Rafael Jesús González

on stamps and other things

2012-01-25T00:30:00.000-08:00

-
Last week, I walked to the post-office near my home to buy stamps and, having been told that postage would increase the following Monday, I asked to see what "forever" stamps were available. I was told that they had only four designs available: the U.S. flag, the Statue of Liberty, the Ronald Reagan centennial, and the Mercury Messenger.

Finding none of them appealing, I thought, for a second, of asking for the Ronald Reagan centennial (I could paste them up-side down on the envelope, I thought, or pen a Hitler mustache on his upper lip, or simply jolt my friends into a response.)

My hatred of Ronald Reagan and all he did is known to all who know me. It is not, I must say, an abstract hatred, but a personal one: as governor of California he dared to invade my city, Berkeley, terrorize its citizens; tear-gas, beat, and jail us; and kill at least one of us, an innocent by-stander merely watching the action from the roof of a near-by theater near the corner of Telegraph Avenue and Dwight.

The two-bit actor went on to the biggest role in his life to become president of the U.S. and carried on his policy of terrorism on an international scale. What we have seen ever since through the last Bush administration and on into the present one has been the logical outcome of the policies he put into place during his term in office. Those policies have terrorized the world, concentrated its wealth in the hands of the few, violated the Earth, and ruined the economy. The suffering in their wake is beyond measure; many are now awaking to the fact. Let us make sure that Ronny Reagan and his legacy is not forever.

I ended up buying the Mercury Messenger stamp.

R. J. G.

Reader Supported News
Reagan's Hand in Guatemala's Genocide

[Bettman/Corbis photo]

Robert Parry, Consortium News
Parry writes: "If there is one consensus in the mainstream US news media, it seems to be that not a discouraging word can be spoken about Ronald Reagan. On those rare occasions when major US news outlets do make mention of the Guatemalan genocide of the 1980s, they circumspectly reframe the story to avoid mentioning Reagan's role."
READ MORE

------------En El Salvador

Las balas encuentran sus nidos
en los pechos de monjas y de maestros —

---hay sangre en las manzanas
---hay llanto en los telares.

En la Casa Blanca
el malo actor de vaqueros desempleado
come dulces de goma
y dice:
--- — Los derechos humanos no nos importan.
---No es negocio nuestro lo que
---pasa en esos países. —
Y envía rifles y municiones
a los generales.

---Hay sangre en las manzanas
---hay llanto en los telares.

-----------In El Salvador

Bullets find their nests
in the breasts of nuns & of teachers —

---there is blood in the apples
---there are tears in the looms.

In the White House
the unemployed hack cowboy actor
eats jellybeans
& says:
---Human rights will not be
---our concern. It is not our
---business what happens in
---those countries.
& sends guns & bullets
to the generals.

---There is blood in the apples
---there are tears in the looms.

-------© Rafael Jesús González 2012

(RiverSedge, Vol. IV no. 2; author's copyrights.)

-

Year of the Dragon 4710

2012-01-23T00:00:00.000-08:00

Nine Dragons, Chen Rong, Sung Dynasty, 1244

Tanka for the Year of the Dragon

The sun's sky dragons,
the sea dragons of the moon
each grasps a fire-pearl,
for good fortune, too, is fierce,
to be welcomed with courage.

--------------© Rafael Jesús González 2012

Tanka para el año del dragón

Los dragones celestes del sol,
los dragones marinos de la luna,
cada uno coge una perla de fuego,
pues la buena fortuna también es feroz
para con valor ser bienvenida .

-------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2012

-
------------

Nine Dragons, Chen Rong, Sung Dynasty, 1244

--
-

Aquarius

2012-01-21T00:00:00.000-08:00

-

------------Acuario

A Acuario,
---el airoso,
------fijo en su servicio,
lo vigila Urano desde lejos;
Saturno le pesa como plomo
y su luz como granate ardiente
destella en el cántaro de amatista
que carga Acuario,
----sus tobillos, sus pantorrillas
----bañados en el aire fijo
----de sus ideales luminosos.

---------© Rafael Jesús González 2012

-------------Aquarius

Aquarius,
---the graceful,
------at ease in his service,
is watched by Uranus from afar;
Saturn weighs on him like lead
& its light like a burning garnet
bounces sparks on the amethyst jar
that Aquarius carries,
----his ankles, his calves
----bathed in the fixed air
----of his luminous ideals.

----------© Rafael Jesús González 2012
-
-
---

Spillway #17 reading, February 4

2012-01-20T00:00:00.000-08:00

********************************************

Spillway Magazine Reading

Saturday, February 4th, 2012

4:00 pm

Hosted by Editor Susan Terris

Celebration of the publication of Spillway #17,
which features over 25 San Francisco Bay Area Poets

Poets appearing will include:
Joan Baranow, Toby Bielawski,
Barbara Swift Bauer, Catharine Clark-Sayles,
Lucille Lang Day, CB Follett, Rafael Jesús González,
Dave Holt, Jodi Hottel, Janet Jennings, William Landis,
Gregory Mahrer, Myron Michael, Shawn Pittard,
Gregory Randall, Melita Schaum,
Jen Siraganian, and Gretchen Stengel.

BOOK PASSAGE

51 Tamal Vista Blvd.

Corte Madera, California 94925

-

Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929–April 4, 1968)

2012-01-15T00:00:00.000-08:00

-
Martin Luther King Jr.
by Yousul Karsh

----------After the Lecture

---------------------------for Martin Luther King Jr.

A woman said I was not polite
to the opposition,
that I was harsh
and did not encourage
discourse.

Perhaps if I were Christ,
I could say, “Forgive them
----for they know not what they do.”
Or the queen, and apologize
for stubbing my executioner’s toes.

But only if I knew
the executioners
----were mine only.

What courtesy have I the right to give
to them who break the bones,
----the souls of my brothers,
------------------my sisters;
deny bread, books
----to the hungry,
----the children;
--------medicine, healing
--------to the sick;
roofs to the homeless;

who spoil the oceans,
----lay waste the forests
--------and the deserts,
violate the land?

Affability on the lips
of outrage
is a sin and blasphemy
----I’ll not be guilty of.

----------© Rafael Jesús González 2012

--------Después del Discurso

------------------------a Martin Luther King Jr.

Una mujer me dijo que no fui cortés
con la oposición,
que fui duro
y que no animé
discusión.

Tal vez si fuera Cristo,
pudiera decir — Perdónalos
----que no saben lo que hacen. —
O la reina, y disculparme
por haber pisarle el pie a mi verdugo.

Pero solamente si supiera
que los verdugos
fueran solamente míos.

¿Qué cortesía tengo el derecho a darles
a los que quiebran los huesos
----y las almas de mis hermanos,
--------------------mis hermanas;
les niegan el pan, los libros
----a los hambrientos,
----a los niños;
--------la medicina, el sanar
--------a los enfermos;
techos a los desamparados;

que estropean los mares,
----que destruyen los bosques
--------y los desiertos,
violan la tierra?

Afabilidad en los labios
de la furia justa
es pecado y blasfemia
----de la cual no seré culpable.

---------© Rafael Jesús González 2012

Martin Luther King Jr.
by Tony Spina

-
-

full moon

2012-01-08T23:32:00.000-08:00

-

-----------Luna llena después

Lanzado el año nuevo,
después de las celebraciones
contando del nacer de un hombre-dios
anunciado por pandillas de ángeles
a toscos hombres entre sus ovejas,
reconocido en una estrella por reyes sabios
---— la luna llena todo ilumina.

---------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2012

---------Full Moon After

The new year launched,
after the celebrations
telling of a man-god's birth
announced by gangs of angels
to uncouth men among their sheep,
recognized in a star by wise kings
---— the full moon illumines all.

------------© Rafael Jesús González 2012

-

Epiphany — 12th Night

2012-01-05T19:00:00.000-08:00

- -

Adoration of the Magi, Andrea Mantegna 1495-1505

------------------ Magos

Pensar que yo, Baltasar de Caldea,
------tenedor de las cosas sacras,
------dejé los observatorios,
------cargado de incienso,
------para llegar allí.
Aun hasta al punto de encuentro fue largo;
para Melchor de Nubia cargado de oro,
para Gaspar de Tarso cargado de mirra,
fue aun más largo.
-----Y de allí a Judea
-----y más allá condujo el lucero —
-----------a la morada de animales,
-----------lugar natal del infante mendigo.
Si era dios,
---como todo dios,
---------ha de haber llegado a mal fin.
¿Qué significaban los agüeros?
-----Tal vez sería el viaje mismo,
---------oír de los leones de Nubia,
---------de los ríos de Tarso;
y sobre todo,
-----sí, tal vez sobre todo,
---------- el ofrendar.

---------© Rafael Jesús González 2012

Book of Hours, France, ca. 1410-1415
(The Cleveland Museum of Art)

---------------Magos

To think that I, Balthazar of Chaldea,
----keeper of the sacred things,
----left the observatories,
----laden with frankincense,
----to come there.
Even to the point of meeting it was long;
for Melchior of Nubia laden with gold,
for Gaspar of Tarshish laden with myrrh,
it was longer.
---And from there to Judea
---and the star led on —
--------to the abode of animals,
--------birthplace of the infant beggar.
If he was a god,
-----like all gods,
-----he must have come to a bad end.
What meant the auguries?
----Perhaps it was the trip itself,
-------to hear of the lions of Nubia,
-------of the rivers of Tarshish;
and above all,
----yes, perhaps above all,
-----------the gifting.

----------© Rafael Jesús González 2012
-
-

(Dear Winter: Poems for the Solstice;
Marie Harris, Ed.; Northwood Press, Thomaston, Maine 1984;
Author’s © copyrights)
-
--

for the Year 2012

2012-01-01T17:00:00.000-08:00

-

-----Olor de canela en el año 2012

Dicen los antiguos mayas
esos minuciosos sacerdotes del tiempo
que ahora llegamos al fin de su cuenta.
Se alinean los astros y los planetas
para comenzar un nueva cuenta
o cuento más bien
para nosotros que tanto
nos gusta el mito y el olor de la canela,
el chisme cósmico, el místico runrún.
Hacedores del mito y del tiempo
sujetos que seamos
al cantar de las estrellas,
cambiemos como cambiemos,
despertemos —
-------------------o no —
----------------------------a otro mundo
si dioses necesitemos
hagámoslos de nuestros mejores sueños,
creemos bien nuestros mitos
y plenamente gocemos del olor de la canela.

----------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2012

---Smell of Cinnamon in the Year 2012

The ancient Maya say,
those scrupulous priests of time,
that now we come to the end of their count.
The stars & planets align
to begin a new count
or rather account
for us who so much
like myth & the smell of cinnamon,
the cosmic gossip, the mystical rumor.
Makers of myth & of time
subject as we may be
to the singing of the stars,
change as we may change,
awake as we may —
-------------------or not —
--------------------------to another world,
if gods we need
let us make them from our best dreams,
let us create well our myths
& fully delight in the smell of cinnamon.

-------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2012

-

New Year 2012

2012-01-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

A-

- श्रीगणेश

Invocación a Ganesh

Om Shri Ganeshaaya Namah

Sentado en el centro
(rodeado de calaveras)
donde el lazo de los años se anuda,
goloso señor cabeza de elefante,
levántate y baila la cuenta nueva;
con tu hacha derrumba
los obstáculos
a nuestro vivir,
pisotea los obstáculos
a nuestro amar,
y haz dulce el camino nuevo.
Que tus familiares
el ratón y la rata roen
al almacén de las bendiciones;
que tu serpiente hable.
Con tu colmillo
en el libro de lo que fue
escribe lo que pueda ser
y de tu caracol sopla
el sonido primordial de lo que es.

----------© Rafael Jesús González 2012

(Spillway 17, ontoño 2011,
derechos reservados del autor)

[De los muchos dioses hindú, Ganesh, dios de dharma y del buen agüero, es el más popularmente amado y venerado. Sus características son su cabeza de elefante y su barriga gorda que metafísicamente se dice contiene todo el cosmos. Sus familiares son el ratón y la rata porque roen por los obstáculos y frecuentan los almacenes de abundancia. Generoso donador de beneficios y derribador de obstáculos, él es el patrón de los comienzos, del desarrollo, de la liberación, de las empresas, tanto físicas como espirituales. Como tal, él es el primero de todos los dioses en ser invocado y se le pide su bendición al comienzo de un día, de una carta, de un rito, de cualquier empresa. Amable guía por las alturas y los abismos de la vida, se dice que él es la buena fortuna manifiesta, la sabiduría descubierta y la abundancia desbordante. Hay 1008 nombres para describir sus poderes divinos y su bendición es un verdadero don.]

Invocation to Ganesh

Om Shri Ganeshaaya Namah

Seated in the center
(ringed with skulls)
where the noose of years is tied,
sweet-toothed, elephant-headed lord,
rise & dance the new count;
ax down the obstacles
to our living,
trample the obstacles
to our loving,
& make sweet the new path.
Let your familiars
the mouse & the rat
gnaw through
to the storehouse of blessings;
let your snake speak.
With your tusk,
in your book of what was,
write what may be
& from your conch blow
the primordial sound of what is.

(Spillway 17, Fall 2011;
author's copyrights)

[Of the many Hindu gods, Ganesh, god of dharma and good portent, is the most widely loved and revered. His distinctive traits are his elephant head and his fat belly metaphysically said to contain the entire cosmos. His familiars are the mouse and the rat because they gnaw through obstacles and frequent larders of plenty. Generous Boon-Giver and Remover of Obstacles, he is patron of beginnings, of growth, of liberation, enterprises, both physical and spiritual. As such, he is the first of all the gods to be invoked and his blessing asked at the start of a day, a letter, a ritual, any undertaking. Gentle guide through the ups and downs of life, he is said to be good fortune manifest, wisdom revealed, time embodied, and abundance over-flowing. There are 1008 names to describe his divine powers and his blessing is a gift indeed.]

-

Alameda Island Poets Reading — January 4, 2012

2011-12-27T00:00:00.000-08:00

---

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year, Poets!

We are beginning the New Year, January 4, 2012 with a very special Featured Reader. Rafael Jesús Gónzalez, professor of literature and creative writing has taught at the University of Oregon, Western State College of Colorado, Central Washington State University, University of Texas, El Paso (as a visiting professor of Philosophy) and at Laney College, Oakland, where he founded the Dept. of Mexican and Latin American Studies. He has also taught in the k-12 elementary and high schools as part of the Poets in the Classroom program. His poetry and articles appear in reviews and anthologies in the U.S., Mexico and abroad. In 1996 he was named "Poet in Residence" at the Oakland Museum. In 2005, he was invited to read his poetry and present a paper at the World Congress of Poets in Tai'an, Province of Shandong, China. In 2006, he was named Universal Ambassador of Peace, Universal Ambassador Peace Circle, Geneva, Switzerland. In 2007 he presented a paper and read his poetry at the 8 Encuentro Literario Internacional aBrace in Montevideo, Uruguay, and in 2008 he read his poetry in Havana, Cuba. In October, 2009 he was honored by the City of Berkeley for his life's work in writing, art, teaching, activism for social justice and peace, and community work. He currently sits on the Latino Advisory Council of the Oakland Museum. His book of moon poems La musa lunática/The Lunatic Muse was published by Pandemonium Press, Berkeley in 2009.

We are very honored to host
Rafael Jesús González
as our first Featured Reader for 2012
on January 4

he will be accompanied on the flute by
Gerardo Omar Marín
(musician, ritualist,
Restorative Justice, Environmental, & Food Justice activist)

Featured Reader from 7:00 - 7:35pm

Open Mic until 9:00pm.

Light Refreshments will be served.

Books Inc, 1344 Park St.

Alameda, California 94501

Books Inc is located at 1344 Park St., Alameda, 94501
telephone (510) 522-2226 or (510) 995-8698
Parking is available at the public lot on Oak St. near the intersection of Oak St. and Central St. Also a public lot (free after 6pm) located directly across from the Alameda Theater. Street parking is also available.

Alameda Island Poets
is a multicultural, multigenerational reading series.
All are welcomed and invited to include your voice!

Nanette Bradley Deetz
Coordinator, Reading Series

Christmas blessings

2011-12-24T17:00:00.000-08:00

-
---------A esto

Se dice que
el fulgor de un lucero
y el cantar de ángeles
anunciaron el nacer
del dios hecho hombre,
del niño nacido
entre animales domésticos.

Sea lo que sea el cuento
de la trágica y gloriosa
trayectoria de su vida,
todo se reduce a esto:
---enseñó a amar.

----© Rafael Jesús González 2011

-------------To This

It is said
that the brightness of a star
& the singing of angels
announced the birth
of the god made man,
the child born
among domestic animals.

Whatever is the story
of the tragic & glorious
trajectory of his life,
it all comes to this:
---he taught to love.

