Thursday, December 25, 2014

Christmas blessings


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Bendiciones al celebrar el mito divino de que el dios único de los hebreos eligió nacer hombre y vivir la gloria amarga-dulce de la mortalidad para encender la esperanza de un mundo regido por la justicia arraigada en el amor y la compasión. Es apto que el día de su nacer se fija en el solsticio invernal, el crecer de la luz.

Casi no es necesario notar que es oscuro el mundo, que por falta de documentos madres, padres son separados de sus hij@s y familias son destruidas, que muchos sufren hambre y desamparo para que los cuantos poderosos ricos vivan vidas de derroche. Y casi no se necesita notar que la iglesia establecida para llevar sus enseñanzas de él más veces que no se presta de fácil cómplice a las instituciones del abuso.

Pero sí hay que notar que ahora ocupa el trono de San Pedro un papa que tomando el nombre de un santo mendigo reclama a los banqueros en el templo y fuera. Se revive la esperanza de que despertemos a la luz. Así sea.  



---------A esto


Se cuenta 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.





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© Rafael Jesús González 2014






Blessings as we celebrate the divine myth that the only god of the Hebrews chose to be born a man and live the bitter-sweet glory of mortality to light the hope of a world ruled by justice rooted in love and compassion. It is fit that his day of birth be fixed at the Winter Solstice, the growing of the light.

It hardly needs remarking that the world is dark, that for lack of documents mothers, fathers are separated from their children and families are destroyed, that many go hungry and without shelter so that the few powerful rich may lead spendthrift lives. And it hardly needs remarking that the church established to carry his teachings more often than not lends itself easy accomplice to the institutions of abuse.

But it must be noted that on the throne of St. Peter there now sits a pope who, taking the name of a pauper saint, calls to account the money-changers in the temple and without. Hope is quickened that we may be waking to the light. May it be so.



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


It is told
that the brightness of a star
and 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 and glorious
trajectory of his life,
it all comes to this:
------he taught to love.




------© Rafael Jesús González 2014



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Sunday, December 21, 2014

Capricorn - Winter Solstice

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Capricorn — Winter Solstice


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------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 2014



------Capricorn



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





----------© Rafael Jesús González 2014

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Friday, December 12, 2014

Feast of our Lady of Guadalupe Tonantzin

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------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 2014




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 2014




by Robert Lentz
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Thursday, December 11, 2014

Fightin' Words launch Saturday, December 20

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http://www.penoakland.com/PEN-Oakland-Publications.html




Paul Krassner       Kitty Kelley   Mona Lisa Saloy    John Curl
Floyd Salas    Ishmael Reed     Michael McClure      Claire Ortalda
Richard Prince     Gerald Nicosia     A.D. Winans      Gerald Haslam
Norman Mailer    Herbert Gold      Rebecca Solnit    Jack Hirschman
Clive Matson     Judith Cody   Barry Spector    Koon Woon
Al Young     Susan Suntree      Avotcja       Devereaux Baker
Kim McMillon     Lucha Corpi   Andrea Zawinski     CB Follett
Neeli Cherkovski      Kathleen de Azevedo      Lucille Lang Day
Steve Dalachinsky      J.P. Dancing Bear     Sharon Doubiago
Rafael Jesús González     Francisco X. Alarcon     Tony R. Rodriguez
Eric Miles Williamson     Adam David Miller      Tennessee Reed
Jack & Adele Foley     Juan Felipe Herrera      Kirk Lumpkin

and many, many more


https://heydaybooks.com/book/fightin-words/



invite you to Fightin' Words Launch Party!

Saturday, December 20th

at 2:00 p.m.

Heyday Books

1633 University Ave.

Berkeley, CA 94703



http://www.penoakland.com/
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Saturday, December 6, 2014

full moon: The Full Moon Calls



--------La luna llena llama

----------------------------- a los inocentes 
-- ---------------------------
muertos por la policía


La luna llena llama
a los enamorados
que deleitan en su luz
y se dice que también llama
a los hombres-lobos y los vampiros.
Es cierto de los enamorados
----(siempre he sido de ellos.)
No sé de hombres-lobos y vampiros;
-----viven entre nosotros —
son los más allá de la ley
-----que matan a inocentes
dizque en nombre de la ley.
-----No necesitan de la luna.




