clinging to the whitewashed trunk,
-black beans on tortillas
distant firecrackers
crackle like raindrops on leaves.
grackles sweetly sing.
yesterday the devil
was burned, today the virgin
is honored with bombs.
we sit in circles,
patiently wait for spirit’s
voice to fill our hearts.
english or spanish,
ki’che, kaqchikel, or mam
bomb blasts are banished.
Mr Ward lived across the street
in a converted garage surrounded
by a wildly overgrown garden.
A few charred timbers lingered
under ivy that covered the
foundation of the house
where his wife had died
when the house burned down
some years before.
He never rebuilt it.
Mr Ward worked the night shift
at the Hamm’s brewery on
Bryant near Seals Stadium.
The Giants were playing there
while the new park at Candlestick
was under construction.
We could see the cranes
from the the street in front
of our house on the hill
in Brisbane.
Mr Ward would
sometimes come out
to join us, tell us stories
about people who had
lived up here on the hill.
Like the man who had lived in
the house that we now rented.
After a landslide next to the house
a riot of poison oak had erupted.
He cut it all down and burned it.
Stood close to the pyre
tending it. Breathed too much
of the smoke, which inflamed
his lungs badly.
Hospitalized,
but I don’t recall if Mr Ward said
that he died. just wanted us
to know, not to burn poison oak.
One day, as we standing
out in the street, a garter snake
crawled out onto the road.
I had never seen a real live snake
before.
It was beautiful, red and black
checkered sides, cinnamon and turquoise
around its head, a pale green stripe
down center of its back.
Mr Ward picked it up so I could
look at it. I turned to Mommy
and asked if I could keep it.
She laughed and said No,
not this one, maybe another one.
Mr Ward put the snake down
in the shrubs at the edge of his
garden and the snake quickly
disappeared. He said it guards
his yard from pests and varmints.
Later on, Mommy said Mr Ward
was a hermit. Because he lived in
that converted garage and
didn’t rebuild the house because
he wife had died in the fire.
I told her that when I grew up
I wanted to be a hermit too.
And have a wild garden with snakes
and work nights at Hamm’s
so I could play with my snakes
in the afternoon.
We moved away from Brisbane
a few months later to a brand new
subdivision in Lucas Valley.
Mr Ward gave us a Century plant,
the kind that can go decades
before itt blooms. Which it did
years later.
And I caught my first
snake there, a huge gopher snake,
long enough to wrap twice around
my waist like a belt. I brought it
to the back door. When Mom
opened the door I said, “You
promised I could keep one.”
And so I did, the first of many.
singing up the dawn.
I can’t see you,
but I know you’re there,
and it’s a comfort.
Are you the ones
the child made
from mud and
brought to life
with his breath?
I'm on the southwest corner in front of a jewelry store.
A panoramic display window diagonal to the corner
with big gold watches for men, brutal, blunt, and heavy.
Dainty ones for ladies, too many diamonds.
Derdre (Dee) is across the street, kitty corner.
We're hawking our big stuff commie newspapers,
we’re outside agitators in the downtown LA garment district.
No skyscrapers, no blank, gleaming, mirrored windows here.
No smoked glass or polished granite, these windows can be opened.
With ornaments, pediments and friezes
where pigeons roost and shit.
You know; an old fashioned city street, made for people.
It's kind of worn, a little threadbare and gravy-stained,
Grimy in that good way that takes a century to achieve.
Get the picture?
The sidewalks are leopard-spotted with old chewing gum.
Discount clothing stores, bottom rung electronics shops
crammed with cheap gadgets; pawnshops.
Check cashing, loans, bail bonds, shysters.
Men pushing wheeled racks of shirts and coats
steering around the window shoppers.
Women dressed as if they just stepped off the bus
from Oaxaca or San Salvador.
With a string shopping bag slung over a shoulder
or dangling from one hand,
a child's hand clutched in the other.
Something somethings in the perennial jeans and a tee,
even a few men in suits, some cheap, some pricey.
But the story is......
I've got a stack of newspapers clamoring for revolution
and I'm spouting the correct revolutionary line,
trying to catch the eye of passersby.
-Friends, I'd like you to consider this:
last week a sleeping volcano exploded up in Washington.
You know the one, Mt. St. Helens blew it's top off,
it was all over the television, the newspapers...
But there is another sleeping giant in this country,
he ordinary people, the extraordinary people,
the people like most of you walking down this sidewalk...
The “masses” are doing their best to look the other way.
Dee is on the corner across from me,
the paper clutched in her hand held high above her head.
Looks like she's selling a few.
At least to the men who stop to check her out,
maybe they'll even read them.
That kid on the skateboard or that woman
who looks like she's on break from a factory
dead weary at noon, leaning against the bricks…
Oh man, here come the Baptists,
five young men and women
sweating in dark suits and ties,
or modest floral print dresses.
They all have bibles firmly in hand.
One of them steps out in front
and the others form a chorus line behind him,
their faces a grim backdrop for his beaming. sweating face.
-Hallelujah! Have you heard the joyful news?
-Jesus loves you. Jesus loves you all.
And he's looking right at me with that huge blissful smile.
but his eyes are knowing, and challenging.
I pause in my revolution-evoking rant:
...it is time to strip the mask off this beast named...
and stare back at him.
Now he's right up in my face, right here.
-Have you heard the news, brother, Jesus loves you.
Slowly, calmly, deliberately, with warm sincerity, I reply, Fuck Jesus.
He blinks, but his smile widens and I smile back; warmly.
It's like some odd kinship between us recognized,
but, we will not speak of it.
He nods almost imperceptibly and moves on down the street
his testifying flowing on without a pause.
and I too am having such a good time today,
just putting out my stuff and grooving on the bustle.
Nothing’s gonna touch me today.
Not them, not anybody.
At least nobody is trying to kill me.
It's been two weeks since Damien died in my lap
on a sidewalk in that East LA housing project.
Those vatos locos with their knives,
jumped out and stabbed him as we marched through
the projects waving our little red flags and chanting
like we were some kind of elite squad of the Red Guard.
But then we had to back there the next day and the next day
just me and Dee, more discretely, no flags or banners or chants,
just slipping into apartments to talk to people,
try find out what happened. Why did they kill him?
They said it was a setup,
the housing cops put the word out to the homeboys
from the Pico Aliso Gardens.
So now, standing on this street corner downtown
surrounded by hundreds of people feels pretty damn safe.
Even if those two cops over there are watching me.
Whatta they want? With their mirrored shades and contemptuous smiles.
-......People! check it out; the ones who own this country,
the ones who pull all the levers and make the deals and the money
off of your backs, your sweat, your blood, you know what I'm talkin' about,
well they sent their lapdogs, the LAPD down here to try and shut me up.
Because they don't want you to hear the truth,
they don't want you to think about a solution,
they don't want you to hear about revolution.....
I drop the cigarette I'm smoking in the gutter and NOW!
They have me by the arms.
-Step over here, sir.
They make me lean up against the window of the jewelry store
i'm staring at all the gold watches and wedding rings.
Hands above my head pressed up against the glass,
legs spread to the side. It’s the classic search and arrest position,
the one we’e all seen a million times on television.
-We're going to have to cite you, son.
throwing an inflammable device into a public thoroughfare.That’s radical.
The cigarette I just dropped into the gutter. Right.
They are crackin' up, cutting their eyes at each other, giggling.
And I can't help but smile too, because tomorrow
I'm going home to San Francisco.
Hasta la vista, City of Our Lady, Queen of Angels.