----© Rafael Jesús González 2011

-

Capricorn — Winter Solstice

2011-12-22T00:00:00.000-08:00

Capricorn — Winter Solstice

-

------Capricornio

La cabra, piel hirsuta,
---cuernos de turquesa,
---ojos de granate,
---pesuñas de plomo,
se arrodilla a Saturno,
planeta de sortijas,
en la noche larga
----y persevera, dura
----en su anhelo de cornear
el punto cardinal de la tierra.

----------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

------Capricorn

The goat, hirsute hide,
-----horns of turquoise
-----garnet eyes,
-----hoofs of lead,
kneels to Saturn,
planet of rings,
in the long night
---& perseveres, persists
---in his desire to gore
the cardinal point of the earth.

----------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

-
-

Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe

2011-12-12T00:00:00.000-08:00

-
-

Juan Diego's cloak

------Rezo a Tonantzin

Tonantzin
---madre de todo
---lo que de ti vive,
es, habita, mora, está;
Madre de todos los dioses
------------------las diosas
madre de todos nosotros,
-------la nube y el mar
-------la arena y el monte
-------el musgo y el árbol
-------el ácaro y la ballena.

Derramando flores
haz de mi manto un recuerdo
que jamás olvidemos que tú eres
único paraíso de nuestro vivir.

Bendita eres,
cuna de la vida, fosa de la muerte,
fuente del deleite, piedra del sufrir.

concédenos, madre, justicia,
--------concédenos, madre, la paz.

---------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

anonymous, Mexico 1746

----Prayer to Tonantzin

Tonantzin
-----mother of all
-----that of you lives,
be, dwells, inhabits, is;
Mother of all the gods
---------------the goddesses
Mother of us all,
---------the cloud & the sea
---------the sand & the mountain
---------the moss & the tree
---------the mite & the whale.

Spilling flowers
make of my cloak a reminder
that we never forget that you are
the only paradise of our living.

Blessed are you,
cradle of life, grave of death,
fount of delight, rock of pain.

Grant us, mother, justice,
-------grant us, mother, peace.

--------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

by Robert Lentz
-

-
-

full moon

2011-12-10T06:36:00.000-08:00

first full moon over Occupy Oakland 11/10/11

---------------Luna ocupante

La luna plena
que marca acontecimientos —
el encuentro de un amigo en el parque,
la ocupación de una calle o una plaza
con campamento de carpas brotando
como hongos extraterrestres
de todos colores del arco iris —
ocupa todo —
esquinas y rincones, atrios y parques.
Con su luz ocupa todo lo que encuentre.

No se le ocurriría
al policía más bárbaro
regarla con gas lacrimógeno.

Sería por demás —
aunque de vez en cuando
se sonroje y se esconda
en la sombra de la tierra
-----------la luna no llora.

----------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

police points gun, Occupy Oakland
photo by James Fassinger

----------Occupying moon

The full moon
that marks happenings —
meeting a friend in a park,
the occupation of a street or a plaza
with an encampment of tents sprouting
like extraterrestrial mushrooms
all the colors of the rainbow —
occupies everything —
outer & inner corners, atriums & parks.
With its light it occupies all it finds.

It would never occur
even to the most barbaric police
to spray her with tear gas.

It would be useless —
even though now & again
she may blush & hide
in the shadow of the Earth
--------------the moon does not cry.

-------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

Occupy Oakland, Frank Ogawa Plaza

Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T00:00:00.000-08:00

-

-----------------Grace

Thanks & blessing be
to the Sun & the Earth
for this bread & this wine,
----this fruit, this meat, this salt,
---------------this food;
thanks be & blessing to them
who prepare it, who serve it;
thanks & blessing to them
who share it
-----(& also the absent & the dead.)
Thanks & blessing to them who bring it
--------(may they not want),
to them who plant & tend it,
harvest & gather it
--------(may they not want);
thanks & blessing to them who work
--------& blessing to them who cannot;
may they not want — for their hunger
------sours the wine
----------& robs the salt of its taste.
Thanks be for the sustenance & strength
for our dance & the work of justice, of peace.

----------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

(The Montserrat Review, Issue 6, Spring 2003
[nominated for the Hobblestock Peace Poetry Award];
author’s copyrights.)

-------------Gracias

Gracias y benditos sean
el Sol y la Tierra
por este pan y este vino,
-----esta fruta, esta carne, esta sal,
----------------este alimento;
gracias y bendiciones
a quienes lo preparan, lo sirven;
gracias y bendiciones
a quienes lo comparten
(y también a los ausentes y a los difuntos.)
Gracias y bendiciones a quienes lo traen
--------(que no les falte),
a quienes lo siembran y cultivan,
lo cosechan y lo recogen
-------(que no les falte);
gracias y bendiciones a los que trabajan
-------y bendiciones a los que no puedan;
que no les falte — su hambre
-----hace agrio el vino
-----------y le roba el gusto a la sal.
Gracias por el sustento y la fuerza
para nuestro bailar y nuestra labor
--------por la justicia y la paz.

---------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

(The Montserrat Review, no. 6, primavera 2003
[nombrado para el Premio de la Poesía por la Paz Hobblestock;
derechos reservados del autor.)

-
---- -

Sagittarius

2011-11-21T00:00:00.000-08:00

-
-

-
------------Sagitario

El arquero apunta a Júpiter,
----planeta de tantas lunas,
cuya luz se refleja en sus ancas,
y en la punta de topacio de su saeta
brota la llama inconstante del anhelo.
------En cadena de estaño
------lleva pectoral de turquesa
------bruñida de ensueños
---------y apunta
-------------------y apunta
---------y anhela herir al cielo.

----------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

-------------Sagittarius

The archer points at Jupiter,
-----planet of many moons
whose light reflects on his haunches,
& on the topaz point of his arrow
bursts the inconstant flame of his desire.
------On a chain of tin
------he wears a medallion of turquoise
------polished by dreams
---------& he points
----------------------& he points
------& desires to wound the sky.

----------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011
-

Occupy

2011-11-15T00:00:00.000-08:00

-Universal Flag of Peace

------------- To Occupy

---------(definition & declaration)

1. We are here to seize possession of

& maintain control over

----not the Earth, but the world

not by military conquest

but peaceably, without violence.

2. We are here to fill up;

-------------take time & space

to make known our grievances,

to say that the Earth & its riches

are for us all to share

(with our brothers & sisters, our relations

the other animals, the plants, the minerals),

that greed & lust for power over others,

over the Earth, are not virtues but sins,

that the fruits of what we produce

are ours to share.

3. We are here to dwell & reside in;

be tenants of the Earth & the world,

------a world of our creation

in which, as the great teachers have taught,

love is the greatest virtue,

root & source of justice

without which there can be no peace.

4. We are here to hold & fill

our office & position as citizens,

not only of this country, this empire,

------but of the world

in union with all who hold sacred

the Earth, one another,

our relations the other animals

the trees, the brush, the grass,

the air, the fire, the water, the soil.

5. We are here to engage, to employ,

& to busy ourselves with all peaceful means

to say that we will no longer stand idle

in the face of injustice & knavery,

in the face of perpetual war,

in the face of power that is used

only for the good of the few

at the expense of the rest

& of the Earth

------Yes, we are here to occupy,

-- ----& we will not go away.

(to be appear in OCCUPY SF - poems from the movement anthology, 2012)

Arrest of Francisco "Pancho" Ramos-Stierle,

Oakland, California, November 14, 2011

photo by Noah Berger

----------------A Ocupar

----------(definición y declaración)

1. Aquí estamos para tomar posesión de

& mantener control sobre

------no la Tierra sino el mundo

no por conquista militar

sino apaciblemente, sin violencia.

2. Aquí estamos para llenar;

---------tomar tiempo y espacio

para hacer saber nuestras quejas,

para decir que la Tierra y sus riquezas

son de todos nosotros para compartir

(con nuestr@s herman@s, nuestra parentela

los otros animales, las plantas, los minerales);

que la codicia y el deseo del poder sobre otros,

sobre la Tierra, no son virtudes sino pecados,

que los frutos de lo que producimos

son nuestros para compartir.

3. Aquí estamos para habitar y residir en,

ser inquilinos de la Tierra y del mundo,

------un mundo de nuestra creación

en que como han enseñado l@s grandes maestr@s

el amar es la más grande virtud,

la raíz y fuente de la justicia

sin la cual no puede haber paz.

4. Aquí estamos para tener y llenar

nuestro puesto y posición como ciudadanos,

no sólo de este país, este emperio,

---- --sino del mundo

en unión con todos que tengan por sagrada

a la Tierra, los unos a los otros,

a nuestra parentela los otros animales,

a los árboles, los arbustos, las hierbas,

al aire, al fuego, al agua, a la tierra.

5. Aquí estamos para empeñarnos, emplearnos,

y dedicarnos con todos medios pacíficos

para decir que ya no nos quedaremos quietos

ante la injusticia y la bribonada,

ante guerra perpetua,

ante el poder que se usa

solamente para el bien de los cuantos

a costo de los demás

y de la Tierra.

------Sí, aquí estamos para ocupar,

----------y no nos iremos.

(aparecerá en OCCUPY SF - antología de poemas del movimiento, 2012)

photo by D. Scot Miller
-
-

Veterans Day

2011-11-11T00:00:00.000-08:00

-
-
[Precious little has changed; the U.S. of A. is still in the quagmire of illegal, immoral, untenable war. We are still in Iraq, sinking more deeply in Afghanistan, unofficially involved in Pakistan. And in these times of financial breakdown, it is hardly brought up as an issue; it lies there like the putrefying body of an elephant, ignored and stinking to the high heavens while the politicians insist that funding for health care, education, social security, healing the Earth be cut when what we waste in war could cover all those expenses with more to spare. I take hope in that "Occupy Wall Street", "Occupy Oakland", "Occupy" wherever, is an indication that we are awaking from the nightmare that the "American Dream" has so long ignored.]

-Veterans Day

When the First World War officially ended June 28, 1919, the actual fighting had already stopped the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month the previous year. Armistice Day, as it was known, later became a national holiday, and in 1954 (the year I graduated from high school), the name was changed to Veterans Day to honor all U.S. veterans of all wars.

The only veteran of that war, “the war to end all wars”, I ever knew was my father’s step-father Benjamín Armijo, from New Mexico, an old man who seldom spoke and whom I would on occasion see wearing his cap of The American Legion. (He was also Republican.)

“The war to end all wars” was anything but that and when I was not much more than five, three of my uncles on my mother’s side (Roberto, Armando, Enrique) went off to fight another war, the Second World War.

I missed my uncles and remembered them by their photos on my grandmother’s home altar, very handsome in their uniforms; in the endless rosaries and litanies the women in the family regularly met to pray; and in the three blue stars that hanged in the window.

My uncle Roberto, tío Beto, did not last his second year; he came home and ulcers and los nervios, nerves, were mentioned. My uncle Armando, tío Pana, in the Infantry division or the Cavalry Division (though not one horse was ever ridden into battle in that war), served in the Pacific Theater, and Guadalcanal is a name that in some way sticks in his history. My uncle Enrique, tío Kiki, the youngest, in the Airborne Division, the “Screaming Eagles,” served in the European Theater and parachuted into the taking of Germany.

After that war ended, they came home, tío Pana into a hospital, sick with malaria which affected him throughout the rest of his life; tío Kiki with a malady in the soul not so easily diagnosed, hidden in his quiet humor, gentle ways. All my uncles were gentle men, in all senses of the word. And Beto, Pana, Kiki spoke not at all about their experiences of war in spite of my curiosity and questions which they diverted with a little joke or change of subject. What they had seen, felt was apparently not to be spoken and the family sensed this and respected their reticence. Neither of them joined the Veterans of Foreign Wars that I ever knew.

Enrique González Prieto

The Korean War “broke out”, as they say, as if it were acne, not long after. But as for me, I have never fought in any war, though I joined the U. S. Navy upon graduating from El Paso High School to become a Hospital Corpsman and obtain the G.I. Bill with which to enter Pre-Med studies upon my discharge; two of four years in the Navy I spent in the Marine Corps with the rank of Staff Sergeant. The Korean War had already ended. And though I served closely enough to it to be given the Korea Defense Service Medal and am legally a veteran and eligible to join the VFW, I never did nor do I intend to.

If I consider myself veteran of any war, it would be of the Viet-Nam War, not because I fought in it, far from it, but because I struggled against it. (I counseled conscientious objectors, picketed recruiting offices, marched in the streets.) The war veterans I have most intimately known are from that war, many, if not most, wounded and ill in body (from bullets, shrapnel, agent-orange), wounded and ill in the soul (terror, guilt, shame, hatred putrefying their dreams, tainting their loves.)

I am leery of being asked to honor veterans of almost any war, except as I honor the suffering, the being of every man or woman who ever lived. I am sick of “patriotism” behind which so many scoundrels hide. I am sick of war that has stained almost every year of my life. Especially now, in the midst of yet another unjustified, immoral, illegal, untenable, cynical, cruel war our nation wages in Iraq, in Afghanistan. I am impatient with fools who ask whether I “support our troops.”

What does it mean to “support our troops”? What is a troop but a herd, a flock, a band? What is a troop but a group of actors whose duty it is not to reason why, but to do and die? In the years I served in the Navy and Marine Corps as a medic, I never took care of a troop; I took care of men who had been wounded and hurt, who cut themselves and bled, who suffered terrible blisters on their feet from long marches, who fell ill sick with high fevers. If to support means to carry the weight of, keep from falling, slipping, or sinking, give courage, faith, help, comfort, strengthen, provide for, bear, endure, tolerate, yes, I did, and do support all men and women unfortunate enough to go to war.

Troops, I do not. If to support means to give approval to, be in favor of, subscribe to, sanction, uphold, then I do not. The decision to make war was/is not theirs to make; troops are what those who make the decisions to war use (to kill and to be killed, to be brutalized into torturers) for their own ends, not for ours, certainly not for the sake of the men and woman who constitute the “troops.”

Indeed, I find the question whether I "support our troops" offensive, cynical, hypocritical given that we care so little for our veterans: so many are homeless; find no work; have little care for their wounds, physical and psychological; little for their addictions; many are in prison; many commit suicide. This acknowledged, the "patriotism" the question pretends is hollow and blind.

I honor veterans of war the only way in which I know how to honor: with compassion; with respect; with understanding for how they were/are used, misled, indoctrinated, coerced, wasted, hurt, abandoned; with tolerance for their beliefs and justifications; with efforts to see that their wounds, of body and of soul, are treated and healed, their suffering and sacrifice compensated. I never refuse requests for donations to any veterans’ organization that seeks benefits and services for veterans. I honor veterans, men and woman; not bands, not troops.

If you look to my window on this day, the flag you will see hanging there will be the rainbow flag of peace. It hangs there in honor of every veteran of any war of any time or place. Indoors, I will light a candle and burn sage, recommit myself to the struggle for justice and for peace. Such is the only way I know in which to honor the veterans (and victims) of war, military or civilian.

Berkeley, November 11, 2007

-
-

full moon

2011-11-10T16:55:00.000-08:00

--------------------¿Qué busca la luna?

¿Qué busca la luna

en los rincones?

¿Alguna cuenta perdida

de jade o de cornerina,

una perla extraviada?

¿secretos de la soledad

hechos de lanilla y polvo?

Cuando se mete por la ventana

¿qué busca en los libreros?

¿algún título olvidado

que merezca leerse otra vez?

¿tal vez un verso

que aliviara al corazón

cansado con amar?

Dime, luna ¿qué buscas

en los libreros,

--------las mesas,

------------los rincones?

-------------------What Does the Moon Seek?

What does the moon seek

in the corners?

Some lost bead

of jade or carnelian,

a wayward pearl?

The secrets of solitude

made of lint & dust?

When it comes through the window,

what does it seek in the bookcases?

Some forgotten title

that merits reading again?

Perhaps a verse

that would sooth the heart

tired with loving?

Tell me, moon, what do you seek

in the bookcases,

--------the tables,

-------------the corners?

Feast of All Souls (Día de Muertos)

2011-11-02T00:00:00.000-07:00

--

--
--Consejo para el peregrino a Mictlan

------------------------(al modo Nahua)

Cruza el campo amarillo de cempoales,
baja al reino de las sombras;
es amplio, es estrecho.
Interroga a los ancianos;
son sabios, son necios:

— Señores míos, Señoras mías,
¿Qué verdad dicen sus flores, sus cantos?
¿Son verdaderamente bellas, ricas sus plumas?
¿No es el oro sólo excremento de los dioses?
Sus jades, ¿son los más finos, los más verdes?
Su legado, ¿es tinta negra, tinta roja? —

Acepta sólo lo preciso:

-----lo que te haga amplio el corazón
--------lo que te ilumine el rostro.

