Canto y grito mi liberación

                      Soledad, November 23, 1962

       Soledad...*

soledad ...
            my soul bleats 
lonely, lonely, lonely ...

a night-some time ago,
long ago-Los Panchos
sang of
       women of perdition 
and love . . .

               my soul cried!

two, three or five years ... 
doesn't matter.
So long ago
love went.

remember her smile,
and the way
she . . . ?
well, do you?
what for?
she'd hate this . . .
too concrete.

smelted steel, toilet-grey
               colored labyrinths;
soledad
inundated with turmoil,
and my identity's lost . . . 
only instant coffee matters, 
tobacco, god, and tobacco. 
rosh hashanah, chanukah 
and ave marias, 
intercourse of the hand

and ominous square pyramids 
where god
         nurses guns, guns, 
and more guns.

nasty wires . . . barbed and piqued; 
fences-so celestially high 
one can't return, run,
    oh,

mi barrio/chicano,
my other life,
show me,
tell me
     once more
of my peasant origin.
Give me a happy, canorous 
grito . . .

damn,
make these chains break!

soledad,
you lied!
    no solitude or serenity here, 
just tormented souls ... no, 
not souls.
      oh   please   unsanity   go   back! 
only your mountains matter, 
your name is wrong,
your keys clang at midnight, 
your phantoms stalk, search, 
and
haunt . . .
           I smoke my pipe,
              I drink hot tea or coffee
                 without
                   sugar
                     or
                       cream. . . .

soledad,
your austere vacuousness 
gave me
       look-alike de-animated death;

two words, yours, guard me:

               hell         and         dreams.

soledad,
god made li'l birds weaklings, 
    murdered flies at midnight, 
and
you killed me for a cup of vengeance.

soledad,
i saw you first
          through the myriad of misty eyes, 
through condemnation,
through lonely vigilance
             as i plotted
         a hasty-never-to-come-escape.
you received me
like you've received your isolation, and

tomorrow will be like today, why?
there is no future,
hope            died
in the ovens ... desecrated 
because god (cops?) did not smile!

soledad,
land of retribution,
nation of rough guys,
          toughs and male whores,
owners of syphilitic brains
          shuffling by aimlessly:

we-they-are the cool cats..... 
     ha ... ha ... ha ...ha ...

       god must've laughed
   (for)
       nothing matters,
all is a shuck, lie, sham,
               thoughtlessness!

soledad,
     so dead,
     so soggy...
                abuser, mis-user,
soledad....

*also appeared in Selected Poems