angst & other idiocies
abound,
really back
in un-real utah,
racist sentiments
hurl pendejadas at me ...
salt lake city 26 Sept. 78
                                    

-REGRESO-*

Back, once more, in the indolent mental-state of donnie & marie, here where to think or to feel is to be considered a pariah. Back to teaching classes in an ethnic studies environment wherein the state of mindlessness demands "don't think beyond standard definitions!"

"How was europe?" a friend asks,
"Suave, ese," i respond,

and then i begin to realize that for many years of my life, that short sojourn in amsterdam was freer for me than anything else ever experienced, no cops harassing me, no foolish questions, no, i was left alone to my own designs, to walk and talk, to see a world alien enough so that i could think and act without having to defend anything; nights spent amidst banter, just wandering about, almost falling through the blackholed serenity of canal-strewn streets, laughing while basking in the sounds of incomprehensible worlds,

saw sights
i'd never beheld 
in the fetid bowels
of supremacist amerika, 
tastes that exploded
stereotypes & other hypes,

for over a week in non-ghetto/barrioized reality, peaceful as the mesas of my land, full moon and realization; chants reverberated, music syncopated, ay, poetry resonated walking interminable hours on interminable streets, felt newness of discovery hovering over thoughtfeelings, congealing sentiment recouped strength to come back to once more struggle against the monstruous machinations demanding that we bow - forget the differences which sculpt the ways we see to live - admonishments still fly and power wielders still remonstrate, but spiritual entelechy rescinds the hecticness of other days I mean to live, whatsoever it may cost, and mean to live as only i can live,

vibrant
'neath the sun,
aware
that land is pungent,
aware
that i am land,
and very much aware

that the sources of beingness come from our realizing that we exist with the awesome right of exploring all dimensions to our beings; that we were born to love - and love means self-defense - and to love means to create, so now that i've returned, i laugh at all those fears of yesterday,

and while laughing say
that living 
is the only art 
and art is but expression 
of human passions free, 
and freedom intertwines 
the thought 
and spirit's feelings,

for i saw human freedom
spiritually unite
a retinue of peoples
who shared in poetry

i felt and heard
communion
in unison
sing out

that human differentials make of us human beings, but now in howling utah

the mormons do demand
mental capitulation,
the soul's utter damnation,

i laugh
as i defy
& hope that i'll be fired,

i'll not give in to them, i'll just continue living, 
my canto is my freedom, 
my grito is my passion,
my poems are but extensions 
of all that i call life ...

*also appeared in 'Loves of Ricardo'