It only took half a minute

Take six hundred acres

of misguided urban policy.

Stack the poor and brown

in institutional boxes.

Fold in some fervent would be

outside agitators holding on

to the remnants

of our sixties radicalism

waving our little red books

and big red flags.

March through the public

housing projects where

the Primera Flats Homeboys compete

with the Cuatro Flats Vatos Locos

for neighborhood supremacy.

Turn up the heat

from the LAPD red squad

who have infiltrated

an undercover officer

who is gleaning information

from the Party member

that he's fucking.

Wait for things to boil over

in Boyle Heights,

and they did.

And a man who overestimated

his revolutionary popularity

wound up on the sidewalk dead.

Somebody shouted, Knife!

Gus spun and ran three steps

towards me before his legs

went all rubbery and he timbered

face first onto the sidewalk. Hard.

I rolled him over onto his back.

The knife cut on his throat

open like a little mouth, hardly bled,

the one through his heart

was the one that did.

His breath was ragged

and his eyes quickly changed

from the warm earthy brown of spring

to the cold of winter mud.

Half a minute, maybe

was all it took for him to go.

I don't know why

I noticed once again

the thin edge of a gold filling

on his tooth.

We called him Gus, an alias

'cause we all had noms de guerre.

Might have been short for

a favorite Uncle Gustavo

or maybe it was just whimsy.

It didn't fit him well, too small.

Pinched him like a pair

of thrift store oxfords.

We tossed it after he was gone,

Vaya con Dios, Damian Garcia.