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Written October 2, 2019

Written October 1 for Jay Mehta. #2 in a Series of Prayer Poems

Written September 28, for Jay Mehta.

“Lo Tierno”
     May 26, 2018
(A much overdue poem for my Mama.)
 
Es un verde tierno
 
I hear the echoes
Long past
Mi Madre
With such an ojo for nature
 
In Spanish
                     Tierno,
 
Means tender, loving
 
Not like those old
Grating Angry cries
From ‘Apa
 
‘Apa would come home
To tattered wooden house
In abandoned orange groves
 
Worked to the veins and bones
Three days straight—No break
Heat that killed mi gente
Pummeling him into this Salvaje
 
He would come to house
Sun-filled rage on tongue &
Harsh desert death on fists
 
Tearing shit up
Tearing mother up
 
The next day,
Mama would be sowing a table cloth
Verde tierno,
Showing me each careful stitch
 
“Así.  Vez, mija?  Así.
Que bonito el verde tiernito, que no?
Como mi niñita, tan tiernita.”
 
Me a sapling at her feet
Soaking in the world
 
I looked with untrained eyes
Her work, delicate, wonderful
 
It was beautiful
 
“The Brittle Tree”
     May 23, 2018
 
I have to spit one out
Before this economic system
Chews more people
Swallows them enteritos
 
Se traga al pobre obrero
 
There goes my neighbor
Citrus Farmworker of 30 years
Seeped in pesticides
Company too cheap to follow EPA standards
Cancer consuming him daily
Down the gullet of Profit
 
Sin pension
Sin healthcare
 
Eaten alive for decades
With promises of
That American Dream
Fused to his bones and muscles
That have known merciless heat
Constant sweat, mingled with tears
 
Now, he’s just the dried husk of an orange
Left out too long in desert sun
He is the orchard
The brittle tree ready to be burnt
"Red Wine, Roque"
      May 16, 2018
Roque
You taught me
Red wine
Was close to a
Lonely
Morning
Orgasm
 
A poem set on the
Moon.
 
A revolution
Set in my
Soul.

"Que Se Mueran de Sed"
May 15, Revised, July 22

Quieren todo los Turistas
Ojos, pupils glistening, full de colores, naranja y reds
Noses imbued with earthen, chile smells.
“$20 imperialista cash, No pesos!”
Begs the exhausted street vendor whose atoms
Have surpassed eons
But--

Turistas,
If you want agua, pura,
You’ll have to steal from Corona
And so many corporate Rateros

Who suck vida from earth, then bottle their wares

To sell to Turistas, like you
Rateros, who, then, sell filthy-death water at inhumane precios
Like in Mexicali and the Driscoll blueberry fields of Colombia,
Where starving children
Must drink the backwash from companies


Quieren todo Los Turistas

Las Corporaciones, too.

Let them die of thirst.

 

“Magical Realism Nopales”
    May 11, 2018
Don’t eat with steel fork
Eat with fingers & timeless maize
Your soul weaved into saliva
 
Don’t drink Coke
Drink yerbabuena & café con leche
Your tongue soaked in justice
 
Don’t dream of tomorrow
Dream of el ranchito & los Aztecas
Your eyes seeped in a better world
 
Don’t cry tristeza
Over los fascistsa y puta migra—when they come
Your heart torn from your chest
 
You are the nopal dream
They fear so much
Let them tremble. 

Yeah, I Tweeted one out this morning, May 10, 2018.
(Yeah, that sounds like digital gratification of the dirtiest kind.)

Home,
Yuma, AZ
Even there,
No freedom
Brown folks exploited--
Drying and withering
Like orange blossoms
In harsh sun
They say,
El Pueblo Unido. . .
But unless we unite

Only this coming nuclear hell
Will greet morning sun


“A Poem to Justice Teachers”
    November 18, 2017
[That joke in the poem belongs to Antonio Connor Breed, my son, so he claims.]
 
At the curriculum fair,
 
Teachers for social just share lessons through connected veins, from mind to heart to each other
 
A better world is teachable
 
            Learnable
 
Seven-year-old son
            Crafts messages of hope
            To Children in Prison
 
Writes bright blue and green marks on glowing mismatched paper,
 
            Crafting jokes, from the heart,
           
            “How did the sea make friends with the ocean? 
 
