Chapter One

With this letter I received from a young Chicano

doing time in New Boston, Texas,

     I'm reminded of the beauty of bars

     and how my soul squeezed through them

     like blue cornmeal through a sifting screen

     to mix with the heat and moisture of the day

     in each leaf and sun ray

          offering myself

          to life like bread.

He tells me he reads a lot of books and wants my advice

and more amazed

      he quotes from my books, honoring my words

      as words that released him from the bars,

      the darkness, the violence of prison.

It makes me wonder,

      getting down on myself as I usually do,

      that maybe I'm not the pain in the butt

           I sometimes think I am.

I used to party a lot, but now I study landscapes

and wonder a lot,

      listen to people and wonder a lot,

      take a sip of good wine and wonder more,

      until my wondering has filled five or six years

      and literary critics and fans

           and fellow writers ask

      why haven't you written anything in six years?

And I wonder about that--

     I don't reveal to them

     that I have boxes of unpublished poems

and that I rise at six-thirty each morning

      and read books, jot down notes,

      compose a poem,

          throwing what I've written or wondered

          on notepads in a stack in a box

                                   in a closet.

Filled with wonder at the life I'm living,

distracted by presidential impeachment hearings

            and dick-sucking interns and Iraq bombings,

my attention is caught by the kid

without a T-shirt in winter

on the courts who can shoot threes and never miss,

by a woman who called me the other night

threatening to cut her wrists because she was in love

       and didn't want to be in love,

by the crackhead collecting cans at dawn along the freeway.

       Sore-hearted at the end of each day,

       wondering how to pay bills,

           thinking how I'll write a poem

       to orphans for Christmas

       and tell them that's their present

       and watch them screw up their faces--

       saying, huh,

             wondering what kind of wondering fool

             I've become

       that even during Christmas I'm wondering ...

       caught in the magical wonder

       of angels on Christmas trees

             colored lightbulbs

all of it making me remember the awe and innocence

        of my own childhood,

             when Santa came with a red bag

             to the orphanage

                  and gave us stockings

                  bulging with fruit and nuts.

It was a time of innocence, gods walking around my bunk

                  at night,

                  divine guardians whispering at my ear

                  how they'd take care of me--

and they did, armies of angels have attended me

in rebellious travels,

and the only thing that's changed since then

is instead of me waiting for Santa,

       I'm like an ornery pit bull leashed to a neck chain

       aching to bite the ass of an IRS agent

wondering why anyone in their right mind would,

with only one life to live, have a job making people so miserable.

It's something to wonder about.

Chapter Two

Now rises this poet's soul

     from an unmarked grave in the middle of nowhere--

     two sticks wired together, hammered deep

     into the drought-stricken dirt.

     At the base a mound of rocks.

     The image of my life

     after having fought every inch of the way

     for dignity and meaning

     to be out here in stinging dust blizzards

     and scrabble scrub brush--

                           my soul

     raises itself into a blazed howl

     and crusty stalk in too much hurt

     and instant glory

     that gives meaning to the hard struggle

     and deep-seeing journey

                     of my soul--

                     and who is the poet?

* * *

He works with no more magic than you or I,

he is not swept away by a woman's trailing skirt

or a man's scraped fist, nor does he need pale language to

      tell of love--

dirty sheets, stale morning city air, loneliness

are words he uses.

            Each act is a ritual, and if the ritual does not act,

            if the candles, spice, fire, incense do not work,

            blow them all out,

     take words, true good words, and open the door and

            sing to the night,

     let it be known that one man, one bare, scraggly, leaf-

            voiced

     man, sings his words as dear and true

     as does the arroyo its dust and gully rain.

His words lay tracks the rain follows pours down and expresses

    itself in.

His words give loam young roots can fatten in.

His words strip sashaying silk from emotions

and show you what love is,

what love is--

            the universe of a gutted bull

            its veined belly resembling a planet.

Here, point out the eye of the bull, that mean, glowing sun,

the world orbits around.

Tell the language of bells in its throat, the deafening signs of

    eternal language

in its horns. Tell it.

            And let others cry foul, how your words and temper

            wound them. Let them.

My poetry--

no shadows cling to its coat,

and in its pocket there is only a hand, and a few seeds

spread across the ground I walk.

What blossoms I won't pluck for myself

I leave them for others and go on,

my gift is merely the day,

and there is no room for anything else

but a human enjoying his lifework.

My poetry offers no room for anything else.

It is as clear to me now as when my mind

first shook with images,

bathed in realization that

I could work out a life no matter

how crooked the path had been left,

I could straighten it out, turn for turn,

mile for mile.

Those who took it the first time

became saints, lords, lovers and rebels,

the rest of us, delaying ourselves

alongside the road,

lift stones in our hands for protection,

cleave to the earth

cloaked in the dream light of our sleep.

I wake up, realizing I am one of the dreamers,

and I arise unnamed, shaggy-hearted,

a brave bison

pounding out poems in my lonely exile

against the rock;

passing the stinking carcasses of my fellows,

their hearts wrenched out

for gold,

the plains dotted black with empty eyes.

