American Journeys::Jornadas Americanas

                                               

                                              en marzo 
                                            los cantos 
                                               marchan 
                                           en su grito 
                                           combatiendo 
                                            las maréas
                                            pre-y-post 
                                          columbines.

                                      The Palouse, Wa.
                                    Pullmania 03-15-92 


            Orale, Don Cristobal
                 or Rapine ét Columbine

                I. comatose pueblos
                   snore
                   through snarling
                   memories
                   best left lying
                   within
                   centuries of pillage,
                   there is
                   no one to take up
                   banners
                   nor to state unequivocally
                   that he/she
                   is standard-bearer
                   for tarred,
                   now feathered Don Cristobal . . .

               II. They assail you again, 
                   smudge your memory, 
                   give you a power
                   you never truly had, 
                   paint you as genocider, 
                   cast you as villain, 
                   claim you introduced 
                   venereal real-politick 
                   into Paradise Refound
                            (not that Chichimecas
                            or Tiaxcaltecas
                            would agree,
                            when in those days 
                            tribute did they pay), 
                   ay, Don Cristobal, 
                   you are defined 
                   as the Padre de Los Chingados 
                   alongside Doña Marina 
                   the Indian woman/bitch 
                   of Octavio Paz's woman-hating
                   infirmities & pseudo-machismo . . .

             III.  what flowers grew 
                   before Columbus 
                   was a city 
                   or a university, 
                   before a federated 
                   district
                   would exist 
                   to tax us
                   unto societal infirmity?
                   what flowery
                   yet hollow stem
                   arose within rapine
                   and pillage
                   to bear your name,
                   when did democracy
                   arrive-if ever
                   it did-to ambush
                   quetzal birds
                   searching for xochitl
                   that poetry
                   might somehow find
                   itself birthing
                   in the marketstalls
                   where dignity is bartered
                   daily for a loaf
                   of preservative-laden
                   condiments
                   from Columbia U
                   to jazz-o-mania taverns,
                   as society still searches
                   for spice & latex condoms
                   to assuage the pain
                   of pillage
                   still continuing
                   centuries after
                   la Niña Isabel
                   imbibed una pinta
                   of historical rot-gut  

                   demon rum 
                   and uttered a rosaried
                   tertiary poetics 
                   to la Santa María, o Holy 
                   Mary canticles, 
                   o dominate us, dominatus, 
                   rapine ét columbine, 
                   flourishing pillage 
                   y Madre de Dios outcries 
                   of Toledo steel 
                   arving out a people 
                   merging
                   into worlds of mestizos? 
                   damn right
                   you are guilty, Don Cristobal, 
                   the eyes of a new humanity 
                   indict you, Don Cristobal, 
                   the mouths of hundreds 
                   of millions of new sentient 
                   human beings in mestizo skins 
                   utter their existence 
                   each time they cry out your name, 
                   yes, Don Cistobal, 
                   my parents and their parents 
                   and five hundred years 
                   of human interaction 
                   declare you guilty 
                   of the wonderous yet painful 
                   merging of emerging peoples 
                   coupling through cultural  

                   and historic angers and disbeliefs   
                   and racist diatribes, each voice 
                   in the Américas finds you guilty 
                   in a most life-giving manner 
                   as humanity continues moving 
                   forward toward even greater 
                   understanding, merging 
                   all worlds into an ensalada 
                   wherein our colors/tastes 
                   commingle, yes, damn right 
                   Don Cristobal Colón, you are 
                   guilty of frightful, frail 
                   fancied human limitation 
                   arriving at ancient worlds 
                   new to you and reacting 
                   from a base debasing the 
                   new while celebrating the known, 
                   oh, how humanly mundane 
                   our depravities can be, 
                   for Toledo steel merely sliced 
                   with a delicacy 
                   unmatched by bludgeoning 
                   obsidian weapons 
                   disemboweling sacrificial 
                   jaguar-peoples, leaving
                   Xiximekatl entrails
                   upon stone and masonry, death 
                   was a mutual concelebration, 
                   torturous sacrifce 
                   was the poetic outcry/canto 

                   of European & Meso-American, 
                   the blood of Christ 
                   merged ith la sangre
                   Huitzolopochtli drank
                   as war drums sounded

                   far away
                   Moors ululated 
                   as Granada fell,
                   Saracen blades
                   saluted Cortesian
                   steeds trampling
                   wailing Nahuatl
                   ocelotl warriors,
                   each side claiming
                   a humanity
                   still awaiting
                   five hundred years later
                   to find a caressive
                   meaning, a beauty
                   that dignifies existence
                   with actions
                   more flowery than words . . .

               IV. I stand, Don Cristobal,
                   at the edge
                   of my people's historic outcry, 
                   seeking in our shards
                   a meaning
                   that can regale
                   all who have existed
                   with a passional explication
                   to assuage our collective guilt/pain; 