                                                        They just kept waving at each other.”
 
I want a world where he will share
 
ideas through laughter and solidarity
            Not prison bars
            Not shackles of poverty
 
Where cards don’t go to incarcerated kids on holidays
 
             Or any day.
 
“A Cup of Coffee for My 20’s Self”
by Dr. Jesu Estrada
October 7, 2017


It’s odd, sitting in a coffee shop
Starbucks in Hyde Park full of
Beautiful black men
Multi-Patchworked Children
 
Families-Safe-Families:  Kids learning to order tall hot chocolates, chocolate produced
from hands of exploited children
 
                        And me without that former angst of incompleteness.
 
That longing for true, true, TRUE fantasyliketelenovelalove
 
Love of teenage wet dreams, sweltering under desperate sheets—Bored.
But always there.  But always invading


Like a fucked commercial on repeat.
 
 
 
             Y NO es que este mas vieja.
 
No—I am NOT a wise old cliché, aged . . . easier to process.
 
            [And this goddamned fly keeps trying to make love to my left leg and shit on it
            at the same time!]
 
            [Let me drink my Venti fantasy of true happiness!  You Fly Fucker.  Keep your
           probing lying tongue away from me.]
 
I pour myself deep, doing what I really was meant to do
 
            —to Be.  In actual peace. 

                                               There is no gap of infinite grief anymore, for someone. 
 
               Anyone.  Like a drunken devastated country song.  No. 
              
               Or a
               Tampax
               commercial with false red love weaved in it.
 
I.   Am.                Not.  

            Chasing what never was, a false self, infused by
 
            gringo ads and
            gringo TV shows from the 70’s.   

Instead, I sit here sipping away at what is pure and mine.

---

"True Faith in Unity"
                 by Dr. Jesú Estrada
                 September 30, 2017
 
People say those in power will always eat a gluttonous feast of misery and profit.
 
The poor will always get poorer.
 
         They will be with us in the shanties of San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonora
                Where indias sell harsh mint chicles and Spiderman keychains to American tourists.
        
         In Gaslight District of San Diego, Califas
                Bleeding cardboard casitas and moldy sleeping bags of shame flap in the dry wind                
                Street


                                After street


                                                After street. 
 
Under Chicago’s viaducts, drivers sometimes share a look of meaningful sadness—between texts—maybe throw pocket change at single mother and prisoner toddler, in tent-home. 
 
The rich will forever gorge on the fruits of that Puritan zeal, anointed by years of
 
                                Colonization,
                                Slavery,
                                Repression,
                                Racism,
                                Misogyny,

                                For money

Tu bien sabes.
 
Y toda mi pobre gente? 
 
Que se chinguen! 
 
Dreamers?  Que se chinguen! 
 
In fact, fascists already rounding up criminals forever nationally tattooed--
 
                                Gangeros. 
 
Unions preaching that loving proletarian-arm in-arm solidarity forever?
 
 Que se chinguen!

Es mas, let's get rid of them!
 
Y Texas, Florida, Mexico,
 
Puerto Rico,

         Devastated, starving
 
         Commonwealth like Colony.  Like a Tourist Hacienda.
 
         You asking for some sustenance?  Quieres pan?
        
         Tu necesitas agua?  Some Aquafina in crystalline bottles?
 
         Te hace falta la luz for hospitals?  Para vivir?
 
Pues, Amen.
 
 
I look to my children, who fill me with so much esperanza, and I wonder at their celestial dreams,
 
                                Siempre soñando.
 
Seven year old son, prays every day,


                “Dear God, Please make Trump a better man.”
 
My heart laughs amazed at his Faith.
 
My two year old hijita so sweet, powerfully determined prays, for her friends, the scared, los zoo animals, las zebras, her light-up shoes. 
 
She knows nothing of Twitter terrorist threats, fake nuclear news against North Korea,

China,

                the Middle East.
 
                                Against You.   
 
Pues esta bien,
 
Let’s pray for our ruler enemies.
 
Let’s also pray for what could be
 
That Unity
        
Where the abundance that is now
 
         The technological splendor that is now
 
         Will be shared gratis y sin verguenza.
 