------------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

-----Advice for the Pilgrim to Mictlan

------------------- (in the Nahua mode)

Cross the yellow fields of marigolds,
descend to the realm of shadows;
it is wide, it is narrow.
Question the ancients;
they are wise, they are fools:

— My Lords, My Ladies,
What truth do your flowers, your songs tell?
Are your feathers truly lovely, truly rich?
Is not gold only the excrement of the gods?
Your jades, are they the finest, the most green?
Your legacy, is it black ink, red ink? —

Accept only the necessary:

-----what will widen your heart
----what will enlighten your face.

------------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

Descent to Mictlan, The Land of the Dead

(Trance Poem in the Nahua Mode)

[Descent to Mictlan, Land of the Dead: Trance Poem in the Nahua mode (commissioned by the Oakland Museum of California while the author was Poet in Residence under a Writers on Site award by Poets & Writers, Inc. and a grant from The James Irvine Foundation in 1996) was written as a performance piece for voice, drums, didgeridoos, and movement intended to guide the audience upon an introspective journey of the imagination down into the kingdom of Death.

It is not so much entertainment as it is ritual art which, with the consent of each person in the audience to give himself or herself to their imagination, would induce the heightened perception of trance to descend into our collective and personal past to examine the legacy of our ancestors. What they have given us, we have become. It may be read by the attentive reader in the same way.

The times demand that we take stock of who we are, for our great Mother the Earth is wounded and, to heal her, we must heal ourselves, learn from the wisdom of our forebears and discard their mistakes. And in return for what each brings back from the store house of the past, each must make a commitment, in good faith, to change and to heal ourselves; and to care for and protect the Earth, all that she bears, and each other in brotherhood and sisterhood of the spirit and of the flesh. It is a gift and a blessing. Any less and we risk our own extinction on the Earth.]

Cruzad el campo amarillo de cempoales.
Cross the yellow fields of marigolds.
Bajad al reino de las sombras — es amplio, es estrecho.
Descend to the realm of shadows — it is wide, it is narrow.

We come to the mouth of the cavern of caverns,
realm of Mictlantecuhtli, Mictlancihuatl,
Señor-Señora Muerte, Our Lord, Our Lady of Death —
It is wide, it is narrow;
pasad, enter this chamber of yellow blooms,
--------the cempoalxochitl, the shield flower,
------------flor de muertos, flower of the Dead.

We step, we walk;
-----we walk the sacred;
---------every step is sacred.
We walk in the tracks of our ancestors,
we step in the tracks of the old ones,
----our grandmothers, our grandfathers,
----the ancients:
--------the people of the drum
--------the people of the canoe
--------the people of the pyramids
--------the people of the spear
--------the people of the shuttle and loom
--------the people of the sickle and plow,
------------our ancient ones, all of the clans.
They taught us to see;
they taught us not to see;
-----from them we learned to see;
-----------we learned not to see.
They taught us to dream;
------they taught us to fear;
-----------much to learn, much to unlearn.
We step in their tracks, we step on the sacred.

We walk, we step in the tracks of our ancestors,
----our relations:
---------the ocelot
---------the buffalo
---------the coyote
---------the bear
---------the salmon, the serpent, the eagle, the hawk,
---------monkey, turtle, frog,
---------the owl and the bat.
Further, further we walk:
the spider, the moth, the fly, the coral, the mite,
ameba, paramecium, germ, virus - all of the clans.
They taught us to see, to live in the now,
------to smell, to taste,
------to hear, to live in the now.
We step in their tracks,
-----we walk on the sacred —
---------all our relations, all of the clans.

We walk, we step in the tracks of our ancestors,
our relations:
-----the fern, the redwood
-----the pine, the oak
-----the cactus, the mesquite
-----the violet, the rose
-----the fig, the grape-vine, the wheat
-----the corn, the thistle, the grass
-----the mushroom, the moss, the lichen, the algae,
-----the mold — all of the clans.
They taught us to touch, to fully delight in the here,
------to find contentment on the here.
We step in their tracks,
-----we walk on the sacred —
---------all our relations, all of the clans.

We walk, we step
-----in the tracks of our ancestors, our relations:
--------the granite, the sandstone
--------the jasper, the serpentine
--------the turquoise, the flint
--------the opal, the crystal
--------the agate, the jade
--------the gold, the iron
----the silver, the lead, the copper, the tin,
----boulder, pebble, sand, dust — all of the clans.
They taught us silence, quiet;
------they taught us to stay, to be.
We step in their track,
-----we walk on the sacred —
---------all our relations, all of the clans.

------It is dark; it is light —
here the roots of the Tree of Life,
------árbol de la vida, tree of Tamoanchan.
Look: wealth, treasure, our inheritance.
Look: teocuitatl, oro, gold, shit of the gods
-------chalchihuitl, jade, jade, the green stone
-------quetzalli, plumas, feathers, the precious things
-------xochitl, flores, the roots of flowers —
gifts and burdens,
------the useful, the hindering,
----------the dark medicine, the glittering poison.
Pick and choose: empowering joys there are,
--------------------useless sorrows there are;
needs true — clear and lovely as water
desires true — ruddy and joyous as wine;
--------needs false and deadly as arsenic
--------desires false and deadly as knives;
swords of jewels, plows muddied and dulled by stones;
--------dazzling powders, herbs rich in visions.
Choose and sort — it is not much you can carry.

Our ancestors, our relations make council; listen:

Much have our mothers, our fathers
-------our grandmothers, our grandfathers
-------our ancestors left us:
-----------gifts are there for our blessing
-----------debts are there for our curse.

Interroga a los ancianos — son sabios, son necios.
Question the ancients — they are wise, they are fools.

Señores míos, Señoras mías — my Lords, my Ladies,
---------¿Qué verdad dicen sus flores, sus cantos?
---------What truth do your flowers, your songs tell?
---------¿Són verdaderamente bellas, ricas sus plumas?
---------Are your feathers truly lovely, truly rich?
---------¿No es el oro sólo excremento de los dioses?
---------Is not gold only the excrement of the gods?
---------Sus jades, ¿son los más finos, los más verdes?
---------Your jades, are they the finest, the most green?
---------Su legado, ¿es tinta negra, tinta roja?
---------Your legacy, is it black ink, red ink?

They offer gifts, they give teachings:
------precious, worthless
------healing, dangerous —

sort, choose — choose the precious, the healing;
-----------------discard the worthless, the harmful;
------there is much to learn, there is much to unlearn.
Choose - each offers gifts, our ancestors, our relations —
---------human, animal, plant, mineral —
------------------they are us, our relations.
Choose and sort, sort and choose
---------these gifts are of the Earth, la Tierra
---------these gifts celebrate and nurture her
---------these gifts blaspheme and destroy her
---------------------These gifts are of the Earth.
Sort and choose, choose and sort.
-----The ancients are wise, the ancients are fools;
----------riches they gathered, garbage they hoarded.
Acepta sólo lo preciso; accept only the necessary:
--------lo que te haga amplio el corazón
--------what will widen your heart
--------lo que te ilumine el rostro
--------what will enlighten your face.
Pick and choose —
------hush —
--------------in silence sort and choose, sort and choose.

Hush —
----------Look carefully - have we chosen well?
the way back is hard, full of dread
----and much have our ancestors left us.
---------What of their gifts is worth the sharing?
----------------Consider well —
------------------------the gold and the jeweled sword
--------------------is not more than the work-dulled plow.
Consider, test your choice —
---------------------------------hush —
Tasks await us on the Earth for our healing, for hers —
-------difficult, great.
---------------Choose well for the journey, for the work.
hush —
---------remember:
----------------------joy is the root of our strength,
------------- the roots that feed us come from the heart
---------the science most wise disturbs least —

-----hush — hush — hush

So, we choose what we choose.
Remember: from these gifts we make our own;
--------------we add to the hoard.
-------Do not burden the children.
Do not carry so much we cannot hold each other’s hands.
----Remember: the most precious treasure
-----------------is that which we take for the giving.

We choose what we choose —
-----make ready — take up your bundle,
-----the seeds of our making - it is light, it is heavy;
-----precious are the bones of our ancestors;
-----leaving them buried makes them no less precious;
they are of the Earth, Madre Tierra, Coatlicue,
-----------------Pachi Mama, the Earth needs them.
------ehecatl, aire, air
------tletl, fuego, fire
------atl, agua, water
------tlalli, tierra, earth.

Make ready to leave the store house, the treasure;
walk round the cavern once as the clock turns
------from the East, red and gold with knowledge
------to the South yellow and green with love
------to the West black and blue with strength
------to the North white with healing.
You are now at the threshold — it is wide, it is narrow
-----------------------------------it is dark, it is light
-----------------------------------it is steep, it is plain.
Do not look back;
leave Mictlan, reino de la muerte, realm of the dead;
-------leave the cave of the ancients,
--------------the cave of our treasure;
------------------begin the way back.
What you bring back from the land of the dead,
-------from among the bones of the ancestors,
-------------is your gift to life.
---------------------Pray the gods you choose well.

Vuelve, vuelve, return.

It is your commitment,
-----the healing of yourself and the Earth.
What will you do?
-------How will you honor the ancestors?
-------------What will you say to the children?
--------------------What will you do for justice and peace?

Vuelve, vuelve, return.
Go, vete —
------------lleva la bendición de la vida;
------------------carry the blessing of life.
------------Go, vete —
form a face, form a heart.
forma un rostro, un corazón
in ixtli, in yollotl

Go, vete, go —
que los dioses te tengan, may the gods keep you.

In whatever you do, bendice la vida,
--------------pass on the blessing of life.

Vete y bendice la vida;
-----Go and pass on the blessing of life.

Vete, ha acabado; Go, the journey is finished —

Vete y empieza un día nuevo,
-----Go and begin a new day.

-----Vete, Go.

-
-

Feast of All Saints (Mexico's Día de Muertos through the centuries)

2011-11-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

-
--

*-------*------*

Pre-Hispanic Mexico

Awed by the eternal cycle of life and death and the need of sacrifice to assure the continuation of life, ages before the Spaniards came to the Americas, the peoples of ancient Mexico, particularly the Nahuas, of which the Mexica (generally called Aztecs) formed a part, celebrated the dead in a great feast quite different from the one we know today. It began on August 8, by the European calendar, and they called it Micailhuitontli, Small Feast of the Dead, to honor their dead children. On that morning, the people went to the forest and cut down a tall, straight tree which they brought to the gates of the city. There, for twenty days, they blessed the tree and stripped it of its bark.

During those twenty days, they did ritual, sacrificed, feasted, danced, and made offerings to the dead of cempoalxochitl flowers, fire, copal, food, and drink. Then, on August 28, which they called Huey Micailhuitl (Great Feast of the Dead), in honor of their adult dead, they made a large figure of a bird perched on flowering branches out of amaranth seed dough, painted it brightly, and decorated it with colorful feathers. They fixed the dough bird to the end of the tree trunk, raised it in the courtyard of the Great Temple, and honored it with more offerings, singing, copal, dances, sacrifice, and bloodletting.

One hour before sunset, the young noblemen climbed the pole to bring down the figure of the bird. The youths who reached the top first and brought down the dough figure were much honored. They broke it up and passed it out among the people to eat; they called it “flesh of the god.” Then they brought down the pole and broke it up, and everyone tried to take a piece of it back to their homes because it was holy.

The pole and its god-bird on flowering branches must have stood for the mythical Tree of Life that grew in the earthly paradise of Tamoanchan. The blood of sacrifice nourished the Tree of Life, just as Quetzalcoatl, Plumed Serpent, God of Life, shed his blood to create humankind. The ritual of the pole and the flesh of the god honored the fact that life cannot be separated from death; we live and die, and our deaths are the price of living.

Composed of both joy and pain, life is brief and uncertain, its end a question that disquiets the heart. Many poems addressing this sad truth were composed by the Nahua poets, the most famous of whom was Nezahualcoyotl, King of Texcoco, who said:

------------------Is it true that one lives on earth?
------------------Perhaps forever on the earth?
------------------Only a brief instant here!

------------------Even the precious stones chip away,
------------------even the gold falls apart,
------------------even the precious feathers tear.
------------------Perhaps forever on the earth?
------------------Only a brief instant here!

The peoples of ancient Mexico created wonderful pieces of sacred art in which life and death are united. The greatest, perhaps, is the great Coatlicue (now in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City), who was at one and the same time terrifying and life-giving, the goddess of life and death, Earth-Mother of the gods, of humankind: mother of all. They carved statues depicting Quetzalcoatl, God of Life, on one side, and on the other, Mictlantecuhtli, God of Death. They painted pictures of the gods of life and death indivisibly joined together, such as the ones in the Borgia Codex, one of the very few of their marvelous books that survive.

When someone died, a piece of green-stone was placed in his or her mouth to take the place of the heart. The people believed that most of the dead went to a gray region of shadows called Mictlan (Land of the Dead), led by a little dog through nine levels of trials. Only the warriors killed in battle, the victims of sacrifice, and the women who had died in childbirth went to the realm of the Sun. Suicides and those who drowned, or were struck by lightning, or died of certain illnesses associated with water went to the place of Tlaloc, God of the Rain. Children who died young went to the realm of Ometeotl, Lord/Lady of Duality, to be nursed by a tree in a place called Chichihualcuauhco.

Mexico under Spain

These were the beliefs and the customs of the natives when the Spaniards came to Mexico and conquered Tenochtitlan and the Mexica empire in 1521. Along with the horse, the gun, and disease, the Europeans brought a new religion, Christianity. They called the people Indians and forced them to convert.

Some of the Christian beliefs were similar to the ancient ones: the Sun had demanded bleeding hearts torn from sacrificial victims to pay for life; God the Father required the bloody sacrifice of his only Son to pay for salvation. Coatlicue had conceived the god Huitzilopochtli without intercourse with a man; the virgin Mary had also miraculously conceived Jesus. The Indians ate the “flesh of the god’’ in a piece of amaranth dough; Christians ate the flesh of Christ in a piece of unleavened bread. Indians did penance; so did the Christians.

But some of the Christian beliefs were entirely new to the natives, such as the notion of a place where the dead went as either reward or punishment for how they had lived their lives: a happy heaven, with angels, saints, and gods (as they perceived the Trinity) and a painful hell, full of demons and evildoers. The new Mother of God was not terrible, as Coatlicue was, but sweet and demure as she stood on the black obsidian moon in front of the sun and wore the starry night sky for her cloak. Tonantzin, Mother of Us All, was now called Our Lady of Guadalupe, an Arabic place-name of Moorish Spain.

In spite of their conversion, the native people kept their ancient customs as best they could by adapting them to the demands of the new religion, transferring the old celebrations to the holidays of the Christian calendar. They were forced to change the rituals of their days of the dead but kept as their core the ofrenda (the altar with offerings to the dead). And they still grew (and do to this day) the yellow cempoalxochitl, the cempoal, marigold, known popularly as flor de muerto (flower of the dead), which they used especially to honor the dead. They transferred the two Feasts of the Dead to the Christian Feasts of All Saints and All Souls. (Long before, between the eighth and eleventh centuries, the Christian Church itself had set the Feasts of All Saints and All Souls on the first and second of November, converting the ancient European Celtic feast of the harvest and of the dead, Samhain [sá-win], into a Christian holiday.)

The melding of two cultures

Spanish art offered images of death, similar to those the natives knew, in the martyred Christ and saints, and memento mori (“remember that you die”) images of skulls from the medieval tradition of the Dance of Death. The conquered people merged their old symbols with those of the conquerors. The indigenous cross of the four cardinal points became the Christian cross. The Tree of Life came to refer to the Garden of Eden as well, and eventually gave rise to the beautiful clay árboles de la vida with birds on flowering branches that we know today. The amaranth-dough offerings were replaced by the popular wheat pan de muerto (bread of the dead).

One great change in the Spanish colonial period was the evolvement of humor and whimsy that we today associate with los Día de Muertos and that make the holiday so uniquely Mexican. The Spanish may have brought these elements from the medieval tradition of the Feast of Fools (associated with Carnaval, carne vale, farewell to the flesh), where everything is equal and open to criticism, ridicule, and frivolity. “We are all equal in death and nothing is beyond mockery,” this tradition said. And humor became a part of los Día de Muertos that we know today.

In the latter part of the colonial period, the people began making sugar-candy skulls, brightly decorated with names spelled out in colored sugar, to exchange as tokens of affection among family and friends. They placed them on the Día de Muertos altars along with the image of Guadalupe, the flowers, the water, the bread, the food and drink, the candles, and the copal that the old ways demanded. They also made toys in the shape of skeletons and little skeleton dolls of clay and papier maché that made fun of people and every sort of human activity. They made playfulness part of the tradition and took from death a little of its sting.

