Eagle-Visioned/Feathered Adobes

                                

                             early morning
                             on tejas plain,
                             road cuts up
                             north by west
                             through southern 
                             voids of panhandle, 
                             onward to little texas 
                             eastern-ness 
                             of Nuevo México...
                             4 de Octubre de 1981



   sentiments hacia Belén

    I. sentiments gesticulate 
       hacia Belén 
       and thence on 
       to Albuquerque
       and Santa Fé, 
       arte-or is it 
       to be artesanía-
       to be explored 
       within
       manito expressivity, 
       write
       something, 
       whether it be 
       a manifesto
       or a treatise,
       maybe even
       a chapbook
       or a series
       of ondas/perhaps
       a brown paper
       on disquietude

         or on
       an aesthetic beatitude 
         hammered out
         by penitential
         sitters on benches
         carving out christ figures,
       maybe a reconfigurated
         Lalo Delgadoism 
         searching for quivira
         amidst Tesuque mithopoetics, 
       something to do with chile verde  
       & other culturalist condiments, 
       just justify
       grants and commitments made
       by Yale University professor
       seeking adventure
       in Nuevo México, anything
       that can address
       the state of hispano (maybe even
                      chicano) arts
           while eating piñones, it seemingly 
       cannot matter much, 
       when one is hired 
       to replace
       a pretty face from new haven, ct., 
       what one writes 
       as long as it is pleasing 
       or soothing
       and somehow makes a point 
       about the intricacies 
       of constructions and fabrications 
           created neath a burnishing sun,
       yes, write
       that position paper 
       which shall explain 
       in quantum terminology 
       the exquisiteness 
       of culturalist expressionists 
       re-inventing the cultura wheel,
       let that wheel turn and turn and turn,

       let it roll over the brain and soul, 
       and, as it rolls,
       do let it leave
       its tracks upon
       blood, history, and placid flaccidity;
       we have become inured to feeling pain/truth,
       let there be an abstract of it
       upon the breezes amidst canyon lands, 
       let it be atole, chaquehue, and 
       sentimientos refritos, 
       a conceptual paper
       girded by enchanted and mysterious 
       chants
       bouncing off the sangre de Cristo mountains, 
       it can well be an academic bit 
       which skims off 
       the chaos of the moment 
       or an elated sense of senselessness,
       whatever,
       as long as it complies 
       with nothing and everything 
       simultaneously, 
       displeasing while appeasing, 
       a sobriquet 
       of maundering words, 
       some sibilant 
       and others sybaritic, 
       neoteric posterings 
       or resurrected fables, 
       as long as the writing reflects 
       a Nuevo México 
       that can be either real
       or feelingly imagined... 

   II. at long last, Belén
       tomorrow Albuquerque, 
       but tonight Belén, 
       some Chile verde con carne, 
       tortillas, and familial locutions, 
       much has changed, we have aged,  

       Your world still has
       the same tierra in it, mine 
       has become a merging
       with other ways of seeing/hearing... 

  III. Alameda, North Valley,                 

       Albuquerque,
       your buildings
       hide your mirages
       Old Town had its milling tourist
          savoring                              
          pretensions earlier,
       Bernalillo
       now basks in trailer lots, 
       ristras hang decoratively 
       from your porches 
       while rhetorical murals 
       camouflage 
       a seedy city
       no longer ours...yes, 
       Albuquerque, you do appear
       to have some art, looked for it 
       within your eyes 
       and found shame and anomie 
       hiding
       neath the edges of your irises... 
       Central and Fourth 
       no longer
       reek of mestizos/indios, 
       nor does First, 
       only in a few crevices 
       do they flood the place, 
       damn, you've become 
       a gigantic taco bell, 
       your mild chile verde
       garnishes eggs macmuffins well,
       your cantos
       yodelout
       quasi-swiss-protestant-stinky-cheesey 
          postulations, 

       and your cutesy adobero
           cinder-concrete-offices
           mock a past
           which has mystifyingly become
           the cultism
       of The Teachings in Z. John,
       newcomers
       just off their boats and trains 
       and planes
       now claim you 
       as their own,
       Albuquerque, you are the vestiges 
       of born again plastic ... and it does 
       sort of become you as you prepare 
       to lead New Mexico 
       into the 19th Century....