With Yoruba circles
Searching for Orishas,
Step point of shoe,
Move shake shoulders
Like itches trembling,
Legs scissor spread rápido,
The waist bring her to you: inject.
Dancing is flirt mating motions,
Spin she he he she to
Together marking clave time,
Rhythm nucleus follow
Melody expresses contradiction,
The three/two time watch
Above changes to the side
Behind us now seems,
Melody goes everywhere,
But the clock of the clave
Always there
Riding out the chaos grounds you
Links like a chain
Circle sky forever
Loops of beat
Stars are scattered maraca seeds,
Gyrating brings you back
To the button,
Cuchy cuchy cuchi ka
There it is
It is there
There is it
Is there
Where
COMO
Ahí no mah.
Language immense greater
Than nationality,
No country politic
Plenty culture song dance
Libre,
Which are turfs savannahs
Mountains for son Montunos
Bahías, boulders trees
Nations (Notions) if you can,
Sentiment of the sounds
We are,
The melancholy of speech
Pity Mountains, ay bendito
Campanas of labia,
The fire of moisture tongues
Combined in new words
Wor(l)ds
Taino de Amazona
Fresh touch of desire,
Guanayamao my jaw of native pala
Chewing tobacco y España
Golden Age poetry-lyrics,
Spit them out or
Essential Romanic tongue
Spillage like
Scribbles discord as the Arab
Is a scimitar razor sharp
Put-downs of hard remembrance
Tongues as long as the desert,
Talk word supremacy
Chismological communities:
Singular your mama.
No modernity erases my peasant side
It came in through language
Hardened with my bones
Invisible if wants
Rock hard agitation
Jump for your lump
The tongue is salt and fire
As the flute sounds of Eros desire,
Clicks to the clit,
Gutsy y brash-clash
Off like tumbadora slaps.
Avoidance/around the bush
Is for brainy American English,
I paint red the sky
Speak out gut-balls –cock
Pingus is
I am Severo, like my father,
Till he vomited the world out
Carrying it upon his back
Painted me and my sister
In the mountain world of
“Gente baja” what was all about
Pueblo folk forever printed,
They all made it to the church
To the word of God,
Meant what he meant
Severo focused upon malicious intent,
Told me not to pity the pitiful
They are god’s necessity,
Pawns in destiny’s hand
Selves better blind
Sun’s light would explode retinas,
Purpose they have enough fulfillments.
Generosity is a symptom of the poor,
Work and do harm to no one,
Don’t ask anyone for nothing
Don’t give them anything either.
Stay home watch Wheel of Fortune
Not a centime wasted,
Allah is the one who proportions
Severo was my father
he was never my friend.
As a kid with Papa
We went over words
In Spanish-English dictionary
Wrote meanings down
Pronunciation.
Anticipating future life
As translator,
Upon the fence balance,
The border crossings,
A playground of syllables
Jumped as kid with
“Papo Got His Gun”
Shooting with words,
Orthography upside down
slamming off the bricks.
It was the morning of a long day.
From the island in Spanish
News of Albizu Campos dying
Radiation torture that in jail,
Governor ex-poet put him in.
And that / that those are the Christians,
Figúrate tú,
The devil on the phone is one thing,
But comes to your door is another,
Chew on that orange
While I peel you a fresh.
My mother erased Manhattan
Skyline
By bringing me up on
The proverbs of the Spanish,
Staring out window Chrysler building
Holding maracas
Doing the boogaloo
While I chew on octopus salad
Next to red beans and plantains,
Where is dónde está?
What choice do I have
When I drink Tamarindo juice
In the Manhattan Latin mountains
Of Guayococobonex, floor six
No elevator,
What you left something up there
Six below zero snow on the street
No reruns, Forget about it.
We were Prisoners of Spain
Prisoners of the Americans.
Once I heard voices as a child
Under the cement of the plaza,
It was the voice of Manolo,
It had an echo from Andalusia,
To the mountain town
I can’t go back there.
What the lengua gave me
Is still the echo inside
Silence chamber shadow of the guitar.
Where resides my shame*
De colores.
Gaze at what I have told you
words are color, sound.
Language not heard but seen/
MIRA!
