Soda pop one hand
pizza the other.
Mulberry Street my foot,
I walk around
make sure buildings don’t
fall upon head,
edifices built for the
Workers old and tired,
big families no fit,
antiquity of bricks, cement
talking Yiddish, slant Irish,
Eyetalian.
steps, stoops, hard
Buttock observatory
street drama.
Tenement stairs groan
step marble a cold
Mineral moan,
iron wrought banister design,
meaning lost.
Beauty at first,
When I saw the building
first days of my own migration
into the metropolis
long view tunnel upward
there skylight dispersed silver light,
top roof floor a room,
Down through the marble stairs,
hallway little tile squares,
Brass door entrance handle knob
along with the brass mailboxes
shining still then
Sight beauty in my youth,
bonito shiny glaze
stare eye see veneer art delight.
close my eyes now it all comes
back.
Eternal.
The super, Charly, this Russian
Jewish old-timer
Told me
“was lotta gambling round here
Gambling sonabitches no good
Irish sonabitches no good
German sonabitches no good
Jewish sonabitches no good”
Like what he told me of
the Old lowlife,
Poricans he called
The Spanish
“sonabitches no good”
For Charly everybody sonabitches
no good.
Deep Lower East Side
now Chinatown
parts of Italy petite
brushing up against what
Municipal courts and business districts
were in times past
the Five Points slum ghetto,
pretty Molly McCollum
blue eyes in desire
want of attention,
She can shake her buns,
a beer or two,
the Tavern of forgetfulness.
Eerie gutter Street,
cut faces of red dark yellow
eyes, men on the conner,
staring stabs of knives from start
jump no salute
working slave class squirm
spit insults stacked like layers
of hate against the heart.
America apart from me this cáliz
cup of foul occupation.
It is better to be slapped in the
face
than to have the humanity of
Five Points shellacking you ass
Al Capone sharpened his wits
upon its gutters,
Gambling holes
who protected them.
Italian, Irish cojones,
closest thing to a smile
was a smirk from a frown face,
Mope glances.
Today you worry about the South of Bronx
That is Mickey Mouse cartoon,
Bomb out burned down,
The Five Points looked that way
Every day,
After the Draft Riots Five Points
looked like Hiroshima
after the atom bomb.
It had nothing else to do
except disappear.
Pockets of Irish families
were amongst the Puerto Ricans
Of my instance,
On 11th Street that beautiful girl
Arlene, her sister Katherine,
mother, uncle with red beer face,
drank with the PoRicans,
the girls fell in with Rican guys
all Catholics,
Irish-Rican kids running around.
Freckles sprinkled upon brown skin.
The Lower East Side,
el culo de Manhattan,
saw myself in a sway hammock
reading Henry Roth’s
Call It Sleep
the Avon books paperback
With the photo of fire escapes
clotheslines backyards
Such reality to my dreams
Recurrence of.
Tenements like painting hues
Corner streets of red brick blues.
I was awake within the
Nightmare.
(A sangre fría)
That too.
New Orleans y Todo Ese Jazz
Jazz is a criollo music from the Latin Caribbean. New Orleans is a Caribbean City Latin American, aligned to the Caribe islands, Latin America, France, Spain, and the rest of the world more so than any Protestant northern region. Close to Mexico, Latin-African Criollo mix like the Caribbean islands, what wonder jazz fusion is but this melt. The Cabildos, African religious organizations in Cuba, maintained authentic African rhythms and culture alive in Cuban society to an extent not heard of in the northern African slave centers, the only northern place that Afros were able to keep their drums was New Orleans, Louisiana. Another factor which made the Caribbean accommodating to African cultures was the proximity in climatic realities between el Caribe and parts of Africa like Nigeria and the Congo, the similarities in tropical flora; the Tainos were still about during the early stages of African slavery and the wise made correspondence. The dance in the Areyto round, the Africans joined right in. The invocation of spirit began to blend, melt, as the popular people talked to each other, and Spanish has never been the same, it became something more open to vocabulary of new fruits and cuisines. A timing, a tempo out of the fusion. When the port city of New Orleans was under Spanish rule we were all under the same umbrella, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, the same Spaniards, as such the Spaniards exchanged military marching bands, musicians, way back before the Jazz Age. Jazz is Blues and Gospel. Homegrown by African slaves, a blues and gospel that came right along with the bursting of the chains. A nativity in place. Could an aspect of its rhythmic pulse have been within the whisperings of the Danzón, the Habanera rhythms of Cuba, the Danzón spread like fire to Mexico’s Yucatán, Vera Cruz region, eventually to New Orleans. Many Mexican musicians could be found among the bands that were marching in the Saints. Afro-Latin dancing a cadence a sensual movement hold your partner the fan tight in her hands, her white dress flowing, in the Danzón sway, bodies pressed tight. Great Afro-Latin musicians are still making people swing in dance halls, as some jazz innovations have moved toward the concert hall, leaving dance to the rhythm and blues folks. France ruled in New Orleans simul taneous with Haiti, slaves interchanged rhythms, Haiti was a fervent musical center, the French Contredanse jumped over to Cuba as eventually the Cuban habanera flowed into New Orleans. Remember that Jelly Roll Morton called it “The Spanish tinge,” what Spanish tinge? Was it the Cuban tinge, what Cuban tinge? He meant the African tinge, which is what the Caribbean has preserved and transmits. New Orleans format (formation) of Jazz.