Another thing that the Spaniards brought was the pasquín (mocking verses scrawled on walls to which passing readers added their own lines and comments). Between 1535 and 1539, the first printing press in America was established in Mexico City, and soon pasquines printed on broadsheets were being pasted on the walls of public buildings. These eventually gave rise to the funny verses called calaveras (skulls, also popularly meaning empty-headed fools), often illustrated with caricatures, through which the people freely criticized and mocked the rich and powerful who ruled their lives. The calavera became a part of the Día de Muertos.

Corridos (ballads in the oral tradition whose themes often focus on current events) had grown to be the popular form of political expression by the time Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821, and by the late nineteenth century, the corrido and the calavera had almost completely replaced the pasquín. Small print shops throughout the country published the most popular corridos and calaveras on broadsides of colored paper, disseminating information and ideas against the authoritarian Porfirio Díaz regime. The best-known of these presses was that of Antonio Vanegas Arroyo in Mexico City, made famous by the witty poet Constancio S. Suárez and by José Guadalupe Posada, a talented engraver. Posada illustrated the verses written by Suárez, who succinctly put the truth which is the soul of the calavera:

--------------------It is a most sincere truth
--------------------that this adage makes us see:
--------------------only one who was never born
--------------------can never a death’s-head be.

Día de Muertos in the Twentieth Century

These are some of the elements of los Días de Muertos inherited by the twentieth century. With the Revolution of 1910, modern Mexican art exploded into its own, and the young artists repudiated not only the French orientation of the Díaz era (1877–1911) but their own Spanish heritage, idealizing their indigenous past. For the young artists of the Revolution (José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and David Alfaro Siqueiros among them), Posada was the father of modern Mexican art and quoted his images in their own work. Indeed, many of Posada’s images (such as his Calavera Catrina) took on the nature of icons that are now hard to separate from los Días de Muertos.

Rediscovering and reclaiming their Indian roots and folk arts and festivals, modern Mexican writers, musicians, dancers, and graphic artists created works that burst with images, sounds, colors of dazzling brilliance and originality. But for the Indians, Mexico was a country colonized for four hundred years, its dominant language and culture European; what the writers, musicians, and painters accomplished was to foment a new respect for, even to romanticize, indigenous custom and form, not adopt them as an integral part of their own lives. The artisans of the people continued to produce the ever popular Día de Muertos sugar skulls and toys, of course—and the artists and the new and growing educated middle class avidly collected them as arte popular (folk art.)

To simply see the tradition of the Mexican los Días de Muertos as a quaint folk custom does it little justice. It has always been a religious practice alive with its own cosmology, vibrant with spiritual and emotional meaning for the people who participate in it. At its center, Día de Muertos is full of reverence, sorrow, and prayer; the levity is more peripheral, an aside. Without their core of belief, of spiritual and emotional power, Día de Muertos would hardly have survived to our day, much less inspired such art.

After the revolution, Día de Muertos lived on in Mexico among the indigenous populations close to their pre-Hispanic roots; thus it was a holiday of the poor, and most especially the rural poor. The urban middle class rarely put up Days of the Dead altars except as quaint displays of “indigenous” art. On All Souls Day, they might visit the cemetery and place flowers on the grave, perhaps attend Mass, but Día de Muertos was not modern, and the tradition was certainly more Indian than they would ever want to be. It was one thing to show off indigenous art, another to be Indian. That the urbane Frida Kahlo affected Tehuana dresses and wore strings of heavy, pre-Hispanic green-stone about her slender neck did not make her Indian.

As Mexico became more urban and more industrialized, at least in the major cities, Día de Muertos became more secularized. Were it not for the indigenous communities faithful to their traditions, Día de Muertos might have gradually become merely a colorful Indian custom, a quaint though cherished symbol of national identity.

Día de Muertos in the United States

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, there flared up a new interest from an unexpected quarter. United States intervention in Viet-Nam had flared into a full-blown war in which many citizens of Mexican descent saw the U.S. invasion of Mexico (1846-48) reflected. At the same time, inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, the Farm Workers Movement led by César E. Chávez under the banner of Guadalupe went into full strike in the vineyards of California. These two events galvanized the identity of the young U.S. citizens of Mexican descent who began calling themselves Chicanos.

The quest for and formation of an identity is always a spiritual matter, a moral matter, a matter of empowerment, especially in a society which exerts such pressures to conform and assimilate. In 1970 the Chicano Moratorium against the Viet-Nam War coalesced a political and cultural movement with its own music, literature, and graphic arts, especially the mural. Walls in San Francisco, Los Ángeles, and other cities throughout the U.S. blazed into color and images that drew inspiration from the mural movement of Mexico. They extensively quoted the work of Posada, Orozco, Rivera, Siqueiros, and Kahlo, and incorporated such indigenist images as Sun Stones, eagles devouring serpents, plumed snakes, Guadalupes, and Zapatista campesinos. Chicano art, rooted in Mexican culture but of the United States, was something all its own.

In the late 1960s, some teachers of Mexican descent with ties to Día de Muertos tradition began to introduce it in the classroom. Also in the early 1970s, the Galería de la Raza, the Mexican Museum of San Francisco, the Mission Cultural Center of Latino Arts, and other galleries in San Francisco began to mount Día de Muertos exhibitions, inviting artists to create ofrendas. The same occurred in Los Angeles and quickly spread to other cities, such as Chicago, that have large Chicano and Mexican immigrant populations. And in the mid 1970s, El Teatro Campesino performed satirical skits with calavera characters for the workers in the fields. The richly layered Día de Muertos customs that were traditionally practiced in that area to the south known as Mesoamerica, where the high cultures flourished, were not familiar in Aztlan (northern Mexico and what had become the U.S. Southwest), where native cultures were more nomadic. There the ofrenda was not customary, and up to this point only appeared when people who had immigrated from the south put them up. But now Día de Muertos ofrendas and exhibitions began to appear in New Mexico, Texas, and elsewhere in the Southwest.

New Expressions for Día de Muertos

Avid to reclaim their Mexican—especially Mexican Indian—roots, Chicanos took the ofrenda, the element at the core of Día de Muertos, from its original matrix and made it into a new art form. Very few of the artists participating in these exhibitions had lived Día de Muertos traditions, though some elders and recent immigrants from south-central Mexico were drawn upon to create “traditional” ofrendas. These, even if they may not have included all the elements prescribed by tradition—the image of Guadalupe, the flowers, the water, the bread, the food and drink, the candles, the sugar skulls, the copal—did include an altar bearing offerings of some sort, as well as traditional incidental decorative elements like papel picado and streamers, and, if the ofrenda honored a particular person, photographs and personal mementos.

Though “traditional” ofrendas were occasionally exhibited in Mexico in museums and public spaces, often under the auspices of FONART (the National Fund for the Encouragement of Crafts) as samples of arte popular, the ofrenda had been, up to this point, solely a sacred and private expression of devotion and memorial created for the home, sometimes for the family tomb, occasionally for the church.

The intimate and devotional family ofrenda now became a point of departure for more conscious works of art, giving way to public statements, often political in nature, incorporating the sociopolitical function of the calavera with the religious form of the ofrenda. It is true that many artists considered their work sacred art; they often created ofrendas to honor dead family, friends, or public figures, and they ritually consecrated the gallery space and the ofrenda by smudging with copal or sage. But the religious, sacred aspects became more broadly defined; the emphasis was on fine art. This was a new art form, a variation of installation art. In the context of the gallery, the term “ofrenda” is now popularly used for any installation on the theme of death. The intent of these ofrendas as works of art is often not so much to comfort as to disquiet.

This new interpretation of the traditions of Día de Muertos as art for the public very soon exerted its influence in Mexico, and ofrendas of a political nature, honoring public figures and commemorating political events, started to appear with more frequency in such public spaces as galleries, museums, libraries, community centers, and even government buildings. Furthermore, though Día de Muertos in such places as Michoacán, Morelos, Oaxaca, Tlaxcala, and Veracruz had always attracted visitors, popularization of the holiday in the U.S. tremendously increased the number of tourists to Mexico during these days so that the cemeteries were overrun with urbanites and foreigners toting cameras.

Processions were another notable development in the United States. A procession sponsored by Self-Help Graphics in Evergreen Cemetery in Los Angeles that started in the 1970s, and another, sponsored by Galería de la Raza in San Francisco’s Mission District in the 1980s, both became so popular that, with the novelty of costumes and samba bands, they were more like Halloween events or carnival parades than traditional honoring of the dead. Interestingly, in the city of Oaxaca since the seventies, comparsas, skull-masked and skeleton-costumed bands, probably influenced by the U.S. Halloween, began to gain prominence in Día de Muertos celebrations, adding an element of carnival to the feast.

* ------*------ *

In Mexico, the Days of the Dead are still observed with deep emotion and spiritual devotion by the many who are heirs to the tradition, as well as others who are taking up the practice. In the United States, whose mainstream culture lacks a holiday devoted to the dead, many are borrowing Día de Muertos traditions, respectfully adapting them to their own needs and circumstances, putting up altars every year to honor their dead in the privacy of their homes . . .

Los Día de Muertos tradition, as it is practiced in Mexico, comes down to us from the shades of our pre-European past, a vital tradition laden with historical, religious, and spiritual meaning. It will change as it continues to be popularized and as the cultures that nurture and maintain it struggle to keep their identities in the face of the demands of the twenty-first century with its push towards globalization not only of economics but of culture . . .*

by Rafael Jesús González

[Excerpted from the introduction of the book
El Corazón de la Muerte (English & Spanish),
Oakland Museum of California
and Heyday Books 2005;
copyrights of the Oakland Museum of California.
Reproduction in any form for commercial use is prohibited
without explicit permission of the Oakland Museum of California]

* Some U.S., Canadian, and other foreign artists in such centers as San Miguel de Allende are now producing los Días de Muertos “folk art” for export to the U.S. and abroad. Stores of arts and crafts from around the world, such as Global Exchange in the San Francisco Bay Area, now sell little death-figures and glass boxes from Perú and Bolivia painted with Posada images, bamboo curtains from Viet-Nam painted with Posada images, wood stamping-blocks from Nepal with Mexican milagro images, and skull-shaped glass votive-candle holders from China. And of course more and more artifacts, calendars, and books with los Días de Muertos themes are being produced in the United States.
-
-
-

Halloween

2011-10-31T12:00:00.000-07:00

-

- - ----------Trick & Treat

Death at the door,
----or lurking among the leaves,
death itself is the inevitable trick;
the only treat worth the having,
----to love fearlessly,
------------------------and well.

-------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

(The Montserrat Review, Issue 7, Spring 2003;
author’s copyrights)

-----------Chasco y Regalo

La muerte a la puerta,
----o en emboscada entre la hojas,
la muerte misma es el chasco inevitable;
el único regalo que vale la pena,
-----amar sin temor,
------------------------y amar bien.

---------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

-

Dylan Thomas (October 27, 1914 - November 9, 1953)

2011-10-27T00:00:00.000-07:00

-

-------Occupational Hazard-

-------------------------to Dylan Thomas

'Write,'
--------they said,
-------------------'of love —
how the wind turns
& calcifies the blood.
-----Erect pillars of salt
-----smoke crowned of pity
----------where witches meet
----------to gossip of despair —
set down the foot-steps of the heart,
their echoes climbing
the perpendicular bone streets of loss
-----into a thin tomorrow —'
----------The angular hands of saints
----------accused;
their tears of stone
clanged loudly on the pavements
-----& their incense breath
-----embalmed the lungs.
----------He saw his hands
----------turn to lizards' claws,
---------------his pen's ink
---------------turn to dust,
blow off the page,
blind him —
---------------& he died
of an insult to the brain.

---------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

(El Grito, Vol. 6 no. 3, Spring 1973;
author's copyrights.)

Dylan Thomas

-----------Gajes del oficio

----------------------a Dylan Thomas

'Escribe,'
----------dijeron,
-------------------'del amor —
como voltea el viento
y calcifica la sangre.
-----Erige pilares de sal
-----coronados del humo de la piedad
---------donde las brujas se encuentran
---------a chismear de la desesperación —
fija los pasos del corazón,
sus ecos escalando
las calles verticales de hueso del perder
-----hacia una mañana flaca —'
----------Las manos angulares de los santos
----------acusaron;
sus lágrimas de piedra
resonaron fuertemente en los pavimentos
-----y su aliento de incienso
-----embalsamó los pulmones.
----------Vio sus manos
----------volverse en garras de lagarto,
---------------la tinta de su pluma
---------------volverse polvo,
disiparse de la página,
cegarlo —
-------------y murió
de un insulto cerbral.

--------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

-

Feast of St. Rafael Archangel

2011-10-24T00:00:00.000-07:00

---------En la fiesta antigua
-------de San Rafael Arcángel

Ángel, un poeta me dijo
que tu raza era terrible,
-----pero tus dedos son suaves
-----sobre mis cicatrices,
---------tu bálsamo de luz de pez
---------en la luna plena de octubre
---------escurre dulzura.

Tal vez sea porque
ya no me importa
luchar —
----------consolar, en vez,
----------acariciar las plumas ojosas
----------de tus alas.

------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

San Rafael Arcángel, Mexico, early 19th century

------------On the Old Feast
--------of St. Rafael Archangel

Angel, a poet told me
your kind was terrible,
----but your fingers are gentle
----on my scars,
---------your balsam of fish light
---------on the full moon of October
---------drips sweetness.

Perhaps it is because
I no longer care
to wrestle —
---------------caress, instead,
---------------stroke the eyed pinions
---------------of your wings.

----------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

---(Metamorfosis, vol. III no. II vol. IV no. I;
----------------author’s copyrights)

Na festa Antiga de S. Rafael Arcanjo

Anjo, um poeta me dissera
que tua raça era terrível,
-----porém teus dedos são suaves
-----sobre as minhas cicatrizes.
------------Teu bálsamo de luz de pez,
------------Numa lua cheia de outubro,
------------escorre doçura.

Talvez seja porque
já não me importa
lutar
-------consolar e sim,
-------acariciar as plumas com olhos
-------de tuas asas.

---------- © Rafael Jesús González 2011

Tradução:
© Clevane Pessoa de Araújo Lopes 2007
Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brasil.
(25/10/2007)
-
-
-

Scorpio

2011-10-21T00:00:00.000-07:00

-
-

-
---------Escorpión

El alacrán
---en sus ojos de ópalo
---guarda los secretos
---del agua inmóvil.
Eleva, tenaz, su cola de hierro
y su aguijón de topacio
refleja las luces rojas de Marte,
---las luces obscuras de Plutón.
Se esconde detrás del palo erecto,
------en la cueva húmeda;
y sabe los secretos del alma.

----------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

----------------Scorpio

The scorpion
-----in its opal eyes
-----guards the secrets
-----of the immobile water.
It tenaciously raises its tail of iron
& its topaz sting reflects
----the red lights of Mars,
----the dark lights of Pluto.
It hides behind the erect pole,
---in the moist cave;
it knows the secrets of the soul.

----------© Rafael Jesús González 2011
-
-

Días de Muertos Exhibit, Oakland Museum of California

2011-10-13T00:00:00.000-07:00

Love & Loss/Amor y Pérdida

17th Annual Exhibit/Exhibición anual 17

Días de los Muertos 2011

October/octubre 12 - December/diciembre 11, 2011

Oakland Museum of California/Museo de California en Oakland

1000 Oak Street

Oakland, California

http://museumca.org/

Guest Curator/Curadora invitada: Patricia Rodríguez
Participating artists/artistas participantes: Amalia Mesa Bains, Chris Granillo, Xóchitl Nevel Guerrero, Roberto Guerrero,
Rubén Guzmán Campos, Joaquín A. Newman, Ernesto Hernández Olmos, Dee Dee Rodríguez, Tessie Barrera Scharaga,
Consuelo Jiménez Underwood, Andrés Cisneros Galindo, Irene Pérez, Rafael Jesús González, Herminia Albarrán Romero, Bea Carrillo Hocker
Participating School & Community Groups/Escuelas y Grupos comunitarios participantes: Peralta Elementary School;
Laney College; Clínica de la Raza & Sutter VNA & Hospice, Emeryville

Community Celebration/Celebración Comunitaria

Sunday, October 23/Domingo 23 octubre

12:00 - 4:30 pm

Featuring ofrendas, music & dance performances, arts & crafts demonstrations, activities for children, plus food & arfts & crafts vendors. Events included with Museum admission / Con ofrendas, música, grupos de danza, actividades artesanales para los niños, demostraciones, comida, y arte para su altar y hogar. Incluido con al entrada general al Museo.

--

Columbus Day/Día de la raza

2011-10-12T00:00:00.000-07:00

-
October 12 is a feast-day known in various regions and times by many names: Columbus Day, Discovery Day, Hispanic Culture Day, Day of the Americas, Day of the Race, Day of the Indigenous Peoples.

