Canto y grito mi liberación                     

                        

                                     tenth month,
                                     el año del chicano

            Stream

  Middle america ... middle amerika it all is the same 
  when hate becomes the calling card and out of stream 

  consciousness, out of migrant stream patterns, the same 

  crappy situation evolves time after time, and every-
  thing is run together like crazy quilt pattern, and 
  people live, die, and somehow nothing is ever resolved
  in their lifetime       and does it-or anything-ever
  come to matter  somewhere, now, a child is dying
  for lack of certain     things, and no one seems to give a
  damn-other than the child's parents, and they are 
  helpless parents, while society or what passes for 
  the elite ruling class attends groovy party and nice, 
  rounded fanny gets pinched and broad married to one 
  fat-cat winds up in hay with her husband's friend, but 
  her hubby won't mind, for they both can share his 
  friend in as many different combinations as are 
  possible-for this is amerika, land of pubic liberty 
  as long as you don't get caught, and nothing is truly 
  immoral, except being poor and/or helpless . . . so that
  immoral child and its parents better get on the ball 
  and learn the name of the game and how to play it ...

  y duelos leidos
  en sermones religiosos
  son paradojas
  señalando
  sonidos huecos,
  tres bíblias
  cambiadas por los terrenos
  del afamado rancho king
  bajo los resos inútiles
  de sacerdotes ciegos y racistas
  acama los enfermos
  mientras aclaramos
  cuestiones vanas

                 creo en un dios verdadero 
                 cerca del basudero, 
                 ahí en el atascadero, 
                 un solo dios verdadero-
                 la gente en el humidero,                

                 un solo dios verdadero ...

  y los rinches 
  como casi-dioses 
  y alcabo el dios 
  amerikano es racista, 
  borracho y pirújo,
  una pantalla 
  con cara de pallaso 
  y alma de baboso,
                 aún lo cuentan
                 los gavachos
                 un solo dios verdadero, 
                 el barrio un quemadero, 
                 la muerte ya mero-mero, 
                 un solo dios verdadero.

  and the subway ride continues on from lexington avenue 
  to becoming the el in bronx by 125th and the night air 
  chills the body, while 5th avenue satiny broads pro-
  menade ailing aimlessly in their loneliness ... nearby 
  in Massachusetts with its many empty universities, more 

  desecrated assaults on the spirit is the name of the game

  around fireside chatter about bahai folklore and wishful 

  thinking, conversion of ex-militant blacks . . . a new toy 

  for middle amerika, this of persian religious order and 

  ritualistic rhetoric of brotherhood as long as niggers 

  remember that their place is near enough to hear them 
  but not to touch them, except during humanistic education 

  workshops (purely experimental to see if their kinks 
  are springy and their smell pungent with musk and gringos 
  turn up their noses even then), and that goes for all 
  minority people . . . and a porty-rican (un boricua de man-

  hattan), quien se llama johnny cabrón, he believes he 
  has white brethren ... and they'll smite him and they'll 
  smite him, til he learns that he's not white . . .


             oda de fé soñosa
             miel amarga

             crujía sepultosa
             cautivadora del alma

             un grito por mi hombresa
             gemiendo bajo la presa

             verdad que grité en mi sueño,
             la busca un borinqueño

             oda de triste verano
             dentro el desmadre chicano

             el existir pa'la raza
             es duelo que en vida pasa.

  and his sugra-(like nigra)-dripping illusions of nirvana 
  cum míctla via panacea become the mandible spewed out 
  honey madness of racist resin in amerika-and he, like 
  other confundidos, dies a man without a soul ... it is sad 
  that there exist those who in trying to sell themselves 
  have found no one to buy them and they can only become 

  regalados ... their souls cast away in hope of acceptance, 

  and never are they accepted ... gift horses looked in the 

  mouth by a system bent on cruel oppression, repression, 
  and human suppression ... and some fight for medals for 

  decorum, only to lose their sanity in the end and wind 
  up in v.a. hospitals, hopped up, loaded to the gills on 

  nembutal and stimulants, cruising labyrinths and empty 
  rooms, their souls hanging limply ... eyes hollow and 
  lusting, mind plotting, and inside an insidious need 

  for self-affirmation.

