"et tu," carnal
   tu también, bato
   you came to the palouse
   looking for some reality
   qué vinimos a buscar?
   (March 21, 1993)

   Chicano Power
   © 1993 by Phil Duran
           -para Ricardo Sánchez

   with rumbling sounds & rushing ondas
   a new volcanic presence in Eastern Washington
   exudes a pungent presence of poetic power
           from Palouse peaks
   over a white mind-scape
   that never knew such forthrightness
   as Mt. Sánchez sends a new mestizo presence
   raining down the slopes of academic turf
           dropping Chicano realities everywhere,
           invoking some form of reaction
           from the suspicious, the uninformed, the complacent...

   mindsets change
   after being long entrenched 
   in the dark valleys of conventional ignorance

   institutional due processes
           oh they do process us
   are challenged 
   by a hot passion for justice

   ostensibly urbane scholarship
   dressed in the comfortable neckties of academia
   hiding within perfunctory structures 
   bowing to institutional appeasement
   feels the steam 
   of humanizing/intellectualizing candor...

   but during after-shocks
   and quiet moments
   raza warmth flows 
   from the depths of a heart 
   which everywhere embraces
   the multi-faceted/multi-ethnic terrains 
   of student life

   Ricardo, compa,
   we came to north Aztlán
   in search of realities 
   and found hospitality in unusual places
   and the lack of it in expected places

   this can't be our home, carnal,
   but in the Chicano diaspora...
   where is home?