I bellow my vulgar dismay

and shake my horns at the pale face of death,

its long blond hair screaming in the wind

as I paw my soul for words

and rush with wild, reddened eyes,

shuddering the ground,

thundering at the footing of delicate built words,

tearing through the page,

my breath burning, burning it ...

Chapter Three

My poems go out to the working people

in Grants' mines, to the farmers in Socorro

and Belén: my poems are ristras drying on rooftops-

the long red chili strands

strung together and knotted at the stems.

The wind rattles them

and the seeds inside the pods

shake coldly.

I think of my heart--

dry and crackly, the dry seeds of dreams

rasping against the tough red inner skin.

My poems have rubbed themselves

on the fingers of a young girl who then rubbed her eyes

and wept all night

in her bedroom for a lover.

From birth my tongue has had a fire

for communication

with trees and dirt and water,

for homes in my barrio

that sniff the ground for something lost.

Kids cling together like leaves on a branch

grown from the earth

outside dripping faucets.

The pictures of my grandfather,

now dead, hold in his eyes the ancient song

of wild drum, and in the eyes of my father,

now dead, the ruins of red dreams.

In winter the barrio stirs quietly,

its ways soft, like an animal sensing

the wind's heart,

flickers

red ashes in wood stoves,

keeping the warm fire alive.

I go looking for poems,

I walk past the church, then back up

and climb up the steps to the landing

and look in. An old man kneels in front

of La Virgen , beckoning her to remove

the boulder from his heart. I lean

against the great doors watching him.

Candles at La Virgen 's feet like flaming guards

swing their silvery sabers

in front of his brown eyes, warm intimate creatures

that ask forgiveness from the mysterious marble.

It's December and he has a gray coat on.

He makes the sign of the cross

and slowly rises. The altar behind him:

thorn-studded slits of flame in blue and red candle jars

spring and twist like a net

wrestling with a wild animal it's caught ...

Outside again, before sunset,

the church bells

bellow through the wild grasses,

the notes trample across the distant fields

like great horses that drag boulders.

They breathe powerfully from steel nostrils;

and behind them great

clouds of sunlight explode

then simmer into evening.

Chapter Four

As if, when I was born, the doctor gave the blanket

I was swaddled in to a police hound to sniff,

and while judicial clerks tabulated future statistics

for how many policemen would have to be hired,

               I slept in a dream of lavender folds

               in my crib,

               my flesh over my bones

               like those long floor-to-ceiling curtains

               in palaces,

               I dreamed another world beyond me,

               of horses and women and food,

               of fields and dancing and songs,

unknowing that when I was carried from the hospital

in my blanket,

a police dog snarled at my passing,

a new set of handcuffs was being made,

and in the distance a new prison was being built.

At an early age

A heavy Bible was placed in my hand,

You got to get down and work hard , they told me.

You can't be talking back.

Whatever you do, watch out not to get in trouble,

    'cause they'll be looking for you,

    expecting you to get in trouble, they said.

Trouble was the furthest thing from my mind

when I knelt in a church

or climbed the rickety choir loft stairs to sing,

o love was me, o happy was I, young child

                hypnotized by the stained-glass window

                eye of God

                circled above the altar back wall

                dawn effused and made glow with blue robes

                angels and doves

                as I sang Latin hymns,

                opening my mouth as wide and wholesome as a frog

                on a pond in the full-moon summer night,

while shadows of pigeons flurried on the edge of the stained-glass

       window--

Lord, I didn't see no blood of mine spilling on the dirt,

Lord, that others thought I was bad

                           had predestined my fate

                           to fall early,

                           struck later in life

                           from the blind side

                           by one clean sweeping stroke of law

I couldn't foresee

because I was too blinded by the blaze of beauty around me,

too in love with an old man's walk and cane

to even think he might curse a mean fate on me,

too in love with vigorous icy air of dark dawn

to think others might be plotting my future

at the hands of jailers.

But violence followed me.

On a cold November dusk, boys' brown arms cold and numb,

noses sniffling, dust in our hair, smudged cheeks,

while bats flitted like black gloves

from leafless trees, and on the distant freeway semis

gutted the air with growls,

            while all the boys on the playground were blending

                  into the shades

            of evening,

I turned from the sandbox,

my nose running mucus, my fingers dark crickets

in the sand, I turned and saw

                             a big Indian boy by the fence,

                             from his hand a thick coil of chain

                                  slurped

                             onto the ground, whiplike,

                             and across from him a blond boy

                             with blue eyes, in a torn T-shirt

                             in midwinter, both approached

                             warily as tigers on my brother,

                             backing him off into the fence,

and then by an elm tree I saw a huge brown stone

on the ground,

and I dashed for the rock, picked it up, ran at the white boy

who had hit my brother and lunged at him with the rock,

hitting him on the head,

                      falling back on the ground with him,

                      at five years old, war-blood on my hands,

my heart screaming

                as if it had been bitten and ripped

                to shreds by bats

and since then

violence had always followed me--

in trees, down sidewalks, crouched in bushes, behind houses,

it leaps on me as I stand to confront

other bullies beating a thousand other brothers and sisters.

Chapter Five

Portate bien ,

behave yourself, you always said to me.

I behaved myself

when others were warm in winter

and I stood out in the cold.

Copyright © 2001 Jimmy Santiago Baca. All rights reserved.