                  Unbridled and free for all to have
 
         And my children and your children and
 
                                                We
        
         —We won’t have to pray for their scraps anymore.    
 

"Little Lover Bird"
                  by Dr. Jesú Estrada
                  January 16, 2017

Little Lover Bird with your sweet trills,
            It is 2a.m.
Little Lover bird with your peckered bill
            It is below freezing
            On a loveless night
            South Side
            Chicago.
Little Cheating Bird, so desperate
            With song so loud
            Pathetic
            Like a plea to be let back
            Into the apartment
                                    After having cheated
                                    On your Little Bird girlfriend.
Little Bastard Bird, Do you not know
            It is fucking January?
            Not spring.
            Do you feel
The cutting winds and icy rain?
Little Fucking Bird
            What feathered crazy one
            Do you think is looking to
                        Get some sweet, sweet
Love
                        This time of year?
Do you think she’ll want to watch her fledglings freeze,
On the sad grey sidewalks
Like so many others
                         In the City?

"Jesucristo Santifícanos:  When a Child Looks at Jesus"

            I can hear the eternal mumbling

            Of el Rosario

            In the other room.

            And I am alone in the living room

            With dirty blue walls.

            More alone than my first day of School,

            Where I sat in the aisles

            Looking at a woman

            I didn’t understand

            ‘Cuz she was a gringa

            And I am a wetback child.  And I

            Hated her and her sick colored skin.

            I hated all the kids who didn’t

            Know what I was saying.  I hated how

            They stood up.  Looked at the Cloth

            With bright red and blue and put

            Their hands over their hearts.  They

            Mumbled on and on like my Abuelita when

            She runs all the words together

            From el Rosario.

 

            The gringa’s eyes were full and new.

            Not like Your eyes that are

            Dying colors.

            And You!

            You didn’t help me.  And now You’re

            Looking at me with those blue eyes

            Like all those dumb kids who didn’t know

            When I said hello.

            You know everything, and theydidn’tknownothing

            ¡No me mires con esos pinches ojos!

            ‘Cuz you’re looking at me like

            I’m no good

            ‘Cuz you know my Dad’s a mojado

            And I can’t mumble the way they do

            When they stand

            So tall

            To pray.

"Three Penises"

When I was six, a thief stole three weeks of my life.  One busy day, I woke up in a purgatory of misery.  I saw in threes; three cheap cornflake boxes, three puke green walls wavering like steam on a hot desert road.  Frank, my hermano, a precocious thirteen year old scholar with dark hair and a hawk nose observed quickly, -Mamí, algo tiene la Jesú.-  Constantly defying over mended pants and tattered books, he always noticed me before anyone else.  Mother scrutinized me like she would an egg about to hatch.

On the way home, she wondered what had gotten me sick and tried to get my father’s opinion.  He drove determined, ignoring her questions, occasionally honking angrily at the old men who crossed his path in their new cars.  Earlier, the good American doctor diagnosed, “Nervous break down,” while silly Popsicle stick men danced crazily from his immaculate lab coat pocket.  It was a mystery my parents had no time to solve.

For days, my tongue hid in my throat.  My mind swam in a limbo of tortured memories of clean cut little white boys and girls mumbling to the cloth of red white and blue.  Of spit from infuriated teachers hissing at us for speaking Spanish in class.  Of lonely corners without happy crayons and green eyed Barbie dolls.  My ears were constantly buzzing with emptiness.

But one afternoon, I heard my father call for my mother from the shower.  He hollered in that familiar way, -¡Chata!-  He shouted and cursed, so I went to his aid.  I wobbled as fast as I could and hit my head on the door frame, even though I went for the middle door.  After an eternity of wrestling with the doorknobs, I entered and spoke for the first time in weeks, -¿Que quiere Papi?-

The shower curtain was open, and I glimpsed a mess of dark hair and waving pink weenies below his waste.  But I was more interested in his contorted purple face.  Quick as a rattlesnake, my father closed the curtain and raged louder.

I shrank.  Before I could ask if he was angry at me, mother rushed in with chicken feathers in her right hand, a bloody knife in the other, and the constant fear in her face.

He parted the curtain and spit venom, “When are you going to take care of your daughter!?”

She stood there, silent, red blood dripping on our forever-clean bathroom floor.  For a brief moment, I understood her suffering.