In Mexico in 1928 at the insistence of the philosopher José Vasconcelos, then Minister of Education, it was named Día de la Raza (Day of the Race), denomination of the Iberian-American Union in 1913 to declare a new identity formed by the encounter of the Spaniards with the native peoples of the Americas. In 1902, the Mexican poet Amado Nervo had written a poem in honor of the President Benito Juárez (a Zapoteca Indian), which he read in the House of Representatives, titled La Raza de Bronce (Race of Bronze) praising the indigenous race, title which later in 1919 the Bolivian author Alcides Arquedas would give his book. Bronze (noble metal amalgamated of various metals) came to be metaphor for mestizaje (the mixing of the races.) According to the thinking of Vasconcelos, a Cosmic Race, the race of the future, is the noble race that is formed in the Americas since October 12, 1492, the race of mestizaje, an amalgam of the indigenous races of the Americas, the Europeans, the Africans, the Asians, the world — in a word, the human race made of a mixture of all the races which Vasconcelos called the Cosmic Race.

But that this race is formed at great cost to the indigenous American peoples (and to the African peoples brought here as slaves) cannot be ignored. Since 2002, in Venezuela the feast-day is called Día de la Resistencia Indígena (Day of Indigenous Resistance.)

Be that as it may, by whatever name we give it, however way we cut it, it is the same cake — the date commemorates the arrival of the Europeans to America (which for them was a “new world”), not a visit but an invasion, a genocide, a subjugation of the peoples of that “new world” which we know today by the name of a European cartographer who scarcely set foot on the sacred ground of the continents that bear his name. What the date marks is a continuous colonization, exploitation, abuse, outrage of the indigenous peoples of the Americas that has scarcely lessened, that has persisted these five-hundred and some years.

of the Dutchman Theodore de Bry (16th cent.), on his visit to La Española;

in the Most Brief Report of the Destruction of the Indies

by Fray Bartolomé de las Casas

It could well be called Day of Globalization. Since that date, the Earth is concretely, definitively proven to be truly round, a sphere, a ball, a globe. And from that date is imposed by force upon the indigenous American peoples a quite strange (in my view, mistaken) cosmology, attitude toward life, toward the Earth, toward economics, toward the sacred, toward the human being him/herself — a single truth narrow and intolerant, a rapacious disdain toward the Earth seen only as a resource to be exploited, a concept of progress difficult to distinguish from greed and the lust for power.

The cause of the indigenous peoples screams for justice: their lands, their fields continue to be stolen from them, destroyed for their valuable woods and minerals; their agricultural creations, such as maize and the potato, which have saved a great part of the world from famine, are modified at the molecular level and controlled by rapacious corporations; their traditional medicines are patented by those same corporations; sacred water is privatized and stolen from them; even their right to their own beliefs and cultures is not respected. Even putting justice aside, we should all ally ourselves with the indigenous peoples of the Americas (and of the entire world) in their resistance against such abuse because what threatens them threatens us all throughout the whole world — and the Earth itself. They have a very much to teach us about a healthy relationship of humankind with the Earth.

In an Earth much smaller and more fragile than we imagined, we find ourselves in full globalization and struggle against the imposition of an unbridled capitalism and the fascism, its logical extension, that accompanies it. The indigenous resistance that has never ceased these five centuries and some continues in spite of a brutal repression and now all of us of the cosmic race, of pure necessity, must align ourselves with their struggle, for that struggle is ours if we are to survive on the Earth, holy mother of our race, the human race — and of all our relations, the other animals, the plants, the minerals. On the round, seamless Earth all borders are fictitious and what threatens one threatens all. To think otherwise is not only immoral but insane.

Berkeley, California, October 12, 2007

-
-

full moon

2011-10-11T19:06:00.000-07:00

-

----Canto lunar del rey azul

La luna plena busca al rey azul
que fue a los mares de la China
que antiguos cartógrafos cuentan
son habitados por dragones.
Déle la madrina de los cangrejos,
de las sirenas y los tritones,
que encuentre lo preciso
para hacerse entero el corazón
del rey azul renuente aventurero
absorto en documentos
que bajo su albor lechoso
con ojo desapasionado
los mares chinos ve.

------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

----Lunar Song of the Blue King

The full moon seeks the blue king
who went to the China seas
ancient cartographers tell
are inhabited by dragons.
May the godmother of the crabs,
the sirens, and the mermen grant
that he finds what is necessary
to make his heart whole,
of the blue king, reluctant adventurer
absorbed in documents
who under her milky shining
with a dispassionate eye
sees the Chinese seas.

--------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

-

10/10/11

2011-10-10T00:01:00.000-07:00

--------

-----Rezo a Huehuecóyotl

---------------(al modo nahua)

Señor Coyote Viejo,
-----Señor del regocijo de la carne,
levanta tu flor de jade,
---------------tu sonaja de oro;
luce tu penacho de plumas,
-----tu manto bordado;
a la luna levanta la quinta copa.
Señor del canto, Señor de la danza,
-----Señor del deleite sensual,
sálvanos de la prudencia cobarde,
-----máscara opresiva
que pretende ponerle buena cara
-----a la prudente cobardía.
Señor del exceso,
---------------------Señor del festín,
-----deslúmbranos con la vida.

------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

-----Prayer To Huehuecoyotl

---------------(in the Nahua mode)

Old Lord Coyote,
-----Lord of the flesh's rejoicing,
raise your flower of jade,
---------------your rattle of gold;
sport your headdress of plumes,
-----your embroidered cape;
raise high the fifth cup to the moon.
Lord of the song, Lord of the dance,
-----Lord of sensual delight,
save us from cowardly prudence,
-----oppressive mask
that pretends to put a good face
-----on prudent cowardliness.
Lord of the feast,
---------------------Lord of excess,
-----overwhelm us with life.

------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011
-

Escritores del Nuevo Sol reading, Sacramento, California, September 28

2011-09-30T15:41:00.000-07:00

Rafael Jesús González by Trina Drotar 9/28/11

Sacramento Press

Rafael Jesús González - activism and poetry amid costumes at La Raza Galería Posada
by Trina Drotar, published on September 29, 2011 at 11:24 PM

Wednesday evening was filled with poetry, music and activism when Rafael Jesús González (poet, professor, artist and bilingual studies innovator) read to a full house at La Raza Galería Posada. He was accompanied by flautist and Rooted in Community co-director Gerardo O. Marín and artist and activist Colin Miller.

Gerardo O. Marín & Colin Miller by Sandy Thomas

The event was hosted by Los Escritores del Nuevo Sol / Writers of the New Sun and opened with local writer JoAnn Anglin. She spoke of the group’s founding in 1993, its monthly writing group, monthly readings and of the group’s anthology, “Voices of the New Sun: Songs and Stories / Voces del Nuevo Sol: Cantos y Cuentos.”

González was introduced by Dr. Fausto Avendaño, a retired Sacramento State foreign language professor, who explained that the evening’s reading would be bilingual. Poems, stories and introductions would be read in Spanish, and English versions, not translations, would follow.

The two men met many years ago, and Avendaño said González’s poetry resembled Federico García Lorca’s, and that “the images struck (him) because it is hard to equal García Lorca.” The idea González put forth that “poetry is just a game with words, images and metaphors” also reminded Avendaño of García Lorca.

González read in front of a backdrop of swirling color, thanks to the current exhibit, “Ballet Folklorico-Lace and Ribbons: The Making of Cultural Affirmation-Costumes from the Instituto Mazatlan Bellas Artes.” He opened by burning a small leaf, a custom he performs before each reading, one that comes from his ancestors.

“We burn a little bit of fragrant smoke to invoke the gods so that what we say does not offend them or the audience,” he said, and suggested that politicians try this custom.

Judging from the full house that remained through nearly three hours, in a room that was often too warm, the sage-burning worked.

He began with a poem honoring Rosh Hashanah, the first day of the Jewish New Year. As with most poems, González provided some background. His third poem was one of his first published poems, and he says the topic is “as pertinent today as it was then.” The poem’s last line is “Señor, how much is this?”

To which he responded, “Too much. Far, far too much. Many of us were asked to give up our culture and our language to assimilate. We lost our names and took on English names to protect us from prejudices.”

Being an activist and a poet, many of the evening’s poems were politically charged. He read several poems about heroes like César Chávez, whose “voice will bear fruit and there will be rejoicing in the furrows, in the ditches.” He reminded the audience that “the battles of the fieldworker are not done,” and he urged people to remember the blood of those who died “when you say grace above your meal.”

Several nerves were touched when he read “To My Students,” with its memorable line of “You who can read, do not take it for granted.” Following the poem, he said that 1968 California “had the best education system in the country,” but that Proposition 13 (1977/78) “undermined the whole infrastructure of the state of California, and (he) quickly saw the literacy rate plummet.”

At the time, he was teaching at Laney Community College in Oakland, where the oldest student was 79 and the youngest was 18, and where “real education was taking place.” Today, he says that it is “to our shame that the wealthiest state cannot afford to teach its children” and called "No Child Left Behind" the most anti-education act.

Poems about the Golden Gate Bridge, houses, and jade hearts preceded more hero poems. One was about Víctor Jara, one of the imprisoned intellectuals in post-Allende Chile. “The Hands” relates the near-myth story of Jara’s hands being severed by guards, and the refrain of “each drop, a note against silence” served as a reminder for each of us not to remain silent.

Perhaps the most touching of González’s poems was “Blankets,” written for “my mother (who) still covers me with rainbows.” This piece, as with a few others, was accompanied by Marín, who played two different native Mexican flutes.

The music served to make González’s voice stronger, and it seemed to work better with the Spanish readings. But Marín, who always watched his maestro, never overpowered the words.

Following a poem written as part of his dissertation about the influence of the gypsy idiom on García Lorca’s work, he spoke about living and writing.

“Everything we do is a game,” he said. “Living is a celestial game that is sometimes peaceful, sometimes difficult. Sometimes words are very volatile. To name a thing can take away its power, (and that) gives us power over nature.” He called naming a “sacred act.”

About writing, González said, “Everybody can write.” He urged the audience to “write for fun. Write for the music of the words. Write to overcome your pain. Write to celebrate your joys.”

He closed with “If We Do Not Speak,” influenced by his invitation to the 20th World Congress of Poets in 2005. While driving home from Santa Fe, N.M., he considered what he wanted to tell his fellow colleagues who spoke in many languages. The opening line is “If we do not speak to praise the Earth / It is best we keep silent.”

He closed with a reminder that “we have never been expelled from paradise. We live in paradise,” and that we “need to care for and love the earth more.”

-

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, September 29, 1547 – April 23, 1616

2011-09-29T00:32:00.000-07:00

Miguel de Cervantes y Saavedra

by Juan Martínez de Jáurequi y Aguilar (c. 1600)

----------El caballero de la cara triste

------------------¡Y Dios no te dé paz y sí gloria!

-------------------------------------------- Miguel de Unamuno

Tratándose del canto
-----en un llano de arbustos silvestres
infestado de las ramillas girantes
----------de molinos rompe cielos,
una figura consintiendo la edad
-----y una mente cavernosa
alanzó al sol embarrando su lanza de luz.

-----(y una estrella mugrosa
----------encendió un cigarrillo lucero
-----para guiar a un guerrero
----------a su lavadura.)

-----Si sucediera una estrella,
-----naciera un canto
-----en algún año decisivo
prometiendo pan y pescados
de que uno no fuera seguro se multiplicaran
¿pagaría la gloria incierta de una aguda herida
el precio de derramar la paz
en una red de empeño enmarañada?

El alto atrever camina en patas flacas
y demasiadas veces la causa de muerte
--------son las estrellas.

----------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

Don Quixote de la Mancha & Sancho Panza

by Honoré Daumier

----------The Knight of the Sad Face

-----------------¡Y Dios no te dé paz y sí gloria!

-------------------------------------------Miguel de Unamuno

Treating of songs
----------in a wild wood plain
infested with twirling sprigs
---------of sky-tearing mills,
a figure indulging age & a cavern mind
speared the sun smearing his lance with light.

-----(& a soiled star lit a cigarette star
-----to guide a warrior to his washing)

-----If a star were to happen,
-----a song born
-----to some decisive year
promising bread & fishes
one was not sure would multiply,
would the uncertain glory of an acute wound
pay the price of spilling peace
-----into a fouled net of undertaking?

High daring walks on spindly legs
& stars too often are the cause of death.

---------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

(Mark in Time; Nick Harvey, Ed., Glide Publications,
San Francisco 1971; author’s copyrights.)

-

Tashlikh

2011-09-28T18:58:00.000-07:00

-
-

------------Tashlikh

These are the days of awe —
time of inventory
-----and a new beginning
when harvest of what we sowed
-----comes in.
(What have we sown
------of discord & terror?
Where have we fallen short
------of justice?)

The scales dip & teeter;
there is so much
to discard,
so much to atone.

When our temples stood
we loaded a goat
-----with our transgressions
----------and sent it to the wild.
Now we must search our pockets
for crumbs of our trespasses,
our sins to cast upon the rivers.

The days are upon us
-----to take stock of our hearts.
----------It is time to dust
the images of our household gods,
-----our teraphim,
----------------------our lares.

------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

(Arabesques Review, vol. 3 no . 3, 2007; author’s copyrights)

---------------Tashlikh

Estos son los días de temor —
tiempo del inventario
-----y un nuevo comienzo
cuando la cosecha de lo que sembramos
-----entra.
(¿Qué hemos sembrado
------de discordia y terror?
¿Dónde hemos fallado
-------en la justicia?)

Las balanzas se inclinan y columpian;
hay tanto de que deshacerse,
tanto por lo cual expiar.

Cuando estaban en pie nuestros templos
cargábamos una cabra
-----con nuestros pecados
----------y la echábamos al desierto.
Ahora tenemos que buscar en los bolsillos
las migas de nuestras faltas,
nuestros pecados para echarlos a los ríos.

Están sobre nosotros los días
-----para hacer inventario del corazón.
----------Es tiempo de sacudir
las imagines de nuestros dioses domésticos,
------nuestros térafim,
---------------------------nuestros lares.

-----------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

-
-

on this day in 1957

2011-09-25T00:00:00.000-07:00

"Little Rock Nine", September 25, 1957

--------Spilling the Beans

------------------for Minnijean

If truth be told
it's all about
spilling the beans —
whether it's from a tray let go
in the school lunch room
or telling it like it is
from the podium.
It's speaking truth —
----------------whether to power
or to the powerless;
it's blowing the whistle
when the whistle needs blowing.
More often than not
--------------it's about courage —
a heart grown too big
with outrage
----------------or compassion,
more often than not
a heart grown big
with compassion outraged
until it explodes
------------------- spilling the beans.

-----------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

Minniejean Brown-Trickey & Rafael Jesús González
Las Vegas, New Mexico, January 2010

On this day in 1957, 1,000 troops secured Little Rock Central High, allowing nine black students to enter and attend school. It was a historic day in the Civil Rights movement not because it was the first school to desegregate, but because it was the first time federal intervention was used to do so.

When the Supreme Court struck down the "separate but equal" doctrine in 1954, banning segregated public schools, it left up to individual states and communities the issue of how and when integration would proceed. Little Rock had approved a gradual approach; the high school would integrate first, then the middle schools, then elementary. But when the time came for black students to enroll in Central High, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus reneged on the deal, surrounding the school with National Guard troops on the first day of the year to protect people, he claimed, from the caravans of protestors on their way to Little Rock. In fact, the Guard denied entrance to the nine black students who attempted to enroll as a crowd of about 300 people gathered. Within days, the spectacle was over, but the Guard remained, napping on the school's lawn and reading newspapers to pass the time. The approach that Southern moderates like William Faulkner had preached was quickly turning from "go slow" into "don't go."

More than two weeks passed before a federal injunction withdrew the National Guard from the school. When Little Rock police officers escorted the nine black students into school on the morning of September 23, crowds of protestors outside became so menacing that administrators had the students slip out a side entrance before noon.

And so two days later, President Eisenhower ordered the Screaming Eagles 101st Airborne Division stationed in Kentucky to escort the nine black students back in — and ensure they were able to stay. By then, the national media attention on Little Rock had become intense, drawing massive crowds — although, as the school newspaper reminded students, the protestors represented less than 1 percent of the town's population.

Of the "Little Rock Nine," as the black students became known, only three graduated from Central High. Five finished their education elsewhere; one was expelled for responding to the constant harassments of her classmates, once by overturning a bowl of chili on a tormentor. (The bullies went largely unpunished.) All nine credited their parents for encouraging them to enroll — and attend class — despite intense scrutiny and racism.

