There were those

There were those

who paid attention

to the old

texts which meant

nothing to most.

In those texts

the story of our errors

our incompleteness 

and the danger we wove

around us, called Hubris

by the Greeks.  The freaks

in the class know, but others

of you who read my words now

didn't know the elders’ words

were like gold:  this civilization

will end.  Greed and monstrous

ignorance crowns every empire.

But you didn't get it.  You

wrote notes about 

the football game

drew pictures of Eagles

swooping from the mountains.

Nothing is lost 

to the old ghosts

of your notebooks

inhabiting the hallways.

Of Herodotus they

still whisper and the

wars, the wars, the

wars we went over.  But

there is nothing

important there.  The teachers 

taught to atomic dust.  

For those of us

who remember

it is late.

El Doctor

The dr discovered in

His alcoholic haze

He had no regrets

Didn't spin all day in

Self accusation

It quieted his crazy

Mind which had

Turned paranoid,

solipsistic and the body

A hermit asleep behind

His books. Reaching you

He says, "the pain

Is horrific, mental,

Worse than a broken

Hand. Leave me thou

In this pain state and I will

Go away. Sleep will

The hummingbird

Acquire and be in sweet."

12 Years

Twelve years, the time it takes
Jupiter to transit its own plane
Round the sun. And there are
False prophets about: fists, torches
Like it’s 1938. Am I to tell you
To give up the sky
For the politics of a dying
Planet, with so many infected
By hatred or indifference?
I keep telling myself
This is not my world
Not my Cadillac not
The road I thought of
thirty years ago. You,
You who have made escape
Impossible, well, some of us
Are too old to fight. I tried
To drive today
Made it home in one piece.
Tonight the planets are
Supposed to surprise me.

New Mexican space warriors

What a hectic
Fuckin ride it’s
Been: from cheap
Rural outcast
Un bronco
From Gallup
Un chilero
From Hatch
Twin worlds
That no one
Wanted. There
Were the rough
Albuquerque schools
And the shallow waters
Of UNM. I’m a brown
Guy. I didn’t expect
To go anywhere.
O here I am teaching
Poetry and the apocalypse
Teaching dignity and acceptance.
On the one hand
It may be the case
I am wrong and I am free.
On the other, the ace
Of spades tells me
It will always change, forever.
We want to strive for this, but
Institutional and cultural
Walls keep us apart: imagine
The 18th century and oak boards
Separating sleepers and lovers
All night. That’s your representation.

Songs for the displaced: 1

There is

Terror in

The morning

Especially the

Summer when

The light lasts

The sun springs

Up at 630.  Counted

A thousand

Stars before that.

When I wake

I'm scared

My muscles 

Twitch in

Witchy circles

I bolt from bed like

A crazy baker

Trying to save

A burning 

Cake he left

In the oven

Overnight.  My 

Dreams consist

Of ex lovers 

Traveling in

Large semis,

Impossible buses

And aeroplanes.

We're always left at the

Same place:  a lame

Ranch house

Below the Sandias

Where we find 

Curios, maps, jewelry 

That costs a fortune.

But the machine

Is always broken,

We cannot 

Go anywhere. 

There is the shaking

The hard shaking

In my legs and arms

As I wake consider

My day:   A long

Drawn out sun,

Some rain after 

A walk, stop

Running away.

Pitchfork

This hammered out darkness

has been here for while.  I’m

reminded to recall darker

ages. but I hadn’t expected

the fall to whittle me away

shredded, carved, discarded.

About those ages:  young

I picked the apple tree & dreamt

of leaving,  packing up

books, towels, credenzas

in a truck that was going

somewhere I’d expected

but somehow didn’t know:

it’s the time, dear one, to

make decisions.  The wind & rain

have come on strong.

Sheltered as you are,

someone has written doom

somewhere in a book more

like the symphony of humanity

scored by the devil, odd

notes and a trail of codas

as it becomes a sequence

of sirens going off in the night.

Light in La Jornada del Muerto

The daemon of Southwestern

light wove in and out

of the thick summer clouds.

Now the war’s been going on

For 70 years, at least.  Even Bear

saw the happenings—the

last beat-down on the rez

made him sick.  If you start

to lecture about the future

you’ll lose.  Nothing cuts

through times that

no longer exist, perchance

perhaps a page from a book

radioactive, not yet

burned for warmth

the war in that phase

a deliberate attempt

to break the mad ones

down, making new

made mad ones only this

time with other enemies

who I shall not mention

For the State is large

on me these days, heavy

as canvas sacks filled

with depleted uranium. 

And what to fear. 

Because I'm Not Chicano

It's because my family's
been living in Cruces
since the 1860's. Its because
my mom's father was
Apache, but there are
plenty of Germans, too.
I grew up watching
my dad's mother
making tortillas
my dad's dad practicing
the fiddle so he'd
play well at the wedding
that weekend.  Any wedding
in Cruces, any time they
needed a strong, resonant violin
player.  But my parents
who spoke Spanish
with me lived in the
suburbs of Albuquerque,
sheltered me from
that life.  So I

went out to Cruces
this summer, went
to Tucson, too
where the other half
of my family
lives.   There
is the pain of the
desert, pain of separation,
the infinite desecration of land
of peoples,
but I am not nor will
ever be a part of the pain
you write.  It's my own
pain that's my muse
and I like Lowell more
than Castillo.  I'm sorry
if this fact offends you.