In the 1940s and 50s cha cha cha, mambo hit New York direct from Cuba, what eventually would be known as Salsa, a music derivative of African sacred rhythms of the Yorubas, Congalese, the Bantu, Mandingo peoples. The Cabildos and the Abakuá Society of African Cubans were essential in preserving rhythms, culture, religions, and the people held on to African cuisine, spiritual systems intact as in the Yoruba Lucumi Santería de Cuba or Candomblé of Brazil. Chano Pozo the conguero that worked with Dizzy Gillespie was an Abakuá Society member. The Voodoo of Haiti, in the eyes and hands of Marie Laveau dragging the giant snake Damballah through New Orleans the French Quarter which is Spanish architecture. Her Creole light skin of immense Africanía. The tinge is s
pirit stains, perfume, scent, psychological state, a walk, cake it if you want. It is possession of cool wind breeze, stance, gravity, holding the jumping horse, guiding it into paso fino tempo, sitting on your tongue that speeches poetry, sings as in language African words phrases, concepts intact in Cubano circles. What more cool than the Danzón? It predates the origins of jazz. Or like Ismael Rivera said in Puerto Rico “guembe mama quembe, habla quembe na mah” calling in his Africanized Spanish widespread through Loíza Aldea, a Puerto Rican community established by free Africans, perhaps among the first communities as such in the Western Hemisphere. Walk, camínalo, biscocho walk. Cake Walk, Andalusia guitar, Qué sabor, it is measure, power smoked into skins of drums, balance, a spirit which later funked into jazz. Proceed into Ragtime Jelly Roll and who more Rican/Cuban looking than Jelly Roll Morton, true criollo hitting the cinquillo note of the habanera, that lilt, motion snake horse swishing through the floor.
Jazz is not becoming Latin, that Africanía sway has always been an original essential ingredient since its origins. Jazz is like a Paella, everything can go into it. Thus jazz was a mixture and fusion of peoples of all ethnicities and colors. At the principio Sicilian Nick LaRocca Italian olive oil was founder of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Creole with Jewish blood from Anglo-London Papa, did he not stop into Puerto Rico, composed “Marches des jíbaros.” Luis “Pepa” Tio, Mexicano and Creole, Danzón órale pues scoping the Mississippi which was clearer in this epoch. A migration to this Louisiana of Canary Islanders, bringing the décima poetic tradition with them, did they décima the blues. Islas Canarias, Spain in Africa. The “Mardi Gras Mambo” New Orleans where anything can happen, half the sea came into town, Katrina. Crime there like in all the other Caribbean localities, vicious with equality for all, rich or poor, blanco or moreno, if you looking for trouble you came to the right place, a vicious Manteca walking. The Caribbean a region of great oppressive policies by conquering Spaniards and subsequently other European powers, the total genocide against the Taino people who were exterminated in about two generations, the Caribbean today contains one of the poorest nations in the world, as in the nature of Haiti, one of the last colonial possessions in the world as is the situation of Puerto Rico with the United States, the only Communist/Socialist regime in the West as in Cuba. We are a region of extremes, yet a people’s mestizaje and culture has arisen with a courage of survival, cultural triumph against all odds.
The great Jazz pianist of New York Rican descent Hilton Ruiz, who had been in New Orleans promoting an album which he participated in to raise funds for victims of Katrina, was assassinated on a visit to this northern edge of the Caribbean; thus indirectly Hilton was another casualty of Katrina. Mi hermano I will miss you for my whole ever. Lo and behold he went to New Orleans to share in musical goodwill, where jazz gave birth, with gospel, blues, and Latin Afro Caribbean elements, and he found his death. His Newyorican soul went marching out with the Saints, to dance rhythm with the Orishas.