On this day in 1789, the First Federal Congress of the United States proposed 12 amendments to the recently ratified Constitution. Ten of them were ultimately adopted to become what's known as the Bill of Rights.

The amendments were the result of a major compromise between opposing factions, the Federalists — who thought the Constitution was a sound and sufficient document — and the Anti-Federalists, who worried that it gave far too much power to the central government and didn't protect individual freedoms. The two sides were at an impasse, and the Constitution was at risk of being rejected, until an agreement was reached that, if the Constitution was ratified, Congress would add on a bill of rights. The Federalists believed the addition was unnecessary, and the anti-Federalists believed it wasn't enough ... but both sides conceded for the sake of the common good.

The first two amendments, concerning the number of constituents and the payment for Congressmen, were rejected. The other 10, each a single sentence, provided for such rights as the freedom of speech and religion, the right to bear arms, the right to a speedy trial by jury without cruel or unusual punishment, and the right of states to govern themselves in any way not expressly prohibited by the Constitution.

An additional 17 amendments have been added to the Constitution since then. The most recent one, passed in 1992, was that second article proposed and rejected back in 1789, delaying any change to Congress's pay until the following session. The very first article proposed is still pending before state legislatures.

As the anonymous saying goes, "Democracy is cumbersome, slow and inefficient, but in due time, the voice of the people will be heard and their latent wisdom will prevail."

© 2011 American Public Media
480 Cedar Street, Saint Paul, MN 55101
USA

(A devout statement of faith devoutly to be wished —
and worked towards.

— Rafael Jesús González)

-

Art in Nature Festival, October 2, 2011

2011-09-24T00:00:00.000-07:00

You are especially invited to this extraordinary arts event

Art in Nature/
the Nature of Art Festival

(free of charge)

Sunday, October 2, 2011

11:00 AM to 5:00 PM

Redwood Regional Park
7867 Redwood Rd.

Oakland, California

for which I have been invited to create and "curate"
a mixed-media installation piece, exhibit, & performance

to the wonder of nature, to the beauty of life,
to the healing of ourselves & the Earth,
to the world we must dance into being.

Rafael Jesús González

Libra

2011-09-23T00:00:00.000-07:00

-
-
-

--------------------Libra

Alumbran a la balanza del día y la noche,
el zafiro temprano del amanecer
y el ópalo tardío del atardecer.
Se alza en obelisco de jade, de nefrita
al punto cardinal del aire,
el apoyo del viento,
----y en cada platillo de cobre
se miden el arte y las consecuencias
---(el amor pesa en la ijada
----de la indecisión,
----en los lomos del deseo.)
La alzaprima del otoño
sostiene sobre el caos,
trémulos y vacilantes
----el sentir, el pensar —
-----------amor, belleza, verdad —
sueños, siempre sueños, justos sueños.

----------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

----------------Libra

The balance of day & night
is lit by the early sapphire of dawn
-----& the late opal of dusk.
It rises on obelisk of nephrite, of jade
to the cardinal point of the air,
the lever of the wind,
----& on each copper plate
----are measured art & consequences
--------(love weighs on the back
---------of indecision,
---------on the loins of desire.)
The fulcrum of autumn
holds over chaos
tremulous & irresolute
----feeling, thought —
--------love, beauty, truth —
dreams, always dreams, just dreams.

-------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

-

reading, Sacramento, Wednesday, September 28

2011-09-18T00:00:00.000-07:00

Los Escritores del Nuevo Sol
Writers of the New Sun

Present a reading by:

Rafael Jesús González,
poet, professor, artist

On: Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2011,

at 7:30 pm.

At: La Raza Galeria Posada, 1024 - 22nd Street,

Midtown Sacramento, California

with musical interlude

Gerardo Omar Marín
on flute

Donation: $5 or as you are able.
Please: share this information with others.

¡Gracias!

Rafael Jesús González, poet, professor, artist and bilingual studies innovator, is a life-long writer who lives between Mexico and Berkeley. He has been the elder in a Latino men's ritual group, Xochipilli, which works with the Oakland Museum of California's annual Dia de Los Muertos. He has contributed art installations there and also for the Mexican Museum and the Mission Cultural Center, both in San Francisco.

Prolifically bilingual, he maintains the blog, http://rjgonzalez.blogspot.com/
For further information about him, contact Ph (916) 428-2191 in Sacramento.

Prof. Gonzalez' formal education took place at the University of Texas, El Paso, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, & the University of Oregon.

He has taught throughout the west, and advises and contributes articles to literary journals. His most recent publication is The Lunatic Muse, which he will have for sale at this reading.

===================================================

Escritores del Nuevo Sol/Writers of the New Sun was established in 1993, a cooperative group to encourage writers of Latino, Chicano, and Native American backgrounds. For information on our group or activities, contact Graciela Ramirez, Ph: 916-456-5323.
For information on LRGP, see: www.larazagaleriaposada.org

-

Mexico Independence

2011-09-16T00:00:00.000-07:00

(201 años después de la independencia de España,
101 años después de la revolución,
491 años después de la invasión española,
como en todas las americas,
sigue el colonialismo.)

----------------------México

--------- --(homenaje a la patria en matices eróticos)

Darte género sería hacer lo que Dios no hizo.
Cuelga la flor de plátano como sexo de caballo
y tus toscas ubres dan beber petróleo —
tienes sin cuenta vientres burladores en tus minas
y los dorados testículos del mango.
-----(Para variar tus orgasmos heterosexuales
-----celebras la homosexual fiesta de los toros.)
Suave no lo eres, patria mía —
-----sino dura como la suerte humana —
----------bola de acero en el fondo de mi entraña,
----------sabor amargo en la lengua de la mente.
Al caer el sol que has emplumado
tienen tus cerros filigrana de venas en sus frentes
y en las junglas de tus costas suelen
volar luciérnagas de ópalo boyante.
Se estremece de pasión tu cuerpo eléctrico y bravío
y piensas en color por tus murales,
sueñas tus sueños táctiles de sones
atados a la tierra por cuerdas de guitarra
-----(y no hay canciones extrañas a tus sueños
-----ni faltan risas en tus tristes pesadillas.)
--------------- Oye, patria mía,
con besos de papel crepé
la buganvilla besa el pene de la torre
y el plúmbago sofocado da besos platónicos al aire.
Muerde el sol los pechos de tus gris colinas
y las manos de tus palmeras acarician la luna.
-----Suave no lo eres, patria mía,
----------sino cruel como el amor humano,
----------exigente como la fe bendita.

-------------------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

(El Grito, vol. III no. 1, otoño 1969;
derechos reservados del autor.)

(201 years after independence from Spain,
101 years after the revolution,
491 years after the Spanish invasion,
as in all the Americas,
colonialism continues.)

----------------------Mexico

-----------------(homage to the country in erotic hues)

To give you gender would be to do as God did not.
The banana bloom hangs like a horse's sex
& your rough breasts give oil to suck —
you have countless wombs in your mines
& the golden testicles of the mango.
-----(To vary your heterosexual orgasms
-----you celebrate the homosexual feast of the bulls.)
Soft you are not, my country —
-----but hard as human fate —
----------ball of steel at the bottom of my gut,
----------bitter taste on the tongue of my mind.
At the fall of the sun you have feathered
your mountains wear filigree of veins on their foreheads
& in the jungles of your coasts
fly dragonflies of buoyant opal.
Your electric & wild body trembles with passion
& you think in color through your murals,
dream your tactile dreams of songs
tied to the earth by the strings of the guitar
-----(& there are no strange songs to your dreams
-----nor is laughter lacking in your sad nightmares.)
---------------Listen, my country,
with crepe paper kisses
the bougainvillea kisses the penis of the tower
& the suffocated plumbago gives platonic kisses to the air.
The sun bites the breasts of your gray hills
& the hands of your palms caress the moon.
-----Soft you are not, my country,
----------but cruel like human love,
----------demanding like the holy faith.

--------------------------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

(The Bitter Oleander, Vol. 15 no. 2, Fall 2009;
author's copyrights)

Jesús Helguera-
-

full moon

2011-09-12T02:27:00.000-07:00

-

----------Luna partera

La madrina luna nos mira
con cara impasible
y bendice todo
con su luz prestada.
Nos protege de los meteoritos
y es partera de la vida terrestre
pues sin su jalar de los mares
no hubieran los charcos
de la marisma que nos dieron nacer
a quienes nos arrastramos
---o andamos en tierra.
Nos bendice la luna
con su luz prestada.

------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

--------Midwife Moon

Godmother moon looks at us
with impassive face
& blesses all
with her lent light.
She protects us from meteorites
& is midwife of terrestrial life
for without her pull of the seas
there would not be the pools
of the tides that birthed us
who crawl or walk on land.
The moon blesses us
with her borrowed light.

--------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

-

September 11, 2001

2011-09-11T00:00:00.000-07:00

-
-
Ten years ago in September 2001, I flew to Boston for the wedding of my godson Max Villalva Valdés and decided to stay on to visit friends intending to return from Boston to San Francisco on September 11. However, I changed my return flight a few days earlier to attend another celebration of friends by San Francisco Bay. So it is that on September 11, 2001, I was able to write:

Love & Thoughts to my Friends on a Dark Day

Since early this morning when a friend from New England called with the news of the destruction of the World Trade Center towers in New York, I have been in a daze, too stunned to sort out my feelings, my thoughts except for confirmation of my deep abhorrence of violence. Certainly pain and anger are there — and great fear.

I have not been able to get through to my friends in New York nor to my friends in Washington, D.C.; I do not know if they are well or not.

And despite the images on television, there is disbelief. How could it happen here? How could it happen to us? The mightiest contemporary nation, the current most powerful empire is vulnerable. Seeing the images of the twin towers, symbol of the greatest wealth and power on Earth, flaming, smoking, and finally collapsing against the skyline of monoliths that is New York made me think, in the midst of the horror of it all, of Goliaths falling in the plain. The Earth is shaken by their fall; the death, the pain suffered by so many through their fall wrings the heart. I am stunned by the pain of it.

But who the Davids are we do not know. Certainly not heroes to me nor to any one I know; villains rather. Davids in size only. But still, seeing some televised images of jubilation in parts of Palestine/Israel, they must be heroes to some — and to some in other places of the world as well.

Terrorism is a frightful term; even more horrible is its reality. What does it mean? Webster’s New World Dictionary succinctly defines it as: 1) use of terror and violence to intimidate, subjugate, etc., especially as a political weapon or policy; and 2) intimidation and subjugation produced in this way. Terror.

I see those images of jubilation on the television and I wonder what could induce such elation at such destruction, such death, such suffering. Terror. Terror like that in New York today except on a smaller scale, day to day terror at the hands of Israeli soldiers, and terror in response, and then more terror in retaliation — a story without end.

The day to day terror in Iraq with children ill and no medicine with which to treat them, little food to give them. The day to day terror in Nigeria and other parts of Africa. The day to day terror in so many parts of Latin America, of Asia, of everywhere. A policy, a political weapon to subjugate.

And who has most to gain by it? A hundred images come to mind, but a simple, nagging cipher blinks on and off against them all: we in the United States are six percent (6%) of the world’s people and yet we consume sixty percent (60%) of what the Earth gives. (And, we hold the highest proportion of our people in prison.) These are formulas of terror.

And we are vulnerable. And I think — the only protection is justice. The only protection is to be so just, so fair that none would wish us ill. No, not even the gods are so just, but if only we tried. If only we concerned ourselves with sharing the Earth’s wealth with everyone of our brothers and sisters. If only we honored the Earth and protected her so that she might continue to sustain us. If only we honored each other. If only we honored life.

I would like to think that we could respond to this horror in New York and Washington, D.C. with a commitment to justice for the world. Not merely the primitive, crude vengeance and retaliation I hear demanded, but true justice that would put an end to terror, not only the terror such as that of this day in New York and in the Capital, but the day to day terror of hunger, of lack of medicine, lack of shelter, of education, of freedom and the violence all that brings. Terror.

But what I see does not make me hopeful. I am afraid. I am afraid of our institutionalized terrorism, our policies of terror that hold the world in thrall. I am afraid of the man in the office of President of the United States who was not elected into office, afraid of his associates, afraid of the Supreme Court which has broken its trust as impartial interpreter of the law of the land. I am afraid of this President who would destroy the Earth for the profit of it, who insists upon an insane system of nuclear “defense” to further enforce a policy of terror.

I am afraid for the peoples of the world. I am just as afraid for us citizens of this United States. I am afraid that the tragedy of today will be used to justify the destruction of what freedom, what civil liberties we have, of a democracy for which clearly the President of the United States and his ilk have no respect.

I am afraid of Goliaths and of the Davids they breed.

But still, more deeply rooted than my fear is my love of the Earth and of its people and of all our relations. Because of this, I trust that our work toward justice and peace will go on in joy of life and that, for all the darkness, it will prevail.

Berkeley, September 11, 2001

photo by Marty Lederhandler AP

--------------- The Towers
------------September 11, 2001

The towers fall as if,
-----seen through crossed eyes,
a Goliath fell brought down by a David.

Behind the myths
-----who of us is the guilty?
---------Who the innocent?
What is the distance
-----between justice and vengeance?

Death is inevitable, not fair.
And when the innocent are caught
in the webs of violence, it is terrible.

May the Earth hold them in rest.
If we would make a monument
worthy of their deaths,
in honor & memory of them,
let us pledge ourselves
----- to freedom,
----- true justice,
------world peace.

For if death be not just
let just be our lives.

----------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

(Abalone Moon, Nov. 6, 2oo7; author's copyrights)

photo by Marty Lederhandler AP

------------Las Torres
---------11 septiembre 2001

Se derriban las torres como
-----si visto por ojos cruzados,
cayera un Goliat abatido por un David.

Detrás de los mitos
-----¿quiénes somos los culpables?
----------¿quiénes los inocentes?
¿Cual es la distancia
------entre la justicia y la venganza?

La muerte es inevitable, no justa.
Y cuando los inocentes caen
en las redes de la violencia, es terrible.

Que la Tierra los tenga en descanso.
Si monumento hiciéramos
digno de sus muertes
en honor y memoria de ellos
comprometámonos
-----a la libertad,
-----a la justicia verdadera,
-----a la paz mundial.

Que si la muerte no es justa,
justas sean nuestras vidas.

----------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

(Abalone Moon, noviembre 6, 2007;
derechos reservados del autor)

New York skyline, 9/11/01

It was on this day in 2001 that the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York were destroyed launching the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and bringing in a renewed era of fascism in the United States.

[I do not call names, but I do name and and try to name as accurately as possible. I use the word fascism in its classical definition as it appears in Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, College Edition, 1968 edition:

*fas.cism (fash´iz’m), n. [It. fascismo <fascio, political group, organization, club fascis; see FASCES], 1. [F-], The doctrines, methods, or movement of the Fascisti. 2. [sometimes F-], a system of government characterized by rigid one-party dictatorship, forcible suppression of the opposition (unions, other, especially leftist, parties, minority groups, etc.), the retention of private ownership of the means of production under centralized governmental control, belligerent nationalism and racism, glorification of war, etc.: first instituted in Italy in 1922. 3. a) the political philosophy and movement based on such doctrines and policies. b) fascist behavior.]

Now, the nation is deep in an illegal, immoral occupation of Iraq, and an untenable war in Afghanistan making the world infinitely more vulnerable to terrorism by nations (such as the U. S.) and organizations (such as al-Qaeda.) Those same fascist forces, bankrupt morally, have bankrupt the nation (and the world) economically.

But the date of September 11 is a day of tragedy for more than one reason.

On a more personal level, it was on September 11, 1991 that my beloved friend and comadre, scholar, organizer, activist Guillermina Valdés de Villalva was killed when a Continental Airlines airplane crashed near Houston, Texas. Sick with pain and rage, I wrote

Huehuecóyotl, © Rafael Jesús González 2011

---Advertencia de Coyote

-----------------------para Guille

Siempre lucharé por lo bueno,
corazón en el hocico,
un grito en el corazón
y el corazón en el grito.
Por eso anoche bailé,
-----tiré la chancla,
---------wriggled my butt,
--------------meneé el culo
hasta las horas escuincles
de la madrugada
porque tal como a algunos nos toca
hacer penitencia por otros
a otros nos toca hacer
la gracia por los demás
y por eso les prometo
que seguiré meneando el culo
hasta que ya no lo pueda
y mantendré verde el rabo
hasta que me lo tape la tierra.

---------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

(Siete escritores comprometidos: obra y perfil;
Fausto Avendaño, director
Explicación de Textos Literarios vol 34 anejo 1; diciembre 2007
Dept. of Foreign Languages: California State University Sacramento;
derechos reservados del autor)

Guillermina Valdés

---------Coyote’s Notice

--------------------------for Guille

I will always struggle for the good,
heart in the snout,
a cry in the heart
& the heart in the shout.
Thus I danced last night,
-----tiré la chancla,
---------wriggled my butt,
--------------meneé el culo
until the puppy hours
of the morning
because such as it is for some
to do penance for others
for others it is up to us
to make grace for the rest
& so I promise
I will continue to wriggle my butt
until I cannot
& I will keep my tail green
until it is covered by dust.