                       el vacío derrama 
                       la voz angustiosa
                       del alma; es mejor 
                       vivir o morir como hombre 
                       que besarle los huevos 
                       al boss/rinche,
                       ese pinche desgraciado.


  i phantasmagorize about the stream of my life, wending 
  its way-como un duelo penumbroso y al mismo tiempo como 
  canto ilustroso-from the madness of east el paso 
  pachuquísmo en el barrio del diablo, out there by the 

  coliseum-between hammett and boone streets, from paisano 

  drive south to el río grande ... and i ran streets in the 

  anguished futility of a chavalón encabronado y encojonado, 

  with a yearning itch in my hands for a filero to use 
  against the hated unknown force(s) that seemed to con-
  trol us through school systems geared to disparage us, 
  shopping areas designed to make us hunger for that which
  we could not afford; and time passed and i grew up with 
  anger and confusion reigning side by side in my being ... 
  one moment, jefferson high seemed the avenue for my 
  salvation, until racist teachers (mcbride, willis, travis 
  & co.) and vendidos (i.e., mares, mendoza, & peña, inc.) 
  turned me off, while beguiling (or trying to) the carnales 
  to pursue a materialistic, roboticized life (si, you 
  young kids can get those new cars & fancy duds, etc., just
  by bartering your souls to mad-eee-son-of-a-bitch-avenue!).
  i was youth at the crossroads without a map or turn signal. 
  the army finished the job begun by the schools; i became 
  flame of need for mine liberation-and i vented my furious 

  desperation with gun and madness, that monstrous bitch 

  residing in the gut lining of my soul/mind ... and sunny 

  California gave me from one to 25 years in prison, and i 

  mulled over and over in my mind, between el desmadrazgo, 

  eviscerations, the canards handed me by a bigotted/unsane 

  society; the cloister of soledad prison steadfastly 
  demanded my capitulation; i could only retreat into a 
  world of dreams and hopes-while reality assailed me to  
  conform    conform    CONFORM!     and all about me i saw 
  humanity deform itself ... years passed in the space of a
  hope born, nurtured, and then wantonly killed. eternity 
  became the blinking of my eyes, and i stepped out of 
  prison with turmoil defining the drive in my soul ... 

  the chirping of birds, 
  even that is cold-blooded; 

  two years
  and you sent me four letters;


  the steel of the bars, 
  cement of the floor,
  stripes sear my soul,
  cold sttriiiips my being . . .

  la pinta is death,
  ay by day you pay out,

  the price is your sanity,
  the hurt is reality,

  escape from rejection
  leads one to nowhere,

  the chirping of birds,
  even that is cold-blooded . . .

  streets of el paso, you received me with frigidity and 

  indifference. i no longer had youthful trust. my life 
  was turbulent-the see/saw machinations of hunger/lust 
  stemming from deprived ansiedad de la pinta . . . pinto vie-
  jo at age 22, as if mockery were to instigate a coup-etat 
  sobre mi vida . . . came out breathing decadence and hope, 

  weird merger, paradoxical and wanting change for the 
  better (i had read and believed all the jive bullshit 
  about rehabilitation that prisons are notorious for 

  disseminating) . . . lonely, hurting, needing, and my mind

  kept churning out razones filosóficas a través de mi 

  existencia-and i continued being el pobre de ricardo's 
  kind of sartre, camús, platón, et al-while sensing the 

  perversity of juárez nights, sojourns midst el gran 
  putísmo . . . y yo gritaba aún sin saber profundamente el
  por qué de mi vivir tal como vivía dentro tiniebla, como 

  refugiado de la anciosa absurdidad. noches i spent 

  enloqueciéndome momento por momento dentro el putísmo 
  de la calle mariscál-de club a club . . . hasta que llegue
  a conocer muchas putas por nombre, and i was numb with 

  despair-and in my now numb anomie i sought nothing,
  yet anger and angustia assailed me until i ran from the

