you were led away by authorities.
Second chances were for punks,
two-bit, jive-timing, nickel-diming
chumps.
It was beautiful in a way,
to see us kids at seven and eight
years old
standing before purple-faced authorities
screaming at us to ask forgiveness, muttering
how irresponsible we were, how impudent and defiant.
That same night
in the dark all alone, we wept in our blankets
for someone to love, to take care of us,
but we never asked for second chances.
I’VE SEEN TOO MANY
prison catwalks with guards
cradling rifles, monitoring me,
to trust anyone, too many
barb-wired walls
to believe what people say,
looked in too many mirrors,
at too many photos
of friends and family
who died early and violently,
to believe what you say.
Understand:
all I have to be grateful for
is my little fan in summer,
my pills on the small table
where the second TV sits
with bent rabbit ears,
my empty Coors and Bud
cardboard boxes
I carry dirty laundry in
on wash day,
that window in my room
that allows me to look
out on hard streets
and dream
for a better life.
THIS DARK SIDE
has always haunted me,
fiercely adamant in its opposition
to all the good I create:
subversive and defiant.
While my spirit revels in light,
it
gorges on cesspool pleasures
leaving my spirit at times a fly
and maggot-infested carcass, dissembling
my dreamwork, disintegrating it back to sand
wind scatters, blows
back into my face
I have to lower in shame.
Imagine a ladder of light, a trellis of branches
rising out of my soul in blossoming radiance,
carving its own latticed speech in the sky
toward the sun.
Imagine
my dark side freeing the termites to gnaw
down these branches.
My soul
falls like a black oak tree cracked by an ice storm.
It stares up with a skull’s nightmare grimace
of cruel suffering on its frozen face.
But hovering at dawn,
hope like a butterfly floats around it,
a powdery rainbow dust effusing the air
with pervasive peace.
And then
the morning yawns forth like whispering lilac
on the air.
My heart untangles itself from its dreams
like wild honeysuckle grandly striding into halls of sunlight,
trickling with dew beads of grace
that sigh from my lips.
Some power moves in me,
a divine dancer elegantly celebrating its existence.
I tell you now,
the dark side arrives unannounced
with cold hands,
scoffing at my efforts to live a single day in dignity,
undermining the goodness in me,
though I’m getting better at exposing it,
standing before it like a brittle twig
smashed under its wrecking tank tread.
All that I’ve despised and spat at in disgust
I’ve become at certain moments in life,
but I continue to praise the spirit,
refuse to embrace the utter horror
of self-destructive impulses.
I draw the curtains of my life shut,
a silent stranger to myself
chewing on the maddening, shredded remnants of my heart.
Accepting it as part of me, loving it,
not afraid of feeling its pain, understanding
how I always contradict myself,
I succumb to passion,
even indifference,
roar my loss and abandonment,
bell-bellow my cathedral soul,
trust and suspect
in a constant flight between light and dark.
It never ends. This harsh beauty,
this struggle not to retreat in fear
but to celebrate what’s hard earned, staying true to myself,
is what it’s all about.
LET ME GIVE YOU A PORTRAIT
not as pretty as uniformed La Crosse players
on an expanse of grass
in one of those
passion-drained, Ivy League schools,
a portrait
achingly real as chipped, rotted
teeth in a hobo’s mouth:
direct your eyes to the peeling
picture of Saint Nino de Atocha,
that child saint who sits on a throne
with a hat with the brim turned up,
holding a staff in his left hand,
an empty reed basket in his right,
two vases of flowers before him, smiling cherubs
above circling his sacred face.
He’s the one I’ve put through hell,
when most of my friends left,
when my boss fired me and my landlord threw me out,
when I ran out of gas one hundred miles from El Paso
and I caught my girlfriend screwing that joker,
when all I had was an opened pack of stale crackers
and dead cockroaches in the cupboard,
a jug of cold water in the icebox
for my father and brother’s hangover.
Santo Nino de Atocha was there
thumb-tacked to the wall
water-stained drab green, with a medal of Our Virgin Mother
hanging over the faded retablo from a nail, veiled in blue
with hands folded, face pleading
with God to accompany this crazy boy
roaming the night streets, stealing and fighting,
and doing so I believe because
I had a pure heart, long before prison and county jail cells,
before drugs and whiskey and guns came into my life.
The pure heart I carried in me
was like a simmering volcano mouth
where roses grew and rocks talked,
where fire was my light on the hard journey,
where the journey work was staying true
to the dreams I believed in as a kid
when I folded my hands and prayed
kneeling at my cot, believing in miracles,
that angels were swirling around my shoulders,
that my dead uncles and family were present in spirit,
that no matter where I was at,
jail or streets or some forsaken, roadside motel room,
Santo Nino de Atocha accompanied me,
held my hand, guided me away from harm,
and was the reason why
the bullet missed me,
the cops ran out of breath chasing me,
I got cigarettes in the hole in jail,
I didn’t get hurt
in a fight,
I found ten bucks on the sidewalk,
I read my first volume of poetry.
I PUT ON MY JACKET
Wrapped up, I went out in winter light
climbing in volcanic rock on the west mesa
feeling softer and meaning than I’ve felt in years.
Amid arid scrub-brush and bone-
biting cold, I thought of Half-Moon Bay,
how the ocean unscrolls on shore
with indecipherable messages.
Only those hiding out
from tormentors and tyrants, those in jail,
gypsies and outlaws, could understand.
The ocean talks to me
as one prisoner taps a spoon to another
through four feet of concrete
isolation-cell wall.
I HAVE ROADS IN ME
winding within my arteries
into distant hills
of memories,
where dreams float like dandelion fibers
on bright, chill, breezy
mornings under a canopy
of cottonwood branches.