*read: verguenza, character
Sueños
The real is I get tired night body rest must. Reading lifelong habit to get my imagination to dance, eves to get my eyes tired for sleep, yet always the toss and turn, I toss more than a lump of shit in water before stumbling into the depth covacha of sleep, sleep is not always sueño, the body the figure thrown rolled into the figure 8 position into a pair of pliers legs arms reaching. Motion forward mattress turns into a snake, a woman, a fruit, are we moving, boat? Something is in motion; halfconscious mind struggles to recall the drama. Something starts to happen, becomes blank, black, gone, a hole. You depart; down it goes, so go to it. A film rolls, chasing being chased, view out of a window, what city, where is this geography? Am I kissing a tree, guayacán, roble, guayaba bushel? The young fine girl next door? What is in my hands, hands, who in am. The episodes lose themselves, disfigure. Smoke. What was that? Episodes of dreams become vapor when the morning sun rises, struggle with black café to recollect. Scattered pictures, photos hanging on to the caffeine walls. Something remembered the mind pushes back toward the azabache of the nocturnal frames, back into itself, scatters, things break up, Manhattan buildings blossom at the tips of tropical mountains, geography topsy-turvy, inside out, upside down, chronology forgets itself, melts. Simultaneously the dream presents everything at once. A cubist painting blows up, fragments fall, red roses stars in light blue sky
. Juan Gris adjacent the bottle of red wine, the clock melted, or Dalí in the The Persistence of Memory, my interior drops down a ravine, blue river rocks midst vapor, frogs bamboo dance river waving hairy bush, jump flight of white garzas over the landscape. Giant butterflies with Miró designs flapping wings as I hear maraca güiro scratch. Toward the future scenarios I am repetitions, but mostly my dreams are visitations perhaps of past lives, jinn’s chance waving through the air. We must be other people simultaneously. I have dreams which have nothing to do with me, which never become part of my future, having nothing to do with my past, dreams must be a present now phenomena reeling, maybe if we run camera while we are out sleeping-dreaming thrown comatose zombie like who knows what scenarios would come into focus what if we apprehend “gaunt night creatures” around our bed, like H. P. Lovecraft claimed creatures of his night horrors, supposedly they were thin, like thread in motion, horns they had, thus cabrones, part goats, who knows what infestations declare themselves while we are mineral. Ghouls from the Arab world cemetery-Makbara, thieves, who swallow people and take on the appearance of what they just imbibe, all over town we see them, talk to them, watch them maneuver, they look real, so are your dreams. For Black Elk they spoke history and mapped his stance in geography almost all native traditions have a link with dreams, bring them out to dance in the bright sunlight, footsteps spell the words that an eagle expressed to them. Ghouls were semblances in The Arabian Nights. In my mestizo Caribbean psyche Taino Opias float about by the periphery of rivers, circle of the yucayeque recall a habitat of insects and lizards, alacranes, flying roaches, frogs, owls shrieking, images that print out at night. Opias, Taino spirits, lizard-alligator texture flesh. The movie I see in dreams feels as if looking down into a well, a cave, something round, now below, eventually above, scenario not happening within us but at a distance from where we are comatose observers, the rest of that mambo simulcast, must be all a contradiction. I could never sleep with my belly button facing up, the navel entrance I have to cover it otherwise eye voyage through phantasmagoria, nightmares, screams, shocking appearances, fear pesadillas. In Morocco they put pillows and cover mantas out into the morning sun and air as if to cleanse the night out of them. Milan Kundura said Life Is Elsewhere.
WHO/WHAT/WHERE
San Francisco asleep
Un moment
Taino village sparks
Women girls all naked,
A river cruising upon canoas,
One toss in bed the scenery
Changes to New York
The roof staring at a kite
Some kid displaced there,
To the left of the screen
Pigeons in cages,
Later in time
Sunlight peeping
Through my window,
Composing self the something,
Whatever it is,
Morning gathering the noche
Fragments scattered into
An 8 eight becoming One-1-
Becoming persona again.
Café desiring as habitual
Junky looking for the flavor.
Aromatic “Baghdad by the Bay”
Herb Caen would say.
See only a sky
The city wind drifts,
Mexican Ranchera music
Window house nearby,
Awake in the Mission District
San Francisco, Califas
Más Northern Mexico summit.
Not far original church
San Francisco de Asis
Misión Dolores,
History claims a creek
Even a lake wide water
Ran nearby—
Gone today.
Somewhere progress
Filled up gutter street houses
Atop in the future.
Where is James Stewart
Looking for Carlotta Valdes
Through the streets of
Mentality in the film
Vertigo de Alfred Hitchcock?
1958 was a place,
Pachucos somewhere in the hood
Big old Buicks y Chevrolets
Sculptured hair like the façade of Pontiacs
Battleships glued with Halka pomade
Throwing shadow onto forehead.