  putismo into the purefying arms of a woman who gave me 
  her nourishing love and purity of spirit and being . . . a 
  woman both sensuous and real, one who could uplift my 
  soul while enflaming my visceral body and we became


  an earthy fusing of body and emotion ... we wed and even 
  then it all seemed confusing, this of fusing, when all 
  about us the world was topsy-turvy, universal scurvy ... 
  Teresa, esposa, you with trust in heart, hope in your 
  bosom, passion in the way we kissed and embraced, yet 
  a way of life that had never known other than the shelter 
  of your parents' home, i came rampagingly into your life 
  with a million angers and a will to either change society 
  or destroy it, and you visibly trembled at the strange, 
  strong way i assailed an unyeilding world, and you stood 
  by me ... i frightened you, yet our love se enfloreció, & 
  our son, Rik-Ser, came into being.  Teresa, i watched 
  anxiously the swelling of you with our son, and i never 
  realized that i would come to know him only after he 
  was four years old, for once more i went to prison-two 
  days before his birth, i stood alone in my mind indicted 
  for robbery, you meanwhile suffering the pangs of birth 

  deliverance, also alone ... aloneness, the condemnation
  of humanity-aloneness! robbery committed in anxiety 
  and desperation; joblessness so i pulled jobs-and you 
  both waited while i spent tumultous years pent up in 

  texas-ramsey prison farm no. 1-years of quasi-college 
  courses at alvin jr. college, working first in the fields 

  picking white gold, later in education department, ever 

  striving to jive the man to grant me a parole, and my 
  jive worked, for i got out ... only to find i still was 

  imprisoned within the horrendousness of a social structure 

  predicated on stricture and desecration ... but i got out 
  march of 1969, this time more dedicated and devoted to 
  transform the gelatinous globulin of society ... and el paso 

  again stood on my horizon ...

                 horizonte paseño,
                 duelo de juventud,
                 calles corridas
                 hambrientamente,
                 mi alma un peñasco
                 mi vida un poéma

  el chuco, ciudad furiosa 
  nacimiento del chicanismo, 
  cuna del carnalismo, 
  creadora ciudad de llanto 
           de medianoche

  el paso, conocistes mi tristesa 
  mi locura y mi desmadrazgo, 
  corrí tus calles y callejones 
  gritando ansiedad y buscando liberación;

  volví a encontrar amor 
  en los besos apasionados, 
  en los brazos cautivadores, 
  en los ojos como norias de cariño 
  de mi amada y querida señora, Teresa ... 
  Teresa, hembra complementando 
  mi hombreduria, 
  somos fuego y rigor, 
  amor y lumbre estética,  
  somos existencia, 
  somos paradoja, 
  somos lo que somos, 
  y seremos
  el vuelo
  de nuestra propia trayectoria;
 
  hijo,
  hechizo de amor y enloquecimiento, 
  de la experiencia chicana, 
  del aprecio vidal que vivimos; 
  Rik, fibra de mi ser y 
  extención de tu madre, mi esposa, 
  eres
  llanto del alma
  y grito de alegria ...

  rik     rik       rik
     como el timbál sonando 
     y la canción gemiendo ... 
  la realidad

  se desarrolla
  cuando la vida es valerosa ...

  rik    hijo
              te
                 quiero . . .

  el paso streets . . . the southside, VISTA M.M.P. work and 

  MACHOS, where i rapped about liberation and in between 
  words, i wrote out past and present, knowing that to-
  morrow is a finite concept ending with the sunset ... and 
  never had i had a sunset ... other than the closing of all 

  doors, so it seemed, and being sum and total of social 

  brutalization (i am chicano!), sheer idiocy gnawed at 
  me ... demanding that i rip off a world belonging to my 
  people, but controlled by middle ameriKa. nights that 
  ate out my innards became days that dazed me with the 
  cruelty of too much light-light that burnt and cauterized, 

  congealing the hurts in my soul. el paso, you insatiable 

  bastard thing, cold and unrelenting, conniver and deli-
  berate obfuscator, era miseria otra vez hasta que cha cha 

  gardea, y otros carnales destendieron las manos con apoyo 
  y ayuda-and my stream elongated and expanded . . . from the 

  mired-up madness of amerika's hateful south (virginny) 
  to Washington, d.c., baltimore, new york, and Massachusetts . . . 

