HECHIZOSPELLS

                          

                                     MARCH 10, 1971                   
                               otra vez el penco al
                        estable, back to the calles
                                     y locuras that
                             hide smirkingly within      
                                  e.p.t. twilights,               
                             dreaming míctla dreams     
                
                  Homing* 

    homing, ese, amidst
    old/known faces,
    with familia embraces
    and love/kisses
    flooding each moment
    of re-encounter,
    la jefita hovering
    over her returned children,
    carnalas, sobrinos/sobrinas,
    suegros, todo el tribu
    estrechando bienllegadas;

    cruising over to pete duarte's, 
    chacha marín rapping on the way, 
    passing familiar sights, 
    seeing el índio on the streets 
    walking toward his sense of nirvana, 
    el hippie flirting with life, 
    melo curbing on the edge 
    of his botella, 
    nina, rosie, rojas, géra, 
    lupe, lalo, and new faces 
    within chuco movimiento, 
    y el borracho tirando tórica bruta-es algo 
    rete sabroso being back, rapping with gardéa, siqueiros, 
    tony parra, pat, 
    and host of raza 
    about building up 
    míctla publications 
    to thus change 
    the horrid imagery 
    that has ever haunted us;

    homing, batos, homing 
    into the nether world 
    of causa y sangre y corazón, 
    and even the caustic words 
    of lozito (el parole officer)

    cannot mar
    the happiness
    of being back
    in this city of callejas y rincones, 
    of pobreza y raza y duelos...
    homing once again                                                                          
    as i cruise my renault r-10
    over the crumbling ruins
    of el Diablo, that land of DDT batos 
    who used to slice up life and hope 
    with filero and herre,
           shooting up carga/chiva/dreams 
    into blueridged veins
           hiding beneath la grasa of brown flesh, 
    finding sanctuary
    within the topor,
                       but life is hell
                       within poverty & self-hate,

    homing as i see skeletal remains 
    of that home that saw me grow 
    at 3920 Oak, later avenida de las américas,
    and now just a dead hulk 
    where only voices of the past 
    can find refuge
        if you listen closely-and carnal, 
    i think even la Ilorona 
    used to live in el diablo,
        over by the algodonales del ayer, 
    there by the river as it cuts/flows 
    through sand and cactus, 
    when we used to slip over or under the fence 
    surrounding Isla de Córdova, that chunk of land 
        that méxico used to own, now traded in 
    as part of the chamizal pact, 
    and at those ranchitos 
    where we would trip out on mota/yesca/grifa 
    and dance
    all night
    to música rete chicana/mexicana y bien rascuache, 
    or when even younger 
    we used to slip through the fence

    and rip off watermelons, cantaloupes, and chavalas 
    and the old rancheritos 
    would threaten us with rusty/dysfunctional shotguns spraying birdshot overhead, 
    and we would laugh 
    with childhood's mirth, 
    in that barrio del eastside 
    where i learned
    to rub up against willing girls 
    who wanted to rub up against us 
    and Doña Chuyita
    would run after us,
    throwing bricks/rocks-anything she could-
    at us and dare us to stop, and we never did, 
    just shouted at her, and later she would 
    grab me with her brown/wrinkled tarahumara hands 
    and between the dark stained bits of teeth 
    within her 108 year old mouth admonish me 
    that if she were a few years younger, why, 
    hell, bato, she would marry me and make 
    a man out of me, then she would laugh 
    and tell me to scoot home, 
    and i would, looking back 
    at that old/furrowed woman, 
    índia-patarajada from the mountains 
    of chihuahua
    who still chopped wood and ran 
    through the alleys of my barrio, 
    barefooted with a red kerchief 
    tied around her left ankle,
           for strength in running she would say, 
    and galavanted about,
    Doña Jesusita, Chuyita: Doña Chúris, 
    and we loved her 
    in our pranksterway, 
    especially when she would sit us down 
    and regale us with stories 
    of life in those mountains 
    when there existed no cars, 
    just burros and tired people 
    who knew how to dance and sing 
    and live off the land, 
    her face was rivuletted

    with time and her eyes 
    were hawklike and strong, 
    the folds of skin 
    on her arms
    were skeins of brown earth;
          once she caught me smoking, 
          i was fifteen or so, and she 
          asked me if my father, Don Pedrito 
          approved and I said maybe, puede que sí, 
          and i offered her a cigarette, 
          she smiled and said that i could not buy 
          her silence, that here before the sky 
          i would have to know 
          that her bosom was not a warehouse 
          where secrets could be stored, 
    but then seeing my youthful fears 
          she told me not to worry
          for things done in the open are not secrets.

    that barrio
    now dead and full of shards, 
    i found a rusty empty can of Mitchell's Beer, 
    a relic of those times 
    almost twenty years before 
    when Mitchell's had reigned 
    and all the barrio had drunk it,
    I found it beside the crumbling wall 
    of that home my father had painstakingly built 
    when I had been a four year old toddler, 
    back then when we had lived 
    in a one room home 
    that grew into other rooms 
    with timely expansions by my father; 
    i saw remains
    of cinderblock fences
    where my brothers, Sefy and Pete, 
    would strum guitars and sing, 
    and they would tell me 
    to go inside that it was late, 
    and in my eight year old world 
    they seemed big, 
    for a five and six year span 
    can mean a totally different world, 
    and years later
    would I come home on leave 
    to bury them 
    and cry softly 
    for the remembrances
    culling loneliness in mind/soul;
    home again to el paso, 
    but no longer to my barrio, 
    but to alien worlds 
    which had been home 
    for rivals when I had been tush-hogging 
    with the X-9 batos, 
    riding herd on other barrios, 
    no longer
    encaged within the mind searing stench 
    of Disneyland or the coliseum at rodeo time, 
    no, seeing
    through tears of recollection 
    a  barrio dead, gone into time's 
    shards with juareños searching through the rubble 
    for still useful things,
                            bricks, boards, iron grill work, 
    any goddamn thing that can be marketed 
    in los serajeros in south juárez,
              at that enclave of junk yards, 
    and seeing them take that 
    still remaining doorframe 
    from what used to be the doorway to our kitchen 
    cut my soul
    and severed forever 
    my linkage to my barrio, 
    and I felt bloody anger                               
    coursing through my mind;
               
    turned, scowling,
    to see a superfreeway
    being built
    to make it easier for tourists 
    to make it to juárez bistros and whorehouses, 
    realized
    that barrios must make way for progress, 
    and as i left,
    to file another parole report,
    heard soft voices of the past....

*also appeared in LOVES OF RICARDO