Beneath the Spanish

by Victor Hernandez Cruz

  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,

  Who drank an ocean of insults,

  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*

  Shining through vasitos

  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.