  then on to chicago, harvard, yale, northwestern, columbia, 

  etc., all for rapping and more and awareness ... then to 

  denver, oregon, michigan, the mid-west, and on and on ... 
  and i lived in the jungle of lalo's pad, mi compa abelardo 
  a fat-gut chicano who lurks in my unconscious like a 

  neo-buddhist cristo, wonder of wonders, the martyr of 
  south el paso, bato/carnal, there in denver with the 
  colorado migrant council co-directing itinerant health 
  program with juan coyotero gilll-eeesss-pie, el mucho 
  malo kid when it comes to coyote killing on king ranch 
  grounds enroute to the valle from houston ... denver, abject 

  city of chicanos who no longer pueden hablar nuestro idioma 

  (mestizaje), y les digo, carnales, que duele al oír mi 

  raza periquiár en inglés o que é1los pidan poesía chicana 
  escrita en el idioma del gringo ... y no puedo traducir 
  ciertas cosas, pues siento mi alma brotar cantos del

  espiritu chicano ... y mi ser demanda la verdad de nuestro 

  carnalismo escrita con sangre apasionada . . .

          denver denver denver 
  en el lanno* rojo 
  de enojo
  en colorado
  con cruzada por la justicia,
  donde carnales
  como corky, gurulé,
  ken luján, narciso,
  y especialmente
  abelardo (que no es) delgado brotan; 
  lugar del ya natalizando chicanismo 
  donde gorilas ávila y tigre cantan

  oficina del concilio pa' migrantes, 
  calle grant numero 665,

  denver, ft. lupton, alamosa,
  pueblo, springs, las áimas,
  tienen parte de ml alma

  t. rotole con señal de paz,
  tu que eras sacerdote,
  hoy buscas paz en mis palabras
          y hallas el pésame hecho del desmadre, 
  tal ha sido mi existencia.

  salí de denver hacia el valle mágico (mas bien trágico),                                            
  en tejas ... y mi raza es bella y hecha de bronce; soy 
  orgulloso y penumbroso viendo la confusa, la paradoja 
  de mi existir . . . marchas, gritos, protestas, demandas ...

  ubicando mi mente
  es el grito de:
  GRINGOS MATENLOS . . .
  eco de mi pasado
  y lo grité
  con furia y realidad
  corriendo por mis venas.

  *llano as pronounced by a denver carnal


  sitting here in my shorts, in magic valley court no. 2, 
  highway 83 east, pharr, tejas, i write in sketches the 
  never ending sensations of my life streaming in and out. 
  early today, a march in McAllen about and around the 
  need for chicanismo in the schools, and a chicanito was

  dispossessed by the principal . . . a few weeks ago, ranted 
  and raved in denver, front of capitol bldg, read poem 
  (INDICT AMERIKA) and felt hollow yet real, fulfilled 
  and needy, and i made hectic love with my wife in 
  California street hotel in denver later than night . . . 
  still trying to bring about a redress for the emptiness 
  of prison (nine years of my life, and i am only 29 yrs 
  old); my new born daughter, Libertad-Yvonne, is now 
  gurgling out her need of my arms to embrace her ... y la 
  adoro con todo el alma, she, born in northampton, Mass-
  achusetts, strange place for a chicano to be born in, 
  part of my escapade as staff writer/lectur-er for school
  of education, u of mass at amherst ... part of me died 
  there mid the vacuousness of new england.

                   hijita linda,
                   es bellisimo ser chicano,
                   casado con chicana,

                   tener hijos hechos 
                   del hierro de la raza 
                   de bronce ... 

                   grito ¡VIVA AZTLAN!

                   siento orgullo 
                   en el pecho 
                   miro tu rostro 
                   y sé vida mia,
                   que embelleces mi existir.

  the stream wends on and on and on ... never a surcease,
  tal es la vida.