Singing at the Gates

by Jimmy Santiago Baca

  in the cowboy strumming his electric guitar

  and the young fat apple-cheeked boy in a hooded sweatshirt,

  in the brother and sister picking pinons in the mountains,

  in the kids

  burning rubber on their bicycles in the church parking lot,

  in the two elderly women dressed in black

  with iron strong hearts and hummingbird soulwings,

  old and new merge, expand and spread,

  riding tractors and low-riders and Harleys, t-shirt and leathers,

  lost in fiesta crowds or alone on a porch,

  still using woodstoves and suspenders, still working at the railroad yards,

  in greasy and smoke-charred overalls, capped and stubbled,

  decaying hundred-year-old ranch houses crack and splinter on the prairie,

  while grandchildren of farmers who lived there

  march in urban streets chanting no war no war,

  and newborns scream their arrivals,

  and fathers with wrist chains and tattoos

  cling to their little loves at parks,

  and the circle widens and expands and ripples

  toward every closed gate, with tribal drums beating,

  gourds blowing and rattles rattling

  we are here, we are here, we are here,

  hue hue te otl, hue hue te otl, hue hue te otl,

  that we have always been here.

  Unfolding my lips to sing your beauty and resilience

  an agave giant petals

  holding you all like desert raindrops,

  moistening your thirst for freedom and respect,

  quenching your hearts to bloom at every entrance

  gate and door

  in every city.

  JULIA

  I am Julia,

  a little girl

  who breathes in air

  and feels butterflies in my stomach,

  who skips the dirt paths

  between friends’ houses

  and hears songs in the earth

  whispering their love to me.

  I kiss you—

  my lips are red blossoms

  trembling with dew.

  I don’t know where I get this happiness

  to praise life, to praise my mother and father

  to deflect mean energy that would bruise my soul

  to celebrate the sparrow’s chirping,

  to pray so hard sometimes

  because I see how people hurt

  and in the songs of my blood

  I am able to sing their words for them,

  share my songs with them,

  they stand at my door,

  mouth agape in awe

  of this gift to feel their heart’s hurt.

  When my cousins’ father and mother abandoned them

  in their yard I hold my cousins’ hands, grasp them tight

  whirl them in mine,

  we turn we turn we turn

  join with all creatures

  living in life of the moment, to release our suffering,

  surrender ourselves to the breeze

  is what I teach and spirits have taught me.

  And to fight—

  not with fist, not with angry words, not with mean attitude—

  but the way yellow sunflowers fight their way up to sunlight,

  the way the trout flail their way upstream in the Chama river,

  the way the elm and cottonwood trees unclench each mighty leaf at dawn

  to defy the dark night,

  welcoming dawn with a fluttering dog’s wage

  welcoming sunrise with barks,

  welcoming sounds and creatures and

  people dashing on errands,

  welcoming them with a singer’s

  open-mouthed first note from the heart.

  I fight for life

  for you to speak, for you to step into the circle

  and tell your story.

  That is what my open arms

  and my laughter convey

  when I see you.

  I am young, strong, Julia, innocent and loving

  beautiful brown eyes and long black hair, with caramel skin

  my body is scented with sage and cedar

  inside my womb butterflies scatter into the day

  my eyelids are crow wings

  my pulse a cawing at dawn

  the palm-reader’s omens

  of things to come—

  there will be rich people who do not like me

  because my heart is worthier than their gold,

  others will scowl in rage that I lie

  when I accuse them of injustice,

  but the sun and moon as witness

  when I see them pale faced, reclined in their coffins

  on silk pillows, I will kneel and ask the saints

  to carry their souls from one to the other worlds

  safely,

  knowing that the only real journey is truth

  how we get from one truth to greater truth.

