
poor people are being murdered,
prisoners are being zapped with fifty thousand volts
of electricity to make them behave.
O hollow-hearted, New Age activist that you are,
tell us in your poetry how coolly you’ve risked
your life helping refugees cross the border.
I want to tell you:
what you’re looking for is a new title to acclaim,
what you want is to be hailed a savior
when you spice your poetry with theatrics,
crumpling on the floor and groaning with rage.
O how the world has done you wrong!
The last thing we need is more toothless tigers
stalking thousand-dollar checks from sympathetic patrons
of first-class airlines and four-star hotels.
I want to tell you:
I’m weary of these castrated Uppidees,
poets and patrons who’ve hardly engaged in life.
I’m tired of the prejudice they never own,
tired of them spouting off familiar remedies
to a world of ills they’ve never known.
I beg you both, get out of the way,
please step aside, just a couple of steps,
it takes too much effort to go around you.
I want to tell you:
the flashpoint of paper is 451 degrees.
WHY AND WHEN AND HOW
did our lives move from the page
words composed so elegantly
boy’s choirs could harmonize,
how did they scatter
like crumbs on the floor
swept up
and tossed from our lives
to decompose with the rest,
how did our pastoral
move from the canvas
to join the mob in madness
when we dreamed we heard angels
whisper once in our sleep?
*
RITA FALLING FROM THE SKY
Because of the drugs they gave me
that damaged my brain
I have been unable to speak for myself,
but now that it is over, and I roam the hills
of my village again,
I will try
to tell you what happened.
When I was born my Creator said,
“I will put this stone that fits in my palm
under this water,
and in a hundred years, the water falling on it
will chisel out a hold, and through that hole
you will see the secrets of my creation.”
I, Rita, who fell from the sky,
am the stone, carrying water and onions,
and I walk alone,
across deserts,
borders, and across lands of many cultures,
I follow the water
dripping on my soul.
They say it is a mystery
that I did so, that I survived.
I am eighty-two years old,
and despite what they believe
I know where I come from and where I am going.
I lick my lips so much
because I learned from the snake to taste, to sense, smell
danger and intruders with my tongue,
also because I am thirsty for truth, for love,
for my land, my people’s lost songs and dances.
Enough destruction,
enough talking.
Enough greed/violence/lies/betrayals.
I walk a world created ages ago,
a world where I killed my husband
because the horny toad spoke to me,
the goat and the llama
urged me, and I still exist,
and for penance I walk thousands of miles
across desert and prairie
across international borders
with only onions and water,
onions and water.
How, the doctors ask, did I do it?
they wonder, make up stories,
call me insane.
I have told no one
what I have seen, who I am now,
how I have changed,
the marvels
I have encountered,
the friendly spirits I have met and who gave me
their blessings and wisdom.
But the doctors think I am crazy
and I let them believe I am mad,
but I will tell you the story, who I am,
why I went,
what I did—
My name is Rita from the Sky
and what you have done to me is not fair.
I escaped the State Mental Hospital in Kansas twice
because I heard my ancestors calling me.
What you have done to me God will punish.
I leave when I hear the ancestors speak to me
they whisper
to me in the nopal cactus
in the exquisite
prairie blossoms and the sage and the prairie doves.
Have you seen, I want to ask,
a prairie dove?
at dawn, plump, they veer here and there,
carousing with the dawn light,
as if they are aware of angels
in every flower, in every rock, in every
tree.
They are like my heart feels, that’s how they fly,
at dawn,
how my heart feels for humanity, for my people,
the sorrow, joy, the sadness that is so great
that nobody even knows.
Instead they say I am mad,
and I walk, walk, and walk
back and forth in my cell,
thousands of miles, four steps one way, four back,
thousands of miles.
To keep an old woman in this cell is mad,
but I cannot contain your madness,
the insanity that sane people have,
tearing up the forest, killing the land,
dirtying the waters.
I hear prairie doves singing to me
in the rocks and sand and dirt and sage and cedar and mesquite
I hear their wings as voices
tellin
g me there is a sacred religion
that none of us are aware of
but which I hear.
I hear the singers singing words that make me feel
alive, make me feel part of life, make me feel
as if my heart means something, makes me feel
I am a woman, and my journey means something.
I am telling you what I am about, what I am made of,
what I hear and feel and how I live.
I hear those singers in the grass, in each of my footsteps,
in my breathing
I hear my ancestors
Mayan kings,
my Toltec ancestors
praising my skin color, praising my strength,
praising my value as a woman
a brown woman
people claim is mad—
those doctors with their stethoscopes,
those nurses with their tablets
jotting down notes
to confine me in a cage
because I will not share
with them what I know.
I cannot tell you lies, cannot tell you I do not
hear voices rising from the silence in the desert,
angelic and beautiful voices
singing passionately from the onion
and the spirits
that I hear
telling me Go on Rita, go on Rita,
even if no one knows we are here, if no one listens to us,
if no one believes we are,
you have been blessed, you have been chosen
and so you walk, you walk to the blessed
love of our heart’s music for your people.
