Hechizospells*

june 10, 1963
soledad

                     Soledad was a girl's name

Soledad was a girl's name,
years ago
at jefferson high, 
and she was soft and brown
and beautiful,
i used to watch her,
and think her name
was ironic
and poetic,
for she was Soledad Guerra,
       solitude and war,
and she used to always smile 
con ternura morena
como su piel,
and now in this soledad
that i am leaving soon,
this callous nation
of bars and cement and barbarity,
it seems strange 
that a name can call out to me
and mesmerize me 
yet repel me,
one a girl, now a woman,
and the other 
a jagged prison world
                      where hate 
                      is a common expletive,
                      seems everyone hates,
                      seems everyone is a convict,
                      even the guards and counselors
                        do time here,
                        everyday trudging into
                        this abysmal human warehouse.

am leaving
and it hurts,
funny that it hurts,
i see the faces of my friends,
we joke about my getting out,
                          and they ask pleading things,
                   "DO IT ONE TIME FOR ME, ESE!"
just one time, carnal,
nomás una vez,
hell, bato, i'll go all over
and do it a million times
recalling all the sadness 
that hides
within this place;
i'll do it a jillion times
for me, for you, for all of us,
and maybe the next soledad i see 
is a morenita from el chuco
i had been too timid 
to ask out...it's strange
that i recall her,
but then la pinta 
makes you think/regret.
but huáchenle, batos,
when i'm doing it for us
i'll probably burst out laughing,
not at you or me or even at some ruca,
but at all the pendejadas,
at all the crazy lies
that say that we are savage;
i'll laugh at mean ass convicts
who terrify the world 
yet love to eat ice cream,
i'll laugh at convicts scurrying 
from cell block to the canteen
with books of scripted money
to purchase cokes and cookies
and candy bars as well;
i'll laugh at contradictions
and yet within i'll hurt 
remembering xmas packages
and letters full of pain;
recalling thise sad mements
when night became the coverlet
and darkness filtered songs,
when all alone i'd die
realizing just how sordid
a prison life can be...

yes, i'll laugh, carnales,
just like we all want to laugh,
not to mock us nor to spite you,
just to say i understand,

pero eso sí, compiras,
no quiero regresar.

*Also appeared in Selected Poems