I am sorry I am not
en la frontera fighting
our battles, which seem
more like yours, not
mine.  I have children
to raise, and their
mother's Irish-Italian,
that is, we are now
Americans and have no
need for tribalism, even
though the world
is ruled by such.

My real friends
laugh, and those who
know my work laugh.
I will go all over
this country reading
and blazing like a fox tail.
For I am hot as hot coal
there is nothing to stop my words
now, no redneck county sheriff
to tell me shut up, Mesican, or
shut up, Indio.  My children
are free and mixed and I am alive.

South Fair Acres Road

I have been
in the Sonoran
Desert, the high
Chihuahua too,
so dry the desert
took most of my sadness
the way the heat
out there drains
you of water without
you knowing.  108
in Bowie.  Later,
that day in
Truth or Consequences
eating stuffed
sopapillas.  All of,
all of my friends
down in the Great
Eastern Forests
or living or living.
In drenched metropolitan
scenes, havoc
of the suburbs.  Shame
that I, between dry
old cities, could take my
car, take a turn on
some old highway,
drive into the salt
flats, chasing dust
devils all day.  Or that
there would be no
one out there, and I
know this because
from my little hotel hovel
in Cruces it would take me
not time at all
to be in desolation,
away from the river,
a bus ride.  A simple
walk to see the stars alone at night.

NM HWY 185

When my grandmother
Josefina died, my grandfather
Felipe let all the rabbits
go.  The fat ones,
the wise ones
who knew she liked
paella with rabbit & shrimp
she bought at the Albertson's
in Las Cruces.  A dish
her mother taught her.

Today at the old farm
there's nothing but
wood to burn.  An empty
house, the fields wild with
volunteer cotton.  I couldn't even cry.
There are the old photos
folks I'll never know,
land I'll never plow.  Shadows
from the old hickory
in the yard--a ghost place
that I'll never see again.

So on the ride home, along
El Rio Grande, which is full
of promise, full of water
I fell for the desert again,
I said your name
wishing you could
see the farms and fields
rushing by, the river
at its height, the acequias
which mean so much.

Mariposas Sin Mundo

How long
will the butterflies
last.  Your son
says fifty years.
Maybe one or two left
in the high Montana
Rockies.  He says
by the time you die, dad
the sky will be forever
pale gray unforgivable,
like the sheer weight
of steel on the world.
Like Atlas you say,
holding up a
losing proposition.  I am
always "suffering dreams
of a world gone mad."
My ethos savory
like a burnt offering.
Most of us
happened to Earth, unaware,
weather unpredictable, late
spring and early summer confused.
But the morning glories
still fight their way
out of the clay
to honor the Sun God and
the Prince of Flowers
who'll have nothing
to do with us, anymore.

Guitarists at Noon

It's not as if
they were drunk,
acting like Russian
Cosmonauts.  In the
neighborhood it happened

while the dishes were being
dried, while the floors
were being swept.
Now you know
the august truth:

even a tether can
break.  High up
in granite or even
when you're towing
an old Volkswagen:

you might see it
like a ghost
chasing you.  Like
La Llorona in the
twilight beckoning

while the crepuscular
light does it work, whispers
that you stay.  And let me
tell you there are
so many ways to go

on this ride.  One time
the Hardy boys
jumped into the mix.
You never know what
might happen.  Just

a story here and there
like so many mulberries
smashed into the sidewalk,
signifying summer, all
there is to come.

King Tiger to Rose Arcade

And then the battle began.   It’s not

a pretty fable, this time the lord

of plenty up against the dark of

nothingness, indefinable unless

you’ve seen a dead body or stood in any

cemetery.  For a long time there was

nothing, some vague threats over the radio.

Even the Apricot trees bloomed.   There were

always rumors of war when we were young. 

Nothing now but old swords swinging

in the wind. In a county not unlike

ours each little town is an armed camp

of rifles and the miles go by

on highways built for tanks and heavy trucks.

If you see the pictures there are

young men holding each other

hostage.  Imperial Moloch and

solitude have brought them there.

Famous Science Fiction Novels

In the end the earth

dies, of course, and either

the detestable aliens

offer us a new ugly

religion or we are

simply ash, our

buildings empty,

on fire. Usually

the humans who are

left learn to sigh

and may even

forget the old

god who got them

into so much

trouble in the first place.

But remember

in some books there are

children picking

weeds and dandelions

from front lawns

all across America.

No one mentions

the wicked step-father

who takes literally

his little patch

while the ghost

of an alien satellite

plays tricks with

his brain.  He will

eventually drive

to the desert

leaving his car

and his jacket

on the road

and no one will

know where he went.

Al fin del siglo,

the largest and widest

of these volumes

echoes off the walls

like a bad opera,

too many notes and the people

really don’t know what

they’re doing, except

that they have special

guns, horses, and parades

like we do here, only there

the masters make clear

their plans, their

domination of the solar

system, the large rocks

that fly by our little

planet, not knowing

we’re here at all.