  I am young,

  I cuss, I doubt, I am afraid,

  because this gentleness I give to you

  is a truth I learned from summer seasons being alone

  and valuing my heart, this compassion I give

  to the drunks, the addicts, the street kids

  is like the biblical woman who washed Christ’s feet and dried them with her hair,

  so my journey is me

  washing my people’s feet, being accused by the men of whoring,

  serving my man, loving fully,

  and all the books and magazine articles written to empower

  to rise and denounce my men,

  rebel against their stupidities would only

  leave them alone, would only leave them stranded

  on their journey, and I am journey keeper woman,

  I help you to understand your way, that you must take it,

  that you must fearlessly turn the corner

  you most want to ignore

  to help you face what you will deny,

  that is who I am, you Julia, strong Julia,

  lovely Julia . . .

  whose black hair weighs heavier than gold

  on my shoulders . . .

  and my man’s hand is always in it, turn over the gold,

  weighing it, offering it to the sun

  sniffing like a coyote

  who senses his ancient roots

  and becomes certain in his destiny, fortified in his fate,

  and then moves on in his journey

  toward the creator Spirits

  unfolding his life story . . .

  I have always known these things—

  my true beauty is practicing my people’s ways

  teaching them the Spirit song

  that will make them strong men, strong me . . .

  It is on Saturday nights, when the stars are wide apart,

  available to all gypsy women

  and I was all of them—

  yes, the young one who spent hours putting on makeup

  who spoke with her brown eyes,

  who brashly used her hand to touch

  the way a flamenco dancer’s hands strike lightning

  in every gesture,

  I was that girl with eyeliner, lipstick

  that would make red roses envy my erotic glance.

  And I taught

  gangsters how to kiss,

  I taught men
who usually held

  chrome plated .45s

  in alleys against an enemy’s head

  how to hold a child’s hand gently.

  I was that girl who leaped up in mother’s living room

  watching Zorba the Greek on TV,

  clapped my hands and yanked my father

  from his chair to dance gypsy style,

  while my brothers laughed and my mother

  disapproved of my flamboyant, shameless

  clapping and hollering . . .

  you see, I needed to live

  I needed to fill the space of my living with me, with engagement,

  contributing to those stars in the night sky

  with my own light—

  I have always been one

  to weep for heroes and heroines,

  I have always loved priestly gangsters,

  those men and women who defy authority,

  who come out of their skins

  haunted by a need to express

  their rebellion

  by gun, by word, by song

  let there by rebellion—

  I am Julia, lover of priests and gangsters,

  I dance with loneliness this evening, with the notes of accordions

  fingers smelling of whiskey and woman’s vaginal juice

  punching the white and black keys somewhere in Bulgaria,

  in some city where children grow to be men at five,

  and young girls know love at seven,

  in a cabaret in Indonesia where the streets

  smell of recent war, powder and death and lawlessness

  and in this environment,

  the voices that sing, the bodies that dance,

  do so because it may be their last and do so

  with all their heart, still dreaming of flutes

  somewhere among those stars, this Saturday night,

  when most people are out on dates,

  when if you look out your window, see them—

  a world of people passing in the night,

  but so few look to the sky to see the stars

  that I see, that you see, that dancers and bar girls and poets

  see in faraway countries.

  What do the stars say, why do we gaze at them?

  Because, when it has come to our lives,

  the tarot cards have lied,

  the diamonds were false,

  the smiles were contrived,

  because in our hearts we smelled horse manure

  and loved it more than money,

  because we are the people who ride at night

  on stallions with broken legs,

  we are the people who fly at night

  on wings that have been broken,

  we are the people who have escaped our captors

  and never reached our homeland.

  So I, Julia, dream of love tonight

  I, Julia, am the woman who left you with your dreams stacked on the table

  weeping in your beer, I, Julia,

  was once so beautiful that poets who loved me

  grieved for years with memories of hours we shared intimately,

  until their love for me interfered with all their loves,

  my face appeared before their lovers’ faces,

  my hands they held as they held their lovers’ hands,

  my thighs they opened as they opened their woman’s thighs,

  my tongue they tasted as they sucked their woman’s mouth,

  because I left each of them with a story

  of a woman’s heart and what she sees gazing at the stars,

  yes, what she sees gazing at the stars.