---------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

It was on September 11, 1973 that the U. S. C.I.A. instigated military coup in Chile overthrew the legally elected and popular government of Salvador Allende initiating an era of brutal dictatorship and bloodshed. President Allende was murdered as was the poet-compose Víctor Jara among thousands of others. The aging poet Pablo Neruda was held under house arrest where he died soon after.

bombing of the Palacio de la Moneda, the Presidential headquarters

--------Rastro de la gota

----------------------a Pablo Neruda

------------------I

Te recuerdo en Holanda
donde las rosas carecen de olor
y el alma que le diste a la máquina
no conoce a la gente.
Tu vicio es vicio de amar
y en tu lengua hasta el cardo
-----sabe dar miel —
hay sangre como la de Federico
-----que sabe doler.
Pero aquí las pupilas son de vidrio
y la desesperación es una gota de agua
que se escurre por los canales dorados,
no de limones sino de hojas muertas.

---------------------II

Hace nueve años que en Holanda
te compuse un verso —
----lleno de agua, hojas secas
----y visión de limones.

Era noviembre —
--------------------es ahora octubre —
el diez cuento mis treinta y ocho
y te has muerto.

Te pienso amapolas y geranios —
el cuero de España y Chile ensangrentado —
hambre, sed,
---------------uvas y luceros.
Hay inventarios en mis huesos
y ortigas en los surcos de mis dedos.

Poeta — me faltan azucenas de consuelo.
------Poeta — me duele Chile
-----------como una punzada en el cerebro.
------Poeta — estoy entumido;
lo único que siento es que has muerto.

-----------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

------(El hacedor de juegos/The maker of Games;
-------Casa Editorial, San Francisco 1977;
-------derechos reservados del autor.)

---------Track of the Drop

---------------------------to Pablo Neruda

----------------------I

I remember you in Holland
where the roses lack color
& the soul you gave the machine
does not know the people.
Yours is the vice of loving
& on your tongue even the thistle
----knows how to give honey —
there is blood like that of Federico
----that knows how to hurt.
But here the pupils are of glass
& despair is a drop of water
that runs through the canals golden,
not with lemons but dead leaves.

---------------------II

It has been nine years that in Holland,
I wrote you a poem —
------full of water, dry leaves
------& a vision of lemons.

It was November —
--------------------now it is October —
on the tenth I count my thirty-eighth
& you have died.

I think you poppies & geraniums —
the skin of Spain & bloodied Chile —
hunger, thirst,
----------------grapes & stars.
There are inventories in my bones
& nettles in the furrows of my fingers.

Poet — I lack lilies of consolation.
-----Poet — Chile pains me
--------------like a sting in the brain.
-----Poet — I am numb;
the only thing I feel is that you are dead.

--------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

(Laughing Unicorn, Fall 1980; author’s copyrights)

Pablo Neruda

The death of poet musician Víctor Jara has become a legend, almost a popular myth. It is told that being held in the Stadium of Santiago de Chile among the multitude of political prisoners, he took his guitar and began to sing. His songs being so popular, the other prisoners accompanied him. The guards then grabbed his guitar and stomped it to pieces under their boots. Then with their bayonets they cut off Victor’s hands. According to the story, Victor continued singing until, his blood draining into the sand, he died.

jacket of one of Víctor Jara's albums

-----------Las manos

-----------------------a Víctor Jara

Cada cuerda rota
una de seis flechas pintadas
que el arco de tu voz lanza
contra la injuria —
cada dedo un punzón
en la conciencia

---cada gota una nota contra el silencio.

Caen las aves negras,
sus plumas nieve enlutada,
en la memoria
donde la sangre hierve

---cada gota una nota contra el silencio.

Las manos caen en la arena,
cada una una fuente roja
que corre hacia un mar sin islas

---cada gota una nota contra el silencio.

Hermano, los gorriones se espichan;
se han roto los cántaros del tiempo
y tu canto corre por el mundo entero

---cada gota una nota contra el silencio:

---cuando la sangre crece alas
---se le llama libertad

---cada gota una nota contra el silencio.

--------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

(Siete escritores comprometidos: obra y perfil;
Fausto Avendaño, director
Explicación de Textos Literarios vol 34 anejo 1; diciembre 2007
Dept. of Foreign Languages: California State University Sacramento;
derechos reservados del autor)

Víctor Jara

----------The Hands

----------------------to Víctor Jara

Each broken string
one of six painted arrows
the bow of your voice sends
against outrage —
each finger a lance
in the conscience

---each drop a note against silence.

The black birds fall,
their feathers snow in mourning,
upon memory
where the blood boils

---each drop a note against silence.

The hands fall on the sand,
each a red fountain
that runs toward a sea without islands

---each drop a note against silence.

Brother, the sparrows grow shy;
the jars of time have broken
& your song runs through the world

---each drop a note against silence:

---when the blood grows wings
---it is called freedom

---each drop a note against silence.

---------

------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

(Second Coming, Vol. 14 no. 1, 1986;
The Montserrat Review #4, 2002;
nominated for Pushcart Prize;
author’s copyrights)

* * *

Now September 11 is to be celebrated as a day of pain and infamy which only our work toward justice and peace may redeem.
-
-

Spillway #16 reading, September 17

2011-09-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

SPILLWAY #16
Reading

Saturday, September 17th, 2011

4:00 pm

Join us for a reading, refreshments,
& a celebration of the publication of
Spillway #16 / 'My First Time'

Host: Editor Susan Terris

Readers will include:

Francesca Bell, Rose Black, Kat Crawford,
Jennifer Dannenberg, Gail Russ Entrekin,
CB Follett, Rafael Jesús González, Laura Horn,
Kristen E. D. Kapfer, Bonnie Long, Roy Mash,
Gerardo Pacheco Matus, Lauren Peck,
David Scronce, Joan Stepp Smith, Joe Zaccardi

Rebound Bookstore

1611 4th Street

San Rafael, CA 94901-2714

(415) 482-0550

-

Jorge Luis Borges (August 24, 1899 – June 14, 1986)

2011-08-24T00:00:00.000-07:00

-

--------------------Elogio del caos

--------------------------------a Jorge Luís Borges

El caos es ese todo que es la nada
pues siendo nada es en potencia todo.
Es ese principio inevitable de donde viene todo
que nace, florece, fructifica y va a la nada.

Es absoluto, eterno e infinito,
invariable, inmanifiesto, sin color
que aburriéndose de no tener color
se vuelve prisma para jugar el juego infinito.

Es ese espejo las ilusiones concretas de este mundo
que bordan tramas en la tela del abismo
para jugar a escondidas con el abismo
que penetra, sostiene, apoya e informa al mundo.

Es ilusión que yo te de la mano
como ilusión el fondo de un espejo
pero es inocurrente dudar de un espejo
y es indisputable el roce de tu mano.

No hay en realidad significado alguno
(es una realidad invariable, infinita y absoluta)
mas la idea de algo que yo llame absoluto
arbitrariamente sin tolerar desprecio alguno.

Y siendo así, lo único que te salva del ubicuo caos
es el capricho de mi voluntad infirme
para colocarte en una ilusión que aunque infirme
te consagra en otra cosa para el mundo, juego del caos.

--------------------------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

(Círculo de poesía 9; Roberto Bianchi, director; aBrace editor,
Montevideo, Uruguay 2008; derechos reservados del autor)

Fenóneno, Remedios Varo

-------------------------Elegy of Chaos

------------------------------------to Jorge Luís Borges

Chaos is that all that is nothing
for being nothing it is in potential all.
It is that inevitable beginning from which comes all
that births, blooms, fruits & goes to nothing.

It is absolute, eternal, and infinite,
invariable, not manifest, colorless
that growing bored of being colorless
becomes prism to play the infinite.

It is that mirror of concrete illusions that is this world
that embroider weaves in the cloth of the abyss
to play hide-and-seek with the abyss
that penetrates, sustains, supports, & informs the world.

It is illusion that I give you my hand
as is illusion the depths of a mirror
but it is unimaginable to doubt a mirror
& indisputable is the brush of your hand.

In reality there is no meaning at all
(it is a reality invariable, infinite, & absolute)
but the idea of something that I call absolute
arbitrarily without tolerating any scorn at all.

& so being, the only thing to save you from ubiquitous chaos
is the whim of my will so weak
to place you in an illusion that though weak
consecrates you as another thing in the world, play of chaos.

---------------------------------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

Jorge Luis Borges
-

Virgo

2011-08-21T00:00:00.000-07:00

-
-
----------------Virgo

La virgen,
pura como una gota de azogue,
en la cintura un cinturón de zafiros,
reina sobre la tierra mudable.
-------La vigila Mercurio
mientras ella ordena cuidadosamente
las cuentas de cornerina, de sardónice
----en la calma de la noche plena.

-----------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

--------------Virgo

The virgin,
pure as a drop of quicksilver,
girdled with sapphires,
reigns over the changing earth.
-------Mercury watches her
as she carefully orders
the beads of carnelian, of sardonyx
-----in the calm of full night.

-----------© Rafael Jesús González 2011
-

-

full moon

2011-08-13T19:52:00.000-07:00

-

---Jin Shengten* y la luna

El joven Shengten dijo
que escribía sus poemas
poseído por la Diosa
de la Benévola Luna.

Mirando la luna
del pabellón de cualquier
de los jardines de Suzhou
seguramente inspiraría
tal locura.

Años más tarde
¿lo poseería también
a hablar contra
los oficiales corruptos
y por ello perder la cabeza?

Muy bien pudiera haber
cosas mucho peores
que la benévola luna inspire
que el escribir de poemas
y decir la verdad ante el poder.

------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

(*Muerto hace 350 años el 7 de agosto
por haber denunciado a corruptos
oficiales de la corte imperial)

Suzhou Garden by Hsu Dan

---Jin Shengten* & the Moon

Young Shengten said
he wrote his poems
possessed by the Goddess
of the Benevolent Moon.

Viewing the moon
from the pavilion of any
of the gardens of Suzhou
would surely inspire
such lunacy.

Years later, could she
have possessed him, too,
to speak out against
the corrupt officials
& lose his head for it?

There may very well be
far worse things
the benevolent moon inspires
than the writing of poems
& speaking truth to power.

------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

(*Executed 350 years ago August 7
for speaking out against corrupt
officials of the Imperial Court.)

-

Nagasaki, August 9, 1945

2011-08-09T00:00:00.000-07:00

-
Let us keep a moment of silence for Nagasaki which, three days after Hiroshima , sixty-six years ago was victim of a nuclear bomb. Never, ever must we allow this to happen again.

Cranes Fly for Peace Tanka

A girl in Japan
taught the world to fold paper
cranes — still there is war.
Blessings written on their wings,
oh, paper cranes, fly for peace.

tanka Grullas vuelen por la paz

Una niña en Japón
le enseñó al mundo doblar grullas
de papel — aun hay guerra.
Bendiciones escritas en sus alas
¡O garzas de papel! vuelen por la paz.

Hiroshima, August 6, 1945

2011-08-06T00:00:00.000-07:00

-
It was on this day in 1945, sixty-six years ago, that the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later, another on Nagasaki. We must never let it happen again; we must work for complete nuclear disarmament throughout the world.

-----------------------------------Andreas Bauer

Origami Crane Tanka

It's said that if you
fold one-thousand paper cranes
your wish will come true.
For peace I would gladly spend
the rest of my days folding.

Tanka de Grulla Origami

Se dice que si
doblas mil grullas de papel
tu deseo se te concederá.
Por la paz felizmente me pasaría
el resto de mis días doblando.

Tanka de Garça Origami

Se dizes que sim
dobras mil garças de papel
e te desejo se realizará.
pela paz, feliz, eu passaria
o resto de meus dias dobrando.

------------------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

------------------------------------ -traducción al portugués por

---------------------------- ------© Clevane Pessoa 2008

In June of 1983, imprisoned in Santa Rita Prison because of blocking the entrance of Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, California, where nuclear arms are designed, we occupied ourselves folding cranes from old newspapers; among us all, we made more than a thousand to send to Japan.

(to make an origami crane)
-

Leo

2011-07-21T00:00:00.001-07:00

-
-

--------------León

El león, ojos de carnalina,
colmillos, garras de sardónice,
lleva en el pecho corazón de rubí
que guarda el fuego fijo del valor.
-----Anhela devorar al sol
-----y mudarlo en oro
que surgiera por sus venas
como río caliente de luz.

----------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

-------------------Leo

The lion, carnelian eyes,
fangs, claws of sardonyx,
carries in his breast a ruby heart
that holds the steadfast fires of courage.
------It desires to devour the sun
------& turn it into gold
that would run in his veins
like a hot river of light.

----------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011
-

Hart Crane (July 21, 1899 - April 27, 1932)

2011-07-21T00:00:00.000-07:00

-
-

Santa Prisca, Taxco, Guerrero, Mexico

----------From Another Tower

------------------------to Hart Crane

Call love the knell
if in the paralytic dream
of longing hell
a bird should wound you.

-----(I too have heard
-----the bells of Santa Prisca
fling blue prisms of delight
into my green volcanoes -
-----voices like the darknesses
-----inside nuns' skirts —
iron sounds that starch the mind
and bleach dark hurts.)

-----Fate was molded thus
-----to give no reason
--------------------------or return
hasten the words which find no answer,
-----wander —
-----------------hesitate —
------------------------------and turn.

Perhaps the sea can tell —
-----resound the gong in its purpuric caves,
----------perpetuate the knell
and toll the clappers of the waves
to drown this glorious hell.

--------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

(El Grito, Vol. 6 no. 3, Spring 1973;
Author's copyrights.)

Hart Crane

-----------------Desde otra torre

----------------------------a Hart Crane

Llámale al amor el toque
si en el sueño paralizado
del ansioso infierno
un pájaro te hiriera.

-----(Yo también he oído
-----las campanas de Santa Prisca
esparcir prismas azules del deleite
en mis volcanes verdes -
-----voces como las oscuridades
-----dentro las enaguas de monjas —
sonidos de hierro que almidonan la mente
y decoloran daños oscuros.)

-----El destino se moldea así
-----para no dar razón
--------------------------o retorno
apresurar las palabras que no encuentran respuesta,
-----vagan —
----------------titubean —
------------------------------y vuelven.

Tal vez el mar pueda decir —
-----retumbar el gong en las cavas púrpuras,
----------perpetuar el toque
y doblar los badajos de las olas
para ahogar este glorioso infierno.

------------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

Hart Crane by David Álfaro Siqueiros
-
-

full moon

2011-07-14T20:32:00.000-07:00

Sobre un frasquito de agua traída del Monte Shasta

Sobre el altar hogareño el agua del manantial sagrado imperceptiblemente se agita en su frasquito al sentir la llamada de la luna llena que asoma por la ventana iluminándola.

Es dócil el agua a pesar del jalar de la luna; ningún resentimiento tiene contra las paredes cristalinas del frasquito que la enjaula aunque aun guarde memorias de su viaje oscuro por las entrañas de la montaña sagrada, de su escape tumultuoso por el ojo sagrado que da principio al río que abastece la región. Sabe que es rezo, su pureza anhelo del ser humano que la contempla iluminada por la luz de la luna.

Primordiales son las ligas que unen la luna, el agua, el hombre que reza.

On a Little Flask of Water Brought from Mt. Shasta

On the home altar, water from the sacred spring imperceptibly stirs in its little flask on feeling the call of the full moon peering through the window, illuminating it.

The water is docile in spite of the pull of the moon; no resentment does it have against the crystalline walls of the little bottle that cages it even though it keeps memories of its dark journey through the entrails of the sacred mountain, of its tumultuous escape through the sacred spring that begins the river that supplies the region. It knows that it is prayer, its purity the longing of the human being who contemplates it illuminated by the light of the moon.

Primordial are the ties that bind the moon, the water, the man who prays.

Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904/September 23, 1973)

2011-07-12T00:00:00.000-07:00

-
-

---------Luna para Neruda

Por la ventana la luna anida
en las ramas más altas de un pino
----como una gran garza
de plumaje tan blanco que duele.
Inmóvil por un momento, se antoja
una figura luminosa en forma de sirena
en la proa del galeón de la noche
que corta por la espuma de las estrellas
para echar ancla en una isla negra
donde el poeta se ahoga en sus libros
que le trae uno de sus esclavos
ya no sabe si Calibán o Ariel,
si para liberarlo del insomnio
o más hundirlo en los sueños.