Now, Frisco inside
Of North African night daze
As also,
I present the Caribbean into
The picture by throwing on
Tito Puente cha cha chas
Along with café con leche
Pan dulces from La Victoria
Panadería on 24th Street,
That apartment of charm hangs in
My dreams an evermore
No matter the Geo
Alights that long hallway
Painted light turquoise,
Woman Elisa Ivette head
Hair black aceituna skin
Olive Taina whispers
Caribbean. Children toddlers
Bunk beds,
Mission High School
Around the corner
Structure architecture Morisco past present,
Now sprinkled with
Central American spice Spanish
The street.
That epoch continues dreaming.
Drinking books by window
Skylight, lost in magic words.
Sunken the night
The curve of her flesh
Against the pillow.
New York that turns tropical river.
The eyelid opens closes the curtain,
Inside appearance
Breathing with my thoughts,
My mother appears,
We are walking together
Back in the town
Her yellow dress
The bright light of the Caribe day,
Scene always like golden negative.
Bed was by it and sleeping
Took a walk into the wall
Nada I came back with
A bag full of nothing.
Waking the trail to school
Mists, bricks lingering.
Out the window tenement paintings
Cold gris colores.
What is this?
My mother spoke in her dreams,
Once I answered her
Thought we were in conversation
Till sister Gladys rang
“She is asleep, stupid.”
Grandmother came to visit
From the island
Father’s mother
Afro-Taina look with long white
Hair
Few times she sat up middle
Of dark nowhere
Calling out “espíritu, píritu, espíritu”
Scare me tremble as she
Used to see things awake,
Imagine asleep.
Dream I was a lizard
Brushing through rocks
Feet slip making
Güiro scratch sound as
Shuffle through the mineral,
Arrive into yucayeque,
Take position scope Areyto dance
In round circle
Walk-dance the moon
Cold blood of my skin
As I hang on to a moon crater
Upside down
Staring toward vast black,
Green blue nickel
The earth
At the bottom pit obscurity
Green light tone. Va pa’llá.
Wake up North Africa Norte
Minaret call to prayer
Perfume de Café,
Almond scent
Rose water sprinkles.
I inquire of the almuad,
Interview my pillow
But the pillow is just as
Lost and wet.
Calls out to me:
Where
When
What
Who?
The Costumes of Peasant Folk
It has always fascinated me to see the peasant dress and designs of
folk from different parts of the world. There is something in the style, patterns, and colors that seems to match one with the other, as if pre-industrial communities had an invisible link or unity, no matter the what of the distances. Look at Eastern European folk dress; compare them to the Guatemalan, Welsh, to an indigenous Peruvian, or Berber rug patterns to Navajo, do they share geometry, illuminated kinship despite wide oceans and mountains. Taos Pueblo-Navajo to Buddhist designs, sand painting, clothing patterns, beads. The world was larger and more apart, yet melded more together. As the local was so particular, each individual, each similarity to collective universes, as everywhere the same difference. Skin upon earth soil, stars, moon which we look up to, who owns the sky? Yet within this age of electronics and the internet, we are getting smaller, condensed. Kitschy minor craftsmanship all around us. The quality of craft has suffered. The dancing, the music seems to become each day more “foreign,” less natural. Less detail, look what has happened to the cha-cha-cha, Rumba, plena, Bomba, guaguancó, son montuno all now swept under the umbrella of Salsa, I need and like those hues of old, the texture of the full panorama, now a-days there is no elaboration, it’s like a lack of concentration. The attitude to life, hard work, discipline, and children is diffused by this modern urge toward a notion of freedom that is artificial. There is nothing but responsibility in life. That’s the freedom—the choice—you have, to achieve your responsibilities to self and family, to community. Unequal, we are as differences united in the same, analogous air. Vive la différence! The most beautiful thing of being upon this earthiness is precisely the differences; the human species is one, yes divided into different ethnicities, geographic regions, skin colors, tones, tunes if you may, hair textures, human features, the beautiful quilt of the human race. We are poly rhythms and poly colors. Thrown upon this earth which is not round, empty the sphere of its water and tell me that it was not the nervous hands of Salvador Dalí who designed it. We live this beautiful yin con yang, oppositoriness, male-female. What makes this music of African drum mixed with the Spanish guitar (which is also Arabic La’ud) so immense this cultura of various classical threads concentrated embroidery, the mulata has it all, the mestizaje she wears, she is the queen of para dise. A culture that incorporates. Space and weight the only equality. Creatures have the limitations of their own form, live within them or derail and suffer the consequences of going against natura. Individual beings can be made aware of a direction but it is up to them to perceive and to have the power to go, create. People seem to grow into destinies to become selves that were already planted within. The sweetness of the mango is in the seed. We are from within, out. No matter what the life examples, individuals go play what is within, they play-sing-become what they came here with. “If you were born to be a hammer, from the heavens will rain the nails” Rubén Blades reminds us in a Salsa tune.