Singing at the Gates

by Jimmy Santiago Baca

  we are burning Afghani women alive; we are assassinating millions

  of innocent people

  we are killing millions with each spoonful of cereal,

  with each spa massage, with each trip to a ski resort,

  with each Olympic medal we celebrate, with each daily paper we read,

  and that’s what this cry is in me,

  the one I can’t get out,

  the one that haunts me, makes me want to lose myself in drugs and alcohol

  because when I walk down the street and see no one cares

  that we’re murdering millions,

  because when I look from my table and see lunch crowds all babbling

  about love

  and money and spouting happy-blissful new-age healing talk,

  I want to rise and smoke the motherfuckers,

  take them to where their corporate consciousness has never taken them,

  out of their nice investment portfolios

  and comfortable house slippers,

  out of their SUVs, out of their lake retreats and grad school classrooms

  and career moves and Canyon Road Santa Fe mansions,

  take them and make them live the life of a small starving Mexican girl

  one day,

  live the life of a woman sold into slavery one day,

  live the life of an Afghani woman or Iraqi child,

  live the life of someone in jail, in prison, who just lost their soul

  to men that raped them,

  then let’s hear their talk, let’s hear their jovial laughter come from

  those contorted mouths

  still agape with horror . . .

  cuz I can’t take it anymore,

  just can’t

  take this cry in my ears and eyes and mouth

  with the blood of millions of nameless victims

  all for the pleasure and greed of a few rich motherfucking men

  gathering in British hotels, Washington chambers or Pentagon Think Tanks,

  can’t take it . . .

  so I must now play this flute given me by a friend now dead,

  I must play this flute, drown out the cries of the murdered,

  I must dance my ballet, move so I sweat and worm and twist

  and leap and gasp with passionate breath,

  I must blow this saxophone so hard my face reddens

  and my cheeks balloon out, eyelids tight, blow man blow man!

  I must paint in my studio, walk in with rage and paint this madness into

  love, dance this madness into tears,

  write this poem so I can stop weeping

  and start dancing in the community with children, women and men,

  so I can open with mouth and vociferate my love vowels clearly,

  so I can use these arms to really bang my hands together to applaud

  so I can whimsically whirl in a dizzying joy for being alive and

  against praise the Creator for this life.

  AGAINST DESPAIR

  I carry in me a fire,

  I dance as flames dance, speak as flames speak

  I touch as flame touches, yearn as flame yearns

  dream as a flame does,

  and yet,

  you bring water to douse me

  you bring wet wood to warm us

  you wear fire-retardant clothing

  you do not sing the light that flames give

  you moan from the burn

  you do not hum the heat up in your heart

  you let the flame grow gray with morning ice

  the flame cracks from neglect

  like a black butterfly’s wing pinned under glass.

  I rub this heart of mine each morning

  I blow on it,

  I ask it questions I wrap it in deer hide

  I throw dirt over it

  I ask it to remember the pain

  I tell it to be humble,

  I instruct it to be like the mallard ducks

  I saw yesterday,

  the male one flying north, its female mate

  following—

  I told my heart

  learn that lesson well

  go into this day

  smelling of cedar smoke, garden soil, and working hands,

  lose your soul in these green sage days

  lose your heart in this Quetzal green day

  on your own unique flight

  to your own primordial map

  tell them who ask

  you are following your joy.

  People have accused me of everything,

  pile my table with platters of their rage

  manipulate words to cheese for laboratory mice

  addicted to spiritless pleasures,

  leave their complaints at my door

  landlord notes for overdue rent,

  their disdain disguised in a mask of empathy and concern,

  remind me of my failures

  lavish over my mistakes

  excavate the bones of my past—

  they will not forget

  my thirst for destruction,

  daydream to satiate their self-righteousness

  cutting off the toes of ballet dancers,

  chopping fingers off guitar players,

  strangling cellists with cello strings,

  they do not seek lover who are free

  but those who wear a key around their necks;

  they have the answers;

  show them a handsome face and they will kiss it

  a muscular body and they will fuck it,

  your sadness and they will mock you

  your compassion and they will be cynical,

  recite a poem and they will try to change it

  or shout you down

  offer up your heart and they will try to change it

  give yourself as you are—they will not accept you.

  They will tell you that your words are hammers pounding them down,

  your hopes mere fantasies to enrapture an immature heart

  that you no longer dream of life as life can offer itself

  in its splendid magnificence,

  but that your needs are selfish

  your emotions whimsical, your honesty a well camouflaged lie,

  and after all of this has been leveled at you,

  like myself, countless times,

  I have put on my jacket

  strolled to the Rio Grande bosque

  seeking counsel from the waters, whispering a prayer

  for an ancestor appear in the air

  beneath my prayer tree (a female cottonwood)

  that leans over a green rainbow

  under which I stand pray—

  I want answers that come from the Creator,

  answers to rise from the ground

  like Christ on Easter Sunday,

  remove the stone from my heart,

  that I might rise from my own death

  to sing my own butterfly metamorphosis

  as I change and ascend

  winged jewel resting on the twig or leaf a moment

  sacrificing myself to the wind and sun

  and by day’s end lie dead in dust

  having fulfilled my song.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I want to thank Jennifer Gates, my agent, what a superb literary eye and sharp mind—thank you so much for believing in my work. Also, my gratitude to Corinna Barsan, what a great delight to work with her, how lucky I am to have such an unrivaled editor. Also to C
indy Bellinger, one of her last acts before dying of cancer was to sit with my Mariposa Letters and excerpt the gems she thought valuable. I consider her sensibility to be in its God-depth of perception for meaning and worth, balanced as it is between this world and the realm beyond. And to Lucia and Esai, my youngest children, and my amazing wife, Stacy, without their support and faith there’d be no book. They believe. Time spent away from them is time spent away from love. To my agent, my editor, and to them I owe this book.

  CREDITS

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors and publishers of the following periodicals, chapbooks, and books where poems from this collection first appeared:

  The Dark Horse: “This Voice Within Me,” “Looking”

  Illuminations: “Excerpt from Letter to Will Inman,” “Quetzal Feathers,” “Things Unexplained”

  La Roca: “December Nights”

  Mother Jones: “Saturday”

  The Sun: “Silver Water Tower,” “With My Massive Soul I Open,” “A Handful of Earth, That Is All I Am,” “Tapestry of Downtown,” “Black Mare,” “New Day”

  Poems from Swords of Darkness originally published by Mango Publishing (1981; Gary Soto, editor).

  Poems from What’s Happening originally published by Curbstone Press (1982).

  Poems from Rockbook 3 originally published by Rock Bottom Books (1978).

  Poems from Set This Book On Fire! originally published by Cedar Hill Publications (1999; Chris P., editor).

  “Smoking Mirrors” originally published in Que Linda La Brisa by University of Washington Press (2000).

  “Rita Falling from the Sky” was written for Rita of the Sky, a documentary by Kathryn Ferguson (2009) and originally published in Rita and Julia by San Diego City Works Press (2008).

  “Julia,” “This Disgusting War!”, and “Against Despair” originally published in Rita and Julia by San Diego City Works Press (2008).

  “Singing at the Gates” originally published in Descendants, in collaboration with photographer Norman Mauskopf, by Twin Palms Publishers (2011).