                   I, you, we stand 
                   upon a land marked 
                   and ravaged, yet celebrated 
                   as it celebrates
                   five centuries of interaction 

                   begotten children,
                   we play at games
                   whose rules
                   have been transformed
                   a countless number
                   of times as time became
                   corrosive, ill-imaged,
                   indisernible beings
                   whose visages/countenances
                   continue merging
                   to emerge each time 
                   with a different cast/coloration,
                   o progeny
                   of Quetzalcoátl
                   whose serpentine message
                   spoke to a humanity
                   disdaining sacrifice
                   and ritualistic blooding
                   of the flowers 

                   at Tenochtitlán 
                   and Tlatelolco, ay, 
                   the rays of Tonatiuh 
                   at the onset of his Fifth Reign 
                   signalled the arrival 
                   of the flip-side of the world coin 
                   as Castillian-Moro 
                   horsemen rode 
                   mountain trails 
                   from Vera Cruz
                   up to Popocatepetl 
                   to peer down 
                   upon Anahuác
                   as milling Aztek 
                   aristocrats
                   strode
                   through Coyoacán 
                   on festive market days, 
                   barbarcha de perrito chihuahuense 
                   was rolled in tortillas de maíz 
                   while Christian noses 
                   and Moorish sensibilities 
                   most probably recoiled, 
                   all the while
                   Franciscan Friars conspired 
                   with Dominican Inquisitors 
                   to topple Quetzalcoátl 
                   and supply a Christ of Love
                   girded by Spanish harquebuses 
                   and Hispanic wiles

                   wafting on Papal mandates
                   and regal ordinances, 

                   oh, rhapsodies  
                   combining worlds 
                   where multihued humanity 
                   still plies its wares 
                   in market places, daring 
                   to infuse its colors 
                   into a humanscape 
                   where differences 
                   might unify and not divide
                   a progeny of cosmic natures, 

                   we stand, Cristobal Colón,
                   at the edge 
                   where a chanting race 
                   dances through myriad colorations, 
                   where black and white and red 
                   commingle with yellowed pigment 
                   to create a continent 
                   where bronze became a human color 
                   bespeaking universal pain, 
                   historic misery and struggle, 
                   yes, we stand, Señor Colón, 
                   plenipotentiary admiral 
                   of the mighty ocean-sea, upon 
                   that sacred land 
                   where lava burnt the very ground 
                   that mighty nations might arise

                   to hunt with zeal 
                   each other's progeny, 
                   we stand upon the threshold 
                   to see our daughters/sons embark 
                   toward horizons new 
                   amidst a sky of stars uncountable, 
                   human that we be 
                   we somehow seek 
                   a new Cristobal 
                   to dare to cross 
                   an oceanic sky, to find 
                   new sentient life 
                   that we might coalesce and merge 
                   and thus emerge 
                   again, again . . . 

                V. at the periphery of Columbia,  
                   at the edges where Aztlán 
                   conjoins its ancient cultures 
                   with dialectical schemes 
                   where reason is mechanical 
                   and passion a distortion, 
                   at those rough edges 
                   where English/Spanish 
                   paradigms wrestle 
                   and form new societal 
                   schematiques, only to find 
                   contortion rearing
                   hydra-headed ideations, each 
                   seeking to supplant the other
                   as waves of conquering zealots 
                   smash head-on unto each other's 
                   need for realization, 

                   500 years of human interaction, 
                   embroilments bubble 
                   as histories commingle,
                   South to North, all peoples merged 
                   and emerged into the pain 
                   of wars within the skins, 
                   from red to white and black and yellow
                   and thence to bronze 
                   and mestizo clarion calls 

                   in this América 
                   where natives find themselves 
                   endangered strangers  
                   within the lands  
                   which gave them birth,

                   Amerika of jazz and turbulence, 
                   rebounding notes 
                   resounding 
                   in the harlems of the soul 
                   we scat and ditty-bop 
                   and shuck-n-jive, 
                   all d. while we 
                   be looking for an out 
                   to sing and shout 
                   that bluesiness 

                   of low-down-stingin' life
                   and what it be about oh, 
                   yes, colorizations
                   which speak to music
                   blaring
                   through glaring
                   city streets
                   and rural pathways 

                   that Johnny might cash 
                   it all in and wail 
                   to countrified be-bop 
                   jazzed down notes
                   despairing
                   as Cajun blackened lifestyles
                   bemoan much left unsaid, undone, 

                   oh, Tewa eyes 
                   peering into Dineh universal outcry 
                   in Chinle, Kayenta and the Cañon 
                   del Muerto where skinwalkers 
                   manifest centuries of culture  
                   as Kachina dancers 
                   snake their ways 
                   to reverberant notes 
                   roiling centuries of wind 
                   bouncing off canyon walls 
                   while humanity chants on
                   Black Mesa

                   tales told
                   by Sky City poet Simón Ortiz 
                   of Sand Creek sabers 
                   gnashing through flesh 
                   as time gnawed on memory,

                   it all resounds, Don Cristobal, 
                   the plastic dance of spastic history 
                   through visceral time, a serpentine 
                   undulation of human bodies 
                   becoming one 
                   from the carnaval of Brazileiro witchery 
                   to Tarahumara/Yaqui incantations 
                   running within the frenzy 
                   of bones being cast 
                   in East L. A. pachuco enclaves 
                   where exiled xicanos from El Paso 
                   pass their fragmented bits 
                   of historic pain onto immigrant hordes 
                   disembarking 
                   from Lowrider carts 
                   up from Sonoran outposts 
                   and Yucateko jungles, oy 
                   veh, América, 
                   we sing you
                   birthday notes

                   within the blues notes 
                   of Langston 
                   wanting to also be

                   what he had always been, 
                   a denizen of a land 
                   greater/grander 
                   than any nation, 
                   a continental concatenation 
                   of nations
                   South to North/East to West, 
                   all one mighty land, 
                   one multihued/polyglottish 
                   people, cosmlclq within 
                   a song, a poem, the 
                   passion of the soul 
                   the cadence of the universe, 
                   five hundred years 
                   of tears & fears 
                   500 years 
                   conjointed/concelebrated, 
                   commemorated 
                   the still surviving dream 
                   crafted
                   in this century's primal revolution, 
                   la Raza Cósmica
                   has been born 
                   and Vasconcelos sings 
                   to an America greater 
                   than any of its parts,

                   you, I, we, 
                   500 years of struggle and becoming . . . .