-----------------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2014








             



-----------The Full Moon Calls

-----------------------------------------to the innocent
---------------------------------------- killed by police



The full moon calls
those in love
who delight in its light
& it is said it also calls
the were-wolves & vampires.
It is true of those in love
-----(I have always been of them.)
I know not of were-wolves & vampires;
---------they live among us —
they are those beyond the law
-----who kill the innocent
supposedly in the name of the law.
-----They have no need of the moon.





----------------------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2014




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Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Thanksgiving


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-------------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 2014



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






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


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




-------------------------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2014



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




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Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Thanksgiving Day — a U.S. holiday


Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (1863-1930)



 

Preparing to celebrate Thanksgiving, favorite U.S. holiday (for we must always be thankful for blessings), it is well for us to recall the history and myth in which it is clothed and reflect upon it.

If in 1621 "Tisquantum" or "Squanto" of the Wampanoag nation, who as a boy or youth was taken as a slave to England fifteen years before the “Pilgrims” came to America, helped the ill-provided colonists and with his tribe celebrated thanksgiving with Miles Standish and the colonists of Plymouth Plantation, it was because the Algonkian tribes were generous and held six thanks-giving festivals during the year (that one being their 5th one of the year.) They brought most of the food, including four wild turkeys, for the feasting.

But it seems that, as William B. Newell, a Penobscot Indian and former chairman of the Anthropology department at the University of Connecticut, points out, the first officially declared Thanksgiving Day by the Governor of the then Massachusetts Bay Colony was the day following the slaughtering of a Pequot village of 700 men, women, and children who were celebrating their annual Green Corn Dance, in June 1637 executed under the command of one John Underhill and documented by William Branford.

In fact, a proclamation of such a holiday recorded in Charlestown, Massachusetts, thirty-nine years later, June 20, 1676, refers to the indigenous peoples of this land as “the Enemy” in “the present Warr with the Heathen Natives of this land.” And the governing council of Charlestown, Massachusetts set June 29 to thank the god of the Puritan “pilgrims” for “giving us especially of late with many of our Confederates many signal Advantages against them [the indigenous people],” thankful “when our Enemies are in any measure disappointed or destroyed.”

It first became a national holiday declared such by George Washington in 1789 for November 26. Abraham Lincoln revived the custom in 1863, and Congress decreed the holiday should fall on the fourth Thursday of November in 1941. And so it is, a holiday with antecedents in the remotest times of human history and burdened with national myth and fact, piety and villainy more often than not inextricably intertwined.

Since 1969 or 70 on San Francisco Bay, the day is begun at sunrise with American Indian ceremony at the gathering of the tribes on the island of Alcatraz as reminder of the history of this land. - and as rededication to changing its course for the better.

Feasting with family and friends in thanks for the blessings of life, Thanksgiving is a holiday of celebration whose joy is marred by a consciousness of our nation in continual war and destruction of the Earth. The government (we, if we tolerate it) not only wages war unjustly, unlawfully, justifying itself through lies and deceit, but violates the U. S. Constitution and Bill of Rights so that our civil rights and liberties are less and less guaranteed. The wealth of the nation is concentrated in the hands of the one per cent rich and powerful, and most of our people will celebrate this day with less wealth, less security, less freedom, less learning, than thirty-three years ago. And the struggle to create a democracy continues.

In the midst of this pain and exasperation, we must give thanks for the gifts of life and the sustenance of the great Mother the Earth. And for each other, and all our relations the other animals, the plants, the minerals. We give thanks mindful that in our gratitude we must also raise our voices in the name of justice and peace knowing that gratitude for that which we enjoy at the expense and suffering of our brothers and sisters is blasphemous and unacceptable.



© Rafael Jesús González 2014

Berkeley/Oakland, Alta California



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