AND SO MY FATHER ASKED
“So you want to be President?” my father once innocently asked.
“Encountering sickness and disease, coveting undiscovered cures,
And governing from an ivory tower, your salary to assure.
Thinking that from an Oval Office you can teach illiterate children to read,
And bring rain for the farmers when they plant their spring seed,
Designing welfare programs for people in need.
Watch yourself,
‘Cause niggers and spics, the wops and the slopes,
While reaching for a pie in the sky will be extending a rope
That might get you entangled in a web of their hopes.
But you’ll live in a white house.”
“Anyone can be President,” my father once said.
As he hoed the rows of cotton that extended for miles,
And we carefully arranged watermelons in piles.
The peach fuzz kept slicing, cutting into wounds that were left
By the boxes we carried like burros, and beasts,
And we bled, and we chafed, for mosquitoes, a feast!
While my mother kept trying to make us a home to keep us from harm.
In empty garages, in shanties, by the river, in a tent ‘neath a tree
As she cuddled my sisters, my brothers, and me
In the safety of her arms.
“Anyone can maybe be President,” my father once thought,
Before the IRS, unemployment, no health benefits and disease
Entered his life and cut this strong man to his knees.
A proud man, who had never begged, forced to cry “Please!
Do something . . . “
“Some people can be president,” my father once mentioned.
As we sat on boxes eating our beans, potatoes and rice,
In the middle of an orchard where dust, beetles and lice
And long hours of labor came and claimed a slice
Of his life.
“Not everyone can be President,” my father conceded.
As he lay weak and dying and crying on his bed
Considering himself a failure in his own head.
“You have to be wealthy, a man, a form of liar, and be white.
A woman won’t do, cause they have too much sense.
A poor black man won’t do, cause all they do is dance.
A Mexican won’t do, they’ll make us the bean capital of the world and such.
A native american won’t do, cause they all drink too much.
No one can ever be a real and honest President,” my father once cried.
Then he died, for him, forever, that one dream denied.
PANCHO AND GEORGE
Pancho Villa said to George Washington, en una cantina one day,
“Por que peleábas tan duro, en tu tiempo, cuando un rey te mandaba
Y de la mano de otro tenías que tomar tus pequeñas cucharadas
De justicia y libertád?”
George Washington smiled his wooden teeth and took a shot of tequila.
Across the table from Villa, George with his curly white hair,
Felt pedal-pushers and short boots, fixed ole Pancho with a stare
And said, “Because I had to.”
Old George poured Pancho Villa another shot from the tequila bottle and asked,
“And you, why did you struggle so hard in your land, unlikely to win,
Just a poor old farmworker, with so very little to gain.
Why did you fight?”
Y quedo sentado Villa, with a carabina a un lado, y un trago en la mano,
“Hasta la pregunta es nécia, Hombre!” el guerrillero grito,
“si las razones, tan claras, Usted ya las indico.
Because I had to.”
“Yo no quíse destruír a mi tiérra, ni matar. Lagrimas llóro al pensarlo.”
“But for the grace of God I lived, and others’ children are dead.
I, too, cry, alone, in the night,” George Washington said,
His eyes red from tequila.
“We fight for what we believe in, and that’s just the way it is.”
Pancho Villa reached over, and grabbed George by the hand,
And said, “Drink with me. Pón’te pedo. We do things, I understand,
Because we have to.”
George Washington díjo, “Chihuáhua! Ya se nos acabó el tequila.
Hace falta otra botella.”
Don Pancho pulled out another bottle, cracked it open and said,
“A toast! A toast! Here’s to us and those like us. Damn few left!”
A gatas they left la cantina, y pedos they waddled down the street.
Un guerrillero and a revolutionary, each lost in his own retreat.
Each knowing why they had stayed by their mission, and never conceded defeat.
Because they had to.
MISTY THOUGHTS
Have you ever cried on a rainy day,
When the rain will wash your tears away,
And God Himself will come to play,
In the meadow?
When the leaves will play the part of chimes,
The rain, the breeze to make them rhyme.
The clouds, a blanket over time,
Just a shadow.
Each drop a moment of joyful mirth,
Jewels of enormous but humble worth,
To tickle the face of Mother Earth,
To a smile.
IN YOU
In your eyes I feel that I can see a passion that rides
Through the Heavens endlessly, a true Sun in the skies!
Feeling your heat upon me, taking me high
Into the night where I’m forced to cry
From the ecstasy of the pleasure that you give to my
Senses . . . .
In your hands I can feel a sureness of touch,
And I feel so real, and I want you so much.
I feel like a stallion, with you by my side,
Lying in a bed of passion built from your sighs
And your cries of delight that tend to excite my
Passion. . . . .
In your kisses I find honey for my thirst.
Covered by your lips so divine, so well versed.
You ride me so well, through clear azure skies,
Through canyons of sunset, painted in your eyes,
A Milky Way of volcanic excitement, embraced within thy
Love . . . .
In you I can only see, my lover, my friend.
What you give to me, as you force me to bend
To your wishes, and I willingly do as you ask.
Take me, and do as you will, until at last,
I beg for mercy from pleasure, and finally collapse
In your arms. . . .
FOREVER UNWAITING
Blood was high, sittin’ on a fence,
Smoking a joint and writing a poem
About a fairyland where words make no sense
America.
Blood was down, leaning against the wall
Smoking in the joint and wondering why
Wounds were so raw and times were so hard
Instead of high.
Blood went crazy, couldn’t write no more.
Certified USDA insane, can’t use his mind
Throw away the key when you lock the door,