  I am Julia, woman of many women, trumpet-hearted woman

  that maddens the bull, el toro, red-caped woman

  bloody sword woman, I am Julia who has cut each man’s heart in half

  and squeezed his blood into my palm like an orange and drank it,

  for days my sweat smelled of man’s blood,

  how our love was a furious life and death ritual,

  how in gypsy cantinas late at night

  after glasses of corn whiskey

  I lifted my skirt and rubbed my ass

  and danced,

  until all the men turned from their tables and cried Bravo!

  and the young women just into puberty, glanced at me

  with hunger in their eyes,

  the hunger of starving thieves

  wanting to share a piece of bread

  I, Julia, was the bread,

  the bread broken into a thousand pieces to eat

  I, Julia, was the priestess singing mournful dirges for the dead

  I, Julia, was the dove at dawn celebrating a child’s birth

  I, Julia,

  am woman of many women

  am voices harmonizing, am thrashing river currents joining,

  am the worn guitar lonely fingers have cried their passion out on,

  am woman giving you myself

  in a hundred different ways

  and in the way tonight I give you myself

  is in these stars, these stars in the sky,

  gaze at them, go to your window and gaze

  step outside and gaze,

  pause and look up,

  and see Julia . . .

  woman of many women

  see Julia . . .

  THIS DISGUSTING WAR!

  There’s a madness in me this morning—

  feels like I have two hands on each side of my face,

  I’m a young colt for the first time with a saddle on my back

  and my eyes are maddened with rage and fear

  and I’m tossing and yanking my head back

  from these two hands

  that keep trying to put a bridle on me,

  nor do I want a harness

  around my head!

  I want to kick, scream, run and out gallop

  the fucking wind.

  But the molten lead slowly hardens around my bones

  and the cry of freedom in me

  keeps racing down my arms—can’t get out here,

  the cry hurls itself against my chest—I can’t get out of my head,

  it scurries up my neck—can’t get out here,

  and I know what it is

  times like these I want to open a bottle of mescal

  and pour a nice large drink in the afternoon heat

  and sit back on a bench somewhere in Arizona

  snug my cowboy hat down so the brim shades out sunlight

  and shoot rattlesnakes all afternoon,

  shoot at cars passing; shoot at hawks and eagles and vultures circling above

  shoot at INS prowling the border for Mexicans,

  spit black tobacco at my boot tips

  and shoot the scorpion trying to climb up my pants,

  then heel crush a tarantula—

  this feeling is the gift the Universe gave me,

  the desperate need to express myself,

  the audacity and gall to think I have the right

  to call down the Gods and face them, confront them, defy their rule,

  question why they made this world in the way they did,

  not understanding any of it,

  the cry in my bones, encased in hardened lead so it can’t escape,

  the cry in my toes that have walked so many paths,

  the cry in my loins that have fucked so many passionate women,

  the cry in my mouth that has spoken so many prayers,

>   the cry in my hands that touched so many beautiful things,

  the cry in my eyes that had seen such violence,

  the cry, the Horrifying, All-Engulfing, DARK cry

  that cries out to God and Creator and Universe

  why did you take my brother,

  why did you murder my parents

  why did you allow those children in the orphanage to be raped,

  why did you allow those innocent men in prison to die

  in their spirits,

  why

  must you Universe crush and smash and destroy what is beautiful

  give so little understanding—

  I defy you, turn my back on you and weep the human cry

  weep the heart-choking cry, throat-gripping, lung-constricting

  weep for those you didn’t give a damn about!

  If ever God gave me the courage to hold court,

  I’d send those Pentagon generals to hell

  stuff a billion dollars up the asses of the Defense Department contractors

  and float them off the shores of the Pacific,

  because if you don’t know how to feel compassion

  if you’ve been smugly pampered in your moneyed privilege

  if you think you’re better because of your billions and never knew

  the fear of not having money to pay for food and utility bills,

  if your life has been a Tom Cruise/Britney Spears carousel ride,

  if life never challenged you because mama and papa

  napkin you every time you spilled milk down your chin

  if you can lie and cheat and cynically sneer at the less fortunate,

  I’d love to shoot you,

  I’d love to cage you up and starve you

  I’d love to bed you down with scorpions

  and corrupt senators for a month,

  not feed you a thing, not hear you cry pleading screams,

  dismiss you as a human being,

  tease with electrocution, not enough to kill you,

  but keep you shaking and screaming

  and I say this,

  because you are accountable for countless murders and rapes

  you have spawned on this land an evil that continually seeds new evil

  in innocent children, in the streets, in homes, in schools,

  in fields, in the air, in the heart, in the soul

  until even religious leaders and presidents have become

  evil prophets millions bow down before in terror—

  I can’t

  I can’t! I can’t!

  endure the killing of Palestinians, Iraqis, Bosnians, Serbs,

  Israelis, Latin Americans, Africans