Motion in the Silence
To the memory of Hilton Ruiz
A man puts Griffin on his white shoes
white guayabera hangs upon door hook
Bahía Matanzas not far, a salty powder
in the wind. Dance tonight above the plaza,
an ex cockfighting ring
converted into club
Now the roosters are men
the dance is the fight,
coquet the night conqueror,
the handkerchiefs wrapped around
the fans, the dresses so white
Milk next to them would appear
dark
Against skin warm moisture air.
going to town Pedro hoping
to see his desire flower
Teresa to be there, two days
back at the Mercado squeezing
Avocados she whispered to
him that she would, to find her
with her dress of white hilo,
holding her hand-painted
Sevilla fan,
He had seen her that afternoon
Moisture cheeks upon,
golden ruby skin sabrosa mulatta.
Grandfather from Galicia
mother hazelnut people probably
Senegal or the Congo deep,
a line of
Kongo mambo feet,
the maternal grandmother
high of Taino cheek
slant almond Asian eyes,
Tell me muses, oh tell me
what was Pedro looking at,
“Let the infinity stay without its stars,
But do not take from me her cinnamon”
Kisses,
thank you Bobby Capó
from Coamo on the Caribbean Sea
way across is Colombia,
“You are the one I care about
and only, only you”
“tú, tú, tú y tú no más
ojos negros, piel canela”
Mas Coamo composer where the girl
of society in the song “El Bardo”
fell in love with a poet,
absent the bard, the mountains cried.
all the rhythms were dressed as white birds,
clothes of the Caribbean to filter heat
the more luminosity flesh
covered as within Gardenia pétalos.
When his mother and father
took a steamship
cross the Caribbean
Mother eyes tear,
looking back on Saint-Dominigue
it was going to be a forever trip
father had a brother
wrote
to him about a job.
Now in New Orleans
some neighbors spoke French
some spoke Spanish
many already this new English
sound,
Nuevo dwelling not far
rounds the Mississippi flow,
they heard familiar drums in
Congo Square
walking begins day sunny
windy maybe rain
Afternoon,
he saw a girl reminded him of Teresa,
popped out hologram upon
the air sweet of colores,
A creole girl same Tere somewhere
else, else this same somewhere
is the where the equivalent again
becomes everywhere
moves duplicate rhythms
martillo between bongo
güiro y maraca
travel as to the drums
her eyes pierce
diamond arrows,
Orleans is the home of now
it matters not the local
But the drum,
the Caribbean a circle,
Bays and coasts
vanishing rivers,
the sway cadence like feet dancing
out of the water,
up, now down, to the side
brush
how it interferes with silence,
“Silencio the flowers are dreaming
I do not want them to hear me crying”
thus wrote Rafael Hernandez,
on the Caribbean coast of 116th St.
In Spanish Harlem,
the Savoy Ballroom not too far
Swing the Charleston, jump the Lindy Hop
Lindo, Swing, Jitterbug,
yo diddy-bops of old,
your bones aching with memories,
I recall Avenue D projects 10th Street
summer days walking along the rim
of the tenements
rose colored project bricks
adjacent brownish reddish gray
tenement brick montage, walking
My father’s head above me as in the
sky like a cloud hanging
broadcasting his warnings, talking about
be careful, everything that shines
isn’t gold, the consequences of your
actions, slowl
y you pay, Dios es el
que proporciona, it is God that
Proportions flesh on earth,
mix that with the sayings
of my Spiritual Grandfather
Don Arturo
“Sex” he explained with his shiny
white hair “is the most dangerous thing
in life, thus be careful,”
he was from Cuba and played guitar
music was his family.
One time slight snow upon street
walking this D Avenue
Going to club
80 Clinton, had my white shoes
inside the rubber boots
pressing white fluff snow.
Once there, salute the material
and search for the rhythmic spirit
of the Clave,
once found: mount
like a wave of the Caribbean going
toward the sand, not far Ponce
Where French last names circulate
tagged upon mulatos in barrio
Near the Sea
mix it up continue, sprinklings
Haitian French made it
Rico here as well,
to bomba explosions of Plena,
some song titles in French,
I am gliding like a Garza
wings white of guayabera shirt,
dancing with Teresa Morales.
Found her again,
Jersey City
black dress now, for winter clime.
Los marineros had seen Teresa
from the ships los marineros
immense white sails,
no name for her but Lola,
Aylelolelola,
The night improv begins
the Andalus said she waved,
later she dropped her handkerchief,
José continues, he almost died
wrapped in an embrace.
Golf of Mexico Portero New Orleans,
the Afro-Latin metropolis,
taking turns with French and Spanish,
was it further south Habana, Ana
Banana O Ana na nah, no mah
near Ponce arrebatah,
sandunguera, swaying dancing,
flowing with the saints,
when they came marching in.
A cleansing,
water rushing toward the drums,
I want to be in that number
when the Orishas come marching in.
with all that water alelujah, to bathe,
clean, Wash the head of Música
—Cabio Sile Shango
Egypt