Hot chili, hot sun, hot sand, hot rocks,
that’s where I go, into the hot searing lands
where life and creation is hot and blistering
I walk into that, happy and joyous
when I can endure the walk until I meet the hotness
of life, the whiteness of heat so hot and painful
that I hear in my soul the cries of my people
that ever hurt, that ever endured sorrow, that ever
experienced soul-tearing tragedy and in that moment and in that
day of delivery of our redemption
I have seen, no—
I am called upon to witness the worst of suffering,
and celebrate it with my walk, with my onion, my water, and my way of
paying honor,
my way of dignifying their hurt, their pain, their destruction
is to walk on, keep walking, and walking.
Those are the spirits talking to me,
those are their ancestors speaking to me,
their suffering, their silence is their way of telling me
I should go north, keep walking, keep my silence,
let others call me mad, let others accuse me of leaving my children,
let others think the worst of me, but I must listen
to the voices that come from the sand, from the silence, from the emptiness
as it travels like an eagle through my soul, soaring
with screeching predatory cries
after me I willingly give myself
to it, open my arms and say here I am,
and then it leaves, it is afraid, it knows
I am sent by the spirits,
because of simple things I believe in—
chili, rice, prayer, hunger, love,
respect, truth,
and that is why I walk, that is why I don’t talk.
*
I am Rita the mad woman,
the woman who betrayed her customs, who disappointed,
who people had trust to become a family woman,
Rita the Mestiza woman who dreams of her goats and sheep,
and the night she accidentally killed her husband,
who works hard,
who raised six children and who knows
three more children I have
from the divine world, given me by the gods
who tell me
that our culture is going to outlast all the lies and betrayals
all the money of men that come here and force us to grow
marijuana and poppy plants, force us at gun point to wake up
each morning and do the work we do not want to do.
I am Rita who sings
don’t you know that my walking is a prayer for all of us
don’t you know that my walking is a celebration
of our spirit,
that my walking is the string that connects us to the gods that care for us
that my walking is a great song without words
without sound without tears or laughter or smiles
or handshakes,
that my walk is our greatest fight against the traitors
that try to kill our souls, don’t you know,
don’t you know, is what my silence says,
is what my madness wants to convey to you smart people
who think you know everything, and have all the answers.
I am speaking to you through the gods’ voices, their messages
come to you through me,
through this old gray haired tired woman, wrinkled face woman
that is worthless and has no value, no place in life,
don’t you hear me, hear me, hear me.
*
I am crazy because
I do not hate, because I do not hunger
for possessions, because I walk alone with my many souls
in a world made of people hating and warring
for more land.
I am a woman with no borders, no gold
only heart blood waves of energy,
as I move across invisible boundaries into great understanding
of life and people.
But they have accused me of being crazy
but here is what happened.
It is my soul that walks north,
to our ancestors’ homeland, to where the blue cranes
carve air with feather chisels, as they go north
to my homeland,
my dreams of a homeland leap from my head and heart
like green skinned frogs, gorging themselves on insects of my desires
that buzz about my head all day and sting my flesh.
The doctors did not understand this,
how my toes are maize kernels
my legs the stout stalks of corn
the pads of feet cracked and
dried
like arroyos in copper canyon
that have had no water in years.
The nurse who smirked at me in the hospital
does not understand how many souls I have—
she wanted to know about presidents and days
and rational answers and facts to her questions
but when I mentioned to her
the time of the Aztecas, the Mayan love of corn,
the Incan songs,
she scribbled in her notepad I was delusional
and I sulked, pretending to be mad
rather than have these soulless skins
waste my time.
Nor were they the only ones who shamed me.
*
My tribespeople
shamed me for leaving my village alone, for being alone in my misery,
for humiliating myself
by leaving without a man and in rags, with only an onion and water
jug for nourishment, heading north because I hear the voices and callings
of the Old Ones.
Nor were they the only ones who shamed me.
Dreams in green skins accompany me
leaping back and forth into reality and dream
with each footstep I take north, going across the desert,
the doctors asked me how I crossed
I told them the frogs helped me, leaping back and forth,
frogs basking under nopalitos,
burrowing in the cool sand
moistened by deer urine,
intoxicated by sage and creosote
I walked from dawn ’til dusk
thinking how frog’s heart is a green
pumpkin seed
in my flesh
and with each step my heart
becomes a heavy yellow pumpkin.
At the end of the first moon cycle of walking
I felt lighter, I keep losing my tiny souls
in the desert, while my three big souls
get larger and larger until they tower over me
like hot air balloons, making footsteps light,
I walk north, hardly touching the ground,
lifted by my three souls, a stick-puppet dangling under them
held by spirit-string. Wind
blows me back and forth, a ragged puppet kite
made of human hair and flesh,
that expands and wrinkles
as my large souls shrink.
*
How hunger became me.
Hunger in my sleep, in my dreams, in my imagined death,
in my spirit-illness,
hunger distributed through my body as if hunger were a stone
pushing out from every pore of my flesh,
root hairs under a turned over rock.
I go north to see the gringo land that was once ours,
I go north to study the gringos
I go north to hear them speak
I go north to tear myself from my Mestiza roots.
Reprimanded and scolded and shamed by my brothers and sisters
my own children turning their backs on me
the lawyers keeping all the money
from the court cases they filed on my behalf,
only the horny toads in desert brush welcome me,
only the coyote wags his tail at seeing me
only the wind combs my hair
only the sun caresses my flesh
only hunger makes love to my loins
open me up to make my footsteps in sand
a language of ritual
and this journey north is a ceremony to make me more woman,
more human, more mother, more earth, more universe,
Singing at the Gates Page 10