Where leaves glimmer
sunlight
roads turn.
I have roads in me
where drums pound a sacrifice
and beckon
to again believe in life’s wonder,
where I learn the intense passion,
seeing the sparkling, dewdripping
leaves upon moist, pine-needled ground.
My heart restored,
I am guided
by stars
and a raging desire to live.
COMMITMENT
A county jail guard knocked out a tooth
smacking me across the face with his club once.
I took that tooth and sharpened it on my cell floor
to an arrowhead I tied to my toothbrush with floss
to stab him with it. I never did,
but with the same commitment, I once took my brogan
and a cot-leg of angle iron
hammering it against the bars to escape, which I did.
Hammering that metal leg for months,
I finally cut that bar they said was impossible
to cut through
with a boot and cot-leg.
It’s a lesson that if I can do that,
when it comes to the business of living,
I can do anything.
PART 2
IN ’88
I married Beatrice,
who bore two angelic children
with hearts glistening like gold
beneath a clear, snow-melt, mountain stream.
We grew together on Black Mesa
encircled in a pool of magic light,
rippling rings of Saturn light effusing our happiness,
her laughter wild as a foal testing its legs
galloping through high alfalfa, scattering
yellow and blue blossoms in its wake,
her presence in the house
a warm refuge.
SUNDAY PRAYER
O Great Creator, I thank You
for watching over my children
and their mother, for keeping their beauty safe
and for guiding them through
all life’s perilous journeys.
Give my children strength
to improve on
who they’ve worked so hard to be.
Gabriel’s just stepping out in the world,
twelve years old and leaping high
to catch stars; clip them to his heels
like spurs as he rides his Cannondale.
Antonio seems like he’s willing
to grind his feet in earth
to make his passage honorable.
I thank you for them both,
their winged spirits gentle and compassionate.
Dear Lord, keep me straight
on my path, don’t let me veer.
Love me, bless me as You have,
let no harm come to my house.
Let this day be a good one,
prime the deep roots of my being
allowing them to bellow out into blossoms.
Give me the willingness to live decently,
to be a man whose acts match his words,
to think before I act, to love before I hate,
to see before my eyes are closed.
THE REASON I WAKE
THIS MORNING
is because those people who’ve lived
through tragedies and loneliness and anxiety
found in their shattered-pottery hearts
fragments that fit perfectly
into the puzzle of night stars,
into the joyous cry
of a child at dawn
dashing out on the playground,
into the hands of men like me
who rise and dress and walk
out the door, culling from winter light
residues of summer
to dream a bit more
of the growing season.
CELEBRATE
Five hundred and five years
tortillas slapping between mamas’ hands,
farmers irrigating red and green chili, squash, and corn rows,
forming halves into wholes, braiding
two roots into one thriving, ever-deepening, mother-root
bridge between black and white,
blood rainbowing
opposite shores,
connecting south to north, east to west.
Five hundred and five years
of prayers mumbled from lips,
hands clasping other hands to endure,
keeping the line intact,
unbroken hope, rosaried faith,
from Incas, Moctezuma, Cortes, Villa y Chavez,
to the anonymous men sitting on park benches
meditating on the dawn,
to women climbing cathedral steps to attend Mass,
to whimpering, wakening infants
suckling at their mothers’ breasts.
Five hundred and five years
and still they remain
all beating with strong hearts,
strong
hearts celebrating the magic songs,
acts of courage that leap from them
and integrity
that shines from them.
IN THE FOOTHILLS
of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains,
the land undulates into mound swellings and unfolding flatness
the moon seems to nest in,
settling
into scrub-brush, parched-arroyo runoffs
where as a child I believed
if we hurried we’d catch the moon,
touch the moon—it was just over the next hill:
Another hill, Mama! Hurry, Papa!
We can still catch it!
In the chase, my being emerged renewed,
a prairie hatchling,
to later stretch its wings and struggle free
birthing into innumerable multitudes of men,
nest within nest,
abandoning one to make another,
migrating toward seasons of laughter,
caresses, anger, troubles, joy,
and friendship.
GRANDMA
And when they come, as they have,
I seek strength in your humble memory.
A
s contrary and farfetched as my metaphors
and images may seem,
to a woman
in the hot, dry prairie,
when you walked, I knew
somewhere in the world a great pianist was playing
to your steps.
O dear sweet ancient woman
who never uttered a word of complaint on her behalf,
when you looked at beans, corn, squash,
a simple glass of water,
your gaze held a melody of a hundred choirs
singing in harmony,
all in unison
thanking the Great Creator
for our many blessings.
I remember a woman who was
sometimes mean and cross with me,
who chased and shooed me from the house on wash day,
who made me scrub my face with freezing cold water.
Your faults were cliff-edge fingerholds
for anyone brave enough to climb to the summit
where sights could be seen only angels were given.
I climbed there many times,
and as many you called me your angel.
Today, when I’m besieged by enemies,
when the easy way out haunts me,
when I’d prefer to sit in a cantina and drink with friends,
when doing drugs to forget the pain of living,
when I struggle to live with dignity,
when I promise to try harder,
when all my vows of conviction turn syrupy,
when the blood drains from my lips,
I kiss your face again in memory
and tell you to watch me, just watch.
I will not surrender
to the worst part of myself, Grandma.
I will be a man you can be proud of,
one who has learned well from you.
And when they come, as they do,
I’ll wade out into the fields,
parting weeds, ignoring briars,
flying all these flags, hollering:
Your weapons mean nothing to me,
I have Grandma in my heart!
AT LORI’S HOUSE IN WISCONSIN
We peer into the foliage
weaving the north side of the wall,
pushing aside the tapestry of vines and tendril braidings
to view inside the robin’s nest for an egg
concealed from sight.
Singing at the Gates Page 7