Carta a mi Jefe segun de los condicions de los trabajadores

I want to make sure that
everything is tied down

now that you’ve made
garrets of my words.  That you

would ever know I rise at
five to feed my dogs

and the old cat who
lives on the porch.  I wash and iron my

son’s clothes, and watch
while my wife leaves for her job

in Kentucky.  It’s just across
the river.  Back down there

is where I bend my soul if
I want to be free,
guitars and fine mountains. 

Did I tell you I
 know all about love, raising children,
parting forever,

planting flowers in May.  But when
I’m folding laundry

barefoot in the basement
listing to R.E.M., I wonder

if you’re even human, I
mean, I could never reconcile

the starched white shirts
you wear for anything

but a symbol of power,
what my liberal friends

call white privilege.   I continue
to wear my old stained

shirts from The Village
Thrift Shop and Goodwill,

I sometimes stop to help
strangers:  did you know

I once saved a toddler
from drowning?  I was living in Tucson
it was 1988 at a part--no one
saw the kid go over the side,

into the deep end.  They were
all drunk and I, smoking

a cigarette in the deep
cactus and juniper noticed, jumped

right in to save her.  I remember her mother cried.

Sometimes I imagine
you’re clipping you’re toenails

as your yard men clear
debris and cut your lawn. 

Across the street, the
roofers are speaking Spanglish,

blasting Cumbia into
the early morning of your

placid suburban existence.   I also imagine
you fear

the word vagina, and fear
what will come years from now,

say in 2065:  the world
finally freed from the Christ delusion,

men and women in love
with the earth and with each other—

the camaraderie of
empty icons will be
nothing where

the tree and the mountain
will reign.  But I dream too much:

I know you love and protect
us like children, each and every

one of us, except the atheists
who are here to ruin things.

But I bet some of them
swing on wild stars and planets

you’ll never know, in
dry clear deserts, on high unspoiled

mountain tops, not the dirty
smog smeared industrial

post-colonial spaces
you’re taking us, where our once

fearsome enemies now
work as slaves to make everything

we own, iPhones, batteries, socks.  So that’s
 the way it is.   Mindlessness and contentment
have a way of drifting

this way or that, like a
plastic grocery bag
on a windy day.

Sometime I imagine
you’re sitting in your office,

above us all, looking
down at the town you protect,

the town you project.  O, if there
were a way to take you

forward as to wipe your
mind of delusions!  Of Moloch

who owns the red bricks and statues,
of Moloch the “business model”
you admire.  Of Moloch and his

corporate bullies who
beat us into fear.  Come now.  You must

as I do take the scared
corn meal, spread

it in the early morning
sunlight, in the glare, past

the houses and trees.  “I will have a good” day

you should shout.  “I will be free”
you should shout.

The sun will be glad
for your existence.  On the lawn

seven Mexican eagles will
dance like pagans
in the sunlight.

This like anything else
is a dream, and I often

go to your institution dreaming
it will be a good day

as I have promised the
cosmos.  I take my little

black truck on over and park,
greeting everyone

with the smile you taught us,
the smile you expect,

while underneath there’s
a bunch of us boiling,

not just me, not just the dude
who empties the trash,

who isn’t allowed to speak to
me least it ruin the decorum

that floats over our village
like a heavy wet blanket

from Disneyland.  Or the old math
professor who’s

given up on god.   In the between
the politics of

shuffling from ice to snow,
to the cold rooms

where I profess the only thing
that holds me here

is gravity:  the heavy life
I carried here, my daughter

who attends your classes,
becoming aware of the

emptiness this place promises
if you aren’t a true believer,

If you’ve been brought
up to think and be free.

Now comes the time
I walk to my office in silence and solitude,

alone in my thoughts as I design
daily lesson plans and go over

readings in the big dark
space that is my mind.   From you and your kind

I have learned to keep my head
down, my eyes on a book

or on the ground, least I offend
with my glare or my big native

body.  I’ve heard stories of
how some people fear big dark men

who stand proud and speak
their minds, who become vociferous

because it’s the only way to
survive in a world that denies

humanity and difference.  Yet in the blue
blue sky I see

the last planets fade, and I gain hope,
for I have tasted the sweet air

of the high mountains, I have fed and cradled
my elderly dad while

he slowly died at the VA.   I have beaten
cancer and

bad cops who wanted
to kill me.  I shiver and quiver

in the dim darkness of my
disease which eats

my nerves and muscles.  Yet there are
some of your clique

who think I am a beast, an animal,
a savage without

manners or dignity.  Only because
I have spoken, or as your

one dog said,  surprised you
all at how articulate I am,

meaning I mean nothing to
you and that I deserved the heart attack

machine your boys
strapped to my quivering chest.

As for the rest, don’t worry.   I am finished
climbing mountains

and what’s ahead is
more like a frozen lake or plain

that I must trudge through.  With books,

breaking into sweats and seizures
just to please you.

For more than anything
else I fear you.  Fear if I stop

you will whip me like
they whipped dark men

in ages before, ages before
your young god stepped

from Nazareth to save
us from such cruelty.

Carving

I carved a wooden heart
just to see if it would
start.  I etched veins
to see if it would pump.
In return the heart
stayed dry and cool
so I made a fire.  It
bobbed in the flames
like undone charcoal.
It then turned to iron
and I the alchemist
was scared and scarred
by the sacred mess I'd made.

Names of Famous Galaxies

He dwindled among
the single roots
of the night, captured
the fright of his
own vision, much
like a ghost prison
aching right
outside his door
near as a church.

Then it was
the end of winter.
He saw the geese
and was undone,
happy as a lamb.
It all sang back
at him then,
small Oak pollen
bursts in the air,

before he sneezed
big gusts of spring
himself in the dark.

Epiphany of the Cross Writes about his Father, H. the Magician

My father, born summer early morning
sunlight among the nuns, was taken
to the place they take the small ones:  a room
with little bears on the wall, slots of oxygen
tubes and metal.  Surviving that, he made
his way from where he came, a blank
hot land he could no longer stand, dryness
taking hold of everything.  He
took his stand and left the West for good--
finding wetness and rain everywhere
he was finally good.  Now growing old
he sits alone counting his rib bones,
testing out his time, the days and seconds
left behind like postcards or love letters.

Letter to 1964

Now in this day
God has been defeated.
The waters run naked,
dirty.  And we're all
fried by the field of grass
you left us at the roadside.
Faked, bottomed out,
our new century is a deep
lake so blue, endless.
On what night
did you arrive and
under what stars?
Here the sky is cracked
colonized by signals,
microwave beams.
I'm trying to be alone but I
can't.  Your songs
don't need any religion,
they're holy by
all accounts.  By our
days you were numbered,
anointed in time
for color TV.