La luna se desenmaraña
de las ramas del pino
y sigue su curso.

----------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

Pablo Neruda by Arthur Sirdofsky

----------A Moon for Neruda

Through the window the moon nests
in the highest branches of a pine
like a great egret
of plumage so white that it hurts.
Immobile a moment, it seems
a luminous figure in the shape of a mermaid
on the prow of the galleon of night
that cuts through the spindrift of the stars
to cast anchor on a black isle
where the poet drowns in his books
brought to him by one of his slaves,
he no longer knows if Caliban or Ariel,
if to free him from insomnia
or sink him more deeply in dreams.

The moon disentangles itself
from the branches of the pine
& continues its course.

-----------© Rafael Jesús González 2011
-
-

Farmworker Justice Breakfast & Trader Joe's Action, Saturday, July 16

2011-07-09T00:00:00.000-07:00

Farmworker Justice Breakfast & Trader Joe's Action

Saturday, July 16 · 9:00am - 11:00am
Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists
1924 Cedar St. (at Bonita), Berkeley, CA

Join the East Bay community in welcoming members of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (a Florida-based farmworker organization) to California and learning about their innovative and highly successful Campaign for Fair Food.

Following breakfast, a short presentation, and a poetry reading by Bay Area's Rafael Jesús González, we'll walk down the street to Trader Joe's (1885 University Ave.) to demand that the company help end farm worker exploitation in its supply chain.

Bring your signs, drums and outdoor voices!

Help build a food system that respects workers' rights!

For more information, contact Damara Luce

Please "attend" here on Facebook and invite your friends.

BACKGROUND:

TRADER JOE'S CAMPAIGN
By paying just one penny more per pound of tomatoes they purchase from Florida, Trader Joe's could help dramatically improve wages for farmworkers. Yet despite $8+ billion in sales last year (and being owned by a multi-billionaire family in Germany), they refuse to make a lasting commitment to do so.

From November through May, 90% of the tomatoes produced in the U.S. come from Florida, where farmworkers have long faced sweatshop conditions, including:

* Stagnant, sub-poverty wages
* No right to overtime pay
* No benefits whatsoever
* Sexual harassment
* In extreme cases, modern-day slavery

Nine other corporate food leaders -- including Whole Foods, McDonald's and Burger King -- have signed on to participate in the Coalition of Immokalee Workers' Fair Food Program, an innovative, worker-led solution to the human rights crisis in the fields. (The program includes a penny-per-pound premium for fairer wages and a strict code of conduct for better working conditions.)

Until Trader Joe's follows suit, it can expect growing discontent from consumers across the country.

COALITION OF IMMOKALEE WORKERS
The CIW, a community-based farmworker organization headquartered in Immokalee, FL, with over 4,000 members, seeks modern working conditions for farmworkers and promotes their fair treatment in accordance with national and international labor standards. Among its accomplishments, the CIW has aided in the prosecution by the Department of Justice of six slavery operations and the liberation of well over 1,000 workers.

In addition, the CIW uses creative methods to educate consumers about human rights abuses in the U.S. agricultural industry, the need for corporate social responsibility, and how consumers can help workers realize their social change goals. The CIW's Campaign for Fair food has won unprecedented support for fundamental farm labor reforms from retail food industry leaders, with the goal of enlisting the market power of those companies to demand more humane labor standards from their Florida tomato suppliers.

ADDITIONAL READING:

* The True Cost of Tomatoes by Mark Bittman (New York Times, 6/14/11)

* Trader Joe's Reveals Its Inner WalMart (CIW website, 6/29/11)

-

Fida Kahlo (July 6, 1907 – July 13, 1954)

2011-07-06T00:00:00.000-07:00

Frida

Conocí a Frida por primera vez en el verano de 1950, tenía yo quince años de edad y en un viaje a México mi padre nos llevó a la familia al museo nacional de arte moderno. Allí conocí a Frida en doble, un lienzo grande (el más grande que creo jamás haya pintado) en que dos Fridas, una vestida de blanco en el estilo de fines del siglo XIX y la otra en traje tehuano, sentadas ante un cielo atormentado, se cogían de la mano, los corazones expuestos y sangrando, las miradas clavadas en la mía. Quedé absorto y fascinado. Mi madre tuvo que desprenderme jalándome de la mano.

Creo que entonces me enamoré de Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo Calderón. La buscaba por dondequiera; entonces sus cuadros no eran tan fáciles de encontrar como los de su esposo Diego. Cuando los encontraba, allí estaba ella, siempre mirándome con mirada fija y estoica aunque en muchos de ellos el dolor que ostentaba como una flor maligna o una joya venenosa era palpable — collares de espinas; corsés como instrumentos de tortura medievales; la espina vertebral expuesta, una columna quebrada; una que otra lágrima como adorno de perla, gotas de sangre como alhajas de rubí. Cada uno de estos pequeños cuadros era como una reliquia preciosa del sufrir o una golosina de dolor, retablos como mandas por algún milagro perverso, exvotos a un dios cruel. Lo que me asombraba eran los colores, la sensualidad, la belleza con que celebraban su dolor. Entre los cincuenta y tanto autorretratos que pintó, aun en los que no aparecen imágenes del dolor, jamás, de que yo sepa, se pintó sonriente.

Poco a poco me enteré de su historia — su rebeldía precoz, el polio que de niña le atacó, el accidente de tranvía atroz que de joven la dejó en pedazos, su amor obsesivo por Diego (aunque no tan obsesivo que le impidiera otros amores con hombre o mujer), su valor que prestaba fuerza a su empeño por la alegría (que a veces ha de haber fingido), su culto a la vanidad, su afán por prendas regionales, joyas arqueológicas tan pesadas que le han de haber costado llevar, su alarde de mestiza.

Ahora la encuentro por dondequiera, aun en las películas, y en los bailes de disfraz parece que se multiplica cada vez más; la encuentro en las salas, los comedores, las cocinas, las recámaras, los baños. A veces me causa celos, mi Frida promiscua, ubicua.

Frida

I first knew Frida the summer of 1950; I was fifteen years old and on a trip to México my father took the family to the National Museum of Modern Art. There I met Frida in double, a large canvas (the largest one I believe she ever painted) in which two Fridas, one dressed in white in the style of the end of the 19th century and the other in the dress of Tehuantepec, seated before a tormented sky, held each others hand, their hearts exposed and bleeding, their gazes locked onto mine. I stood there absorbed and fascinated. My mother had to pull me away dragging me by the hand.

I believe it was then that I fell in love with Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo Calderón. I sought her everywhere; then, her paintings were not as easy to find as her husband Diego’s. Whenever I found them, there she was, always looking at me with fixed and stoic gaze even though in many of them the pain she displayed like a malignant flower or poisonous jewel, was palpable — necklaces of thorns; corsets like medieval instruments of torture; the exposed vertebral spine, a broken column; a few tears like pearl ornaments, drops of blood like ornaments of ruby. Each of these small paintings was like a precious reliquary of suffering, a delicacy of pain, offerings for some perverse miracle, ex votos to a cruel god. What amazed me were the colors, the sensuality, the beauty with which they celebrated her pain. Among the fifty some odd self-portraits, even in the ones in which there appear no images of pain, never, that I know of, did she paint herself smiling.

Little by little, I came to know her history — her precocious rebellion, the polio that attacked her as a child, the terrible trolley accident that left her in pieces young, her obsessive love of Diego (though not so obsessive that it prevented other loves with man or woman), her courage that lent strength to her determination for joy (which at times she must have feigned), her cult of vanity, her zeal for regional costumes, archaeological jewels so heavy that they must have hurt her to wear them, her boasts of being mestiza.

Now I find her everywhere, even in films, and at costume balls she seems to multiply herself more and more; I find her in the salons, the dining rooms, the kitchens, the bedrooms, the bathrooms. She sometimes makes me jealous, my promiscuous, ubiquitous Frida.

4th of July, Independence Day

2011-07-04T00:00:00.000-07:00

-
For my brothers and sisters who on this day may want to wave flags, these thoughts to ponder:

It is not for him to pride himself who loveth his own country, but rather for him who loveth the whole world. The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens.

Baha'u'llah

Our country is not the only thing to which we owe our allegiance. It is also owed to justice and to humanity. Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong.

James Bryce (British politician, diplomat, and historian, 1838-1922)

To him in whom love dwells, the whole world is but one family.

Buddha

*

The best way to enhance freedom in other lands is to demonstrate here that our democratic system is worthy of emulation.

Jimmy Carter (39th U.S. President (1977-81). Nobel Prize for Peace in 2002. b.1924)

*

The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border?

Pablo Casals (Spanish Cellist and Conductor, 1876-1973)

*

It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars.

Arthur C. Clarke

*

True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else.

Clarence Darrow

*

You can protect your liberties in this world only by protecting the other man's freedom. You can be free only if I am free.

Clarence Darrow (U.S. Lawyer, Speaker and Writer, 1857-1938)

*

I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth, and I am a citizen of the world.

Eugene V. Debs

*

We do not consider patriotism desirable if it contradicts civilized behavior.

Friedrich Durrenmatt

*

Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!

Albert Einstein

*

He is a poor patriot whose patriotism does not enable him to understand how all men everywhere feel about their altars and their hearthstones, their flag and their fatherland.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

*

Our country is the world, our countrymen are all mankind. We love the land of our nativity, only as we love all other lands. The interests, rights, and liberties of American citizens are no more dear to us than are those of the whole human race. Hence we can allow no appeal to patriotism, to revenge any national insult or injury.

William Lloyd Garrison (Declaration of Sentiments, Boston Peace Conference, 1838)

*

I love America. I love the world. Brotherhood and sisterhood have no borders. My heart orbits the Earth, love cannot be measured in longitude or latitude.

Terri Guillemets

*

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.

Abraham Lincoln

*

We are free, truly free, when we don't need to rent our arms to anybody in order to be able to lift a piece of bread to our mouths.

Ricardo Flores Magón, speech, 31 May 1914

*

Borders are scratched across the hearts of men
By strangers with a calm, judicial pen,
And when the borders bleed we watch with dread
The lines of ink across the map turn red.

Marya Mannes, Subverse: Rhymes for Our Times, 1959

*

Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched.

Guy de Maupassant (French writer of short stories and novels, 1850-1893)

*

We need a type of patriotism that recognizes the virtues of those who are opposed to us . . . The old "manifest destiny" idea ought to be modified so that each nation has the manifest destiny to do the best it can — and that without cant, without the assumption of self-righteousness and with a desire to learn to the uttermost from other nations.

Francis John McConnell

*

If I knew something that would serve my country but would harm mankind, I would never reveal it; for I am a citizen of humanity first and by necessity, and a citizen of France second, and only by accident.

Montesquieu

*

Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarreled with him?

Blaise Pascal

*

If you can't get them to salute when they should salute and wear the clothes you tell them to wear, how are you going to get them to die for their country?

General George S. Patton (U.S. general in World War I and II, 1885-1945)

*

If patriotism is "the last refuge of a scoundrel," it is not merely because evil deeds may be performed in the name of patriotism, but because patriotic fervor can obliterate moral distinctions altogether.

Ralph B. Perry

I couldn't help but say to [Mr. Gorbachev], just think how easy his task and mine might be in these meetings that we held if suddenly there was a threat to this world from another planet. [We'd] find out once and for all that we really are all human beings here on this earth together.

Ronald Reagan, 1985 [Stupid indeed, and blind, if we cannot see our common humanity without a threat from another planet; what greater threat to humanity, and the Earth, than ourselves? R.J.G.]

*

Patriots always talk of dying for their country, and never of killing for their country.

Bertrand Russell (English logician and philosopher 1872-1970)

*

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.

Bertrand Russell

*

To me, it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography.

George Santayana

*

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.

George Bernard Shaw

*

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

George Bernard Shaw

*

I am not an Athenian or a Greek, I am a citizen of the world.

Socrates (469 BC - 399 BC)
also credited to Diogenes of Sinope (412 BC - 323 BC)

*

I have no sense of nationalism, only a cosmic consciousness of belonging to the human family.

Rosika Schwimmer

*

The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded.

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy (Russian thinker, novelist and philosopher, 1828-1910)

*

The time is fast approaching when to call a man a patriot will be the deepest insult you can offer him. Patriotism now means advocating plunder in the interest of the privileged classes of the particular State system into which we have happened to be born.

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

*

The most tragic paradox of our time is to be found in the failure of nation-states to recognize the imperatives of internationalism.

Earl Warren

*

As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America [U.S.] among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.

George Washington (1st US President (1789-97), 1732-1799)

*

You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it.

Malcolm X (U.S. black militant leader the early 1960s, 1925-1965)

*

-

Reclaiming Quarterly, "Confessions of a Pagan Priest"

2011-06-29T00:21:00.000-07:00

http://www.reclaimingquarterly.org/102/102-welcome.html

Feature Articles - "Confessions of a Pagan Priest"

by Rafael Jesús González, pp. 57 - 59

-

Gay Day

2011-06-26T00:00:00.000-07:00

Gay means joyful

To all my brothers and sisters who on this day celebrate human sexuality in all its diversity and joy with provocative abandon and scandalous good humor.

---So Much for Sex

You have a dong
or you have a ding;
---at various times
------& different places
you may ding-ding
or you may ding-dong
or you may dong-dong.

Anyway, the music is lovely
& you can’t go wrong.

------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

May justice and universal human rights, respect, compassion, peace prevail under the universal flag of the rainbow.

Gay significa alegre

A mis hermanos y hermanas que en este día celebran la sexualidad humana en toda su diversidad y alegría con provocante abandono y escandaloso buen humor.
-

---Tanto por el sexo

Tienes un don
o tienes una doña;
---en varias ocasiones
------y en distintos lugares
harás doña-doña
o harás doña-don
o harás don-don.

De todos modos la música es linda
y no necesitas perdón.

----------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

Que la justicia, los derechos humanos universales, el respeto, la compasión, la paz prevalezcan bajo la bandera universal del arco iris.
-

-

riverbabble 19, summer 2011

2011-06-25T22:28:00.000-07:00

riverbabble 19 --------summer 2011

Vietnam, 2011 by Christopher Novak

riverbabble 19

Summer Bloomsday Issue

Poetry

Jannie Dresser:
-------------Elaine, Lily Maid of Astolat
-------------Mortician's After Hours

Rafael Jesús González:
-----------La entrega de coyote / Coyote's Surrender
-----------Obra maestra / Master-Piece

Daniel Beauregard: Symphony on 400 North

Marion Boyer: The Vacuum of Space

Anthony Adrian Pino: The Healing Beach

j.d. daniels: Mount Ayr

Craig Collins-Young: Lou's Tavern

Juan Domingo: Moon Coyote

Emily Severance: Kink

James Duncan: I'll drink you down at dawn

Karen Schubert: Concealed by a Doorway, Can't Turn Away

Nancy Flynn: Faux Elegy After Mario & Thaeng's Vows

Brad Rose: Second Cousins

Gregory Owen Pearse: Tea With the Emperor

Christopher Mulrooney: the black box

Cindy M. Kelly Fish Story

George Korolog: Listening to James Clay

Maude Larke: Firebird

Ken Poyner: Shotgun Wedding

Armando Rendon: Bike Repair

Phibby Venable: Eleven Swans

Fiction

Larry Lefkowitz: In Victoria's Bed

Sandra O'Briant: Against the Rules

Tom Sheehan: Ivaloo Outside the Lines

Mitch Duckworth: First Snow

Phibby Venable: The Man in the Train is Waving

Flash Fiction

Olivia Arieti: Singing Revenge

Chella Courington: Monsoon Days

Jim Eigo: Moonless

Jason Price Everett Sarcology

Kawika Guillermo: Learning to Love

Aryan Kaganof: The Cuckolding

Len Kuntz: Night Swimming

Doug Mathewson: Planet Betty, the New World

Brad Rose: Spikes

Jerry Vilhotti: Gotcha!

Elizabeth Weaver: The Gift

Reviews

Joanne Faries: Refuse to Flinch: a Review of Girls & Women

Meg Withers: Review of Girls & Women

Photography

Christopher Novak: Vietnam, 2011

___________________________________________________________________

O well I suppose its because they were so plump and tempting in my short petticoat he couldn't resist they excite my self sometimes its well for men all the amount of pleasure they get off a womans body were so round and white for them always I wished I was one myself for a change just to try with that thing they have swelling up on you so hard and at the same time so soft when you touch it

JAMES JOYCE, Ulysses, p. 638., 18, 1378-1333.

___________________________________________________________

| Submissions | Contact Us | Archives | Staff

~

Pandemonium Press

2nd printing

available now on Amazon.com

or from

the publisher: pandemoniumpress@gmail.com

_________________________________

Leila Rae, editor
riverbabble
http://iceflow.com/riverbabble/Welcome.html
---
-