Your daily dose of Chicano poetry
"I write poems on walls that crumble and fall
I talk to shadows that sleep and go away crying.”
Luis Omar Salinas (1937–2008)
“I learned humility from a fat, Jewish oboe player…”
by Oscar “Zeta” Acosta
“It is this anarchy of socialization, this willingness to strike at all self-image masking as reality, that permitted me the freedom to open my own sores before these strangers. It is not that I had never been beaten over the head by others; for insult couched in smart talk was the permanent style of conversation at the bars I had frequented for years in San Francisco. And even prior to my arrival in San Francisco (in 1958 at the age of 23) I was accustomed to and accomplished in brutal conversations. At seventeen I had joined the Air Force Band during the Korean War and had lived four years with those jazz musicians who didn’t want to get their asses shot off defending a country that, at best, was irrelevant to their interests. Jazz musicians were the hip, the perceptive and the rebellious men of that otherwise drab era. It is from those professional artists that I learned the ropes; learned to identify and to use sex, drug and music. They were the dominant themes of the fighting 573rd A. F. Band at Albrook Air Force Base in Panama between 1954 and ’56. The year before, I had found Jesus and had been consumed with the Holy Ghost. When I preached instant salvation to the jazzmen, they merely told me to practice whole tones on my clarinet or invited me to a whorehouse. I discovered they would not scare as easily as did the natives I was leading by the nose in the jungles. The harder I railed at them, the more kindness and humor they threw back. Ultimately, I learned humility from a fat, Jewish oboe player, who practiced alone seven hours a day in the attic of the barracks, when he told me that he respected my commitment.”
excerpt from his draft: The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
Let’s dedicate a few days to Oscar “Zeta” Acosta, the legendary Chicano lawyer, activist and writer who became known as a “Robin Hood Chicano Lawyer” of sorts in California during the ’60s and ’70s. He was the real-life model for Hunter S. Thompson’s “Dr. Gonzo.” Gonzo, the film, is about Thompson, but makes references to Acosta since Thompson was influenced by him. Acosta’s first book was Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo. He also penned The Revolt of the Cockroach People. I’ll be posting excerpts from some of his writings over the next few days.
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson is Alex Gibney’s latest documentary. You can listen to an interview with Gibney about the film on NPR’s Talk of the Nation HERE.
Excerpt: Rebirth
If it does not feed the fire
of your creativity, then leave it.
If people and things do not
inspire your heart to dream,
then leave them.
If you are not crazily in love
and making a stupid fool of yourself,
then step closer to the edge
of your heart and climb
where you’ve been forbidden to go.
Debts, accusations, assaults by enemies
mean nothing,
go where the fire feeds you.
Jimmy Santiago Baca
Excerpt from Book Five: Rebirth from Healing Earthquakes: A Love Story in Poems
Ana Castillo: Xicanisma and Writing
Ana Castillo has been interested in the role of women in Hispanic society and the lack of recognition of women in Chicano and American culture throughout her life and her work. She described in the 1998 “Platica” how “being a Chicana or a mestiza was a total non-event in American society. It’s as if we didn’t exist.” ~ from speakingofstories.org
The Poetry of America
Of the sixty-two
viceroys who served in New Spain, three of them
had private Indian mistresses and fourteen of them had mulatto
children.
They flayed skin and drank oyster juice.
They burnt corn tribute to Huitzilopochtli
in the name of Yahweh. I raise my arms to them.
Salut, I say. Salut. In the center of the table.
I can see their nakedness; this harpoon, I carry, in their accent.
This invention of being.
I must dive deep to find my father now.
In this office there is little to save except the disintegration
that plagues all species. I have learned to play the piano
and the clarinet. This is my new awareness.
I wear a bluish wig. I have learned to kneel
on water, outside where the old woman loosen their clothes.
Ocelotl swishes his knife blade. He shows us his teeth.
The Central Valley coughs and fumbles for words.
How to describe this illusion:
in New York, the Metros have rusted on their tracks.
Another homicide tells of this. Chiapas lives on bagels and tequila.
They know the history. They know where to find the President’s
children.
They read Artaud in Braille and rub their genitalia.
A sandwich, a Cézanne to mix things up a bit. Bologna or
ham on rye, garlic butter. More. Duck sauce and rasberry sausages.
Lobster, ostrón and calabaza. We must eat.
We must crash through our faces
and discover the new opening.
Eat the gold,
chew the strings, digest until we are ribbons,
reddish and jade green. Chinese and Vietnamese.
Cambodian and Hmong villages in tuxedos. Manila
and Northern Luzon where the Ilongot seek the words
for the new revolution.
Juan Felipe Herrera
“Juan Felipe Herrera was initiated into the Word by the fire-speakers of the early Chicano Movimiento and by heavy exposure to various poetry, jazz, and blues performance streams. He is the Tomás Rivera Endowed Chair in the Department of Creative Writing at the University of California – Riverside. His published works include Border-Crosser with a Lamborghini Dream, Mayan Drifter: Chicano Poet in the Lowlands of the Americas, and Thunderweavers / Tejedoras de Rayos.” ~~City Lights Booksellers and Publishers
Xican@ Poetry Daily 