The Republicans Are Repainting The
Constitution Of The United States Of
America By

screwing the poor whites, the blacks,
the browns, the yellows, the reds,
the gay colors,the different colors,
the true colors…

The Children’s Prison

As a kid I believed
in segregation,
I had no choice

since all chicanos
were locked up
in the same school.

I could not
argue at the time
since

everything was
as it
was supposed to be.

You only had to
grow up
and learn the English,

they despised Spanish
and Spanish names---
they gave you

gringo names
to go
with your brown face.

William Carlos Williams And His Wife Had
Friends Over For Dinner So She Baked A
Couple Of Chickens. After Din Din WCW
Went Out On The Back Porch And Wrote
This Poem

red
wheel

barrow

glazed

with
rain

If Andy Warhol Had Been A Chicano Poet


camp
bells
soup
c a n

What Billy Collins Saw When He Undressed
Emily Dickinson, But Didn’t Have The Guts
To Tell Us


M

Henry’s Gonzo Elegy For Hunter S. Thompson

How do you like your
blue-eyed boy now
Mr. Death-two-doors-down?

Balding, shooting bears in the ass,
shooting your assistant in the ass,
shooting yourself in the ass.

There’s already a hole there,
there’s already a hole
in your convertible head.

Fear and loathing comes out of it,
motorcycles roar out of it,
the Big Island pours out of it,

the surfers hang none
behind your big ears,
it is still the Sixties

and hippies cast the non-deciding vote.
The war will continue,
but that is all behind us now.

The future opens up
like your black bow-tie
holding your death by the neck.

But, listen, Hunter, don’t go drinking too much Chivas
and shooting God
in the nuts.

"Brown Buffalo’s"

The Brown Buffalo’s
disappeared

who used to
drive hunter s thompson’s
convertible
and break thefuckinglawsofthisfuckingcountry

Jesus Maria y Jose

he was a brown baboso
and what I want to know
is how do you like your brown-eyed vato now
Mr. Muerte

by rE.yE.s cardenas

Homemade Girl

The sixteen-year-old
Palestinian girl,
bombs strapped

under her breasts
to hide the bulge
walks into the pizza place

and triggers the bomb.
There’s no sound,
no pain.

That was easy,
everything became nothing…
They find pieces of her,

her hair, skin, brain matter
mixed with pizza,
stuck on a chair,

but they find that
her mind
is still intact

and lying on the floor.
Her thoughts
are there

for all to see,
but all of us, every single one of us
looks away

before we
start thinking
what she’s thinking.

Steph-a-nie, No Disassemble

Contrary to the laws
created by Isaac Asimov
to govern all robots,

Johnny Five
jumps on a butterfly.
Sometimes you’re the windshield,

sometimes you’re the bug,
sometimes the laws
are written badly.

If you’re going
to pick your nose,
you’d better clip your fingernails.

If you’re going
to cross the road,
you’d better be a chicken.

If you’re going to be chicano
you’d better be prepared
to fight the white man for a thousand years.

El Corrido De Alberto Gonzales

Alberto Gonzales,
Dubya’s Mexican gardener,
the Frito Bandito,

the Tio Taco,
the big enchilada
of torture,

the Taco Belle
from hell,
the Mexican plate of hate.

Alberto Gonzales,
Dubya’s pinto bean.
Dubya says jump

and the Mexican jumping bean
jumps,
“How high, sineeor?”

Alberto Gonzales,
your daddy should have put
a corn leaf on his hot tamale.

Alberto Gonzales,
we don’t serve your kind
in this Chicano restaurant.

The Missing Links

Mr. Bones was
adding links to his blog
when everything

went to hell
on the spot---
the blogspot.

His Winnie the Pooh
dead in Iraq gone,
his links

to the greatest
of all chicano poets
gone.

Mr. Bones was standing
on ground zero,
Nagasaki,

the links looked
like the outlines of human beings.
Dubya’s smile was radioactive

and he was threatening
other nations again and again
with his brand of Texas democracy.

Incantation

"What the hell
was Mr. Bones
doing in England?"

I ask Henry.
"He went a lookin’
for Miss Sylvia Plath,

it seems
he’s much enamored
of her tiny waist,

the hair pulled back,
the dress that
only reveals so much."

Henry spoke
as if he himself
had been transported

to her side.
Her scent hung in the air,
you could feel

the heat coming
from her body.
I had to shake

my head vigorously
to escape the clutches
of the apparition

created by Henry.
Then, the wind pushed her dress
against her curves,

I could see the outline
of the shrine
and Mr. Bones at worship.

Henry’s Elegy For Sylvia Plath

October 27,1932-Feburary 11, 2007

Henry walked into the cold flat
and found Sylvia’s head
inside the oven,

and Cid Corman
had his head in there, too.
The two death poets

giggling
and butting heads
like mountain goats

in the English Alps.
The whites of their eyes
was snow.

The flakes of poetry
littered the room,
each letter of each word

made a bump on the floor.
They made a puzzle
to read.

Henry scratched his head
until the smell of gas
became too strong.

He closed the door behind him.
The London sky was mice,
the rain turned out to be a truck.

So there was not much
Henry could have done.
Just then, a line of poetry struck Big Ben,

and Henry sought
the enormity of time
with only man-made tools.

God stood by
toe-tapping
its twenty feet.

Gone Fishing

My girl has love-handles
thought Henry
as he grabbed her

and kissed her on the mouth.
At that moment
the doorbell rang.

He looked through
the peep-hole
at Mr. Bones.

They were going to the ballgame,
to watch the Yankees
play the Cubs.

It was tied
at nothing nothing
when Babe came to the plate.

Wham! There it goes
into the right field seats.
A fan reached up

just in time to disappear
as Indians fished
the Hudson with nets.

This Is Why The Glacier On Mt. Kilimanjaro
Is Melting

Time is not something
you can time,
you can’t take it apart.

It is not made of atoms,
electrons, nucleus, protons,
and those tiny

little things that scientists
think exist,
but don’t.

It is not their fault,
anybody can be fooled.
Henry jotted down his thoughts

as he drank a cup
of coffee.
The cup fought valiantly

to stay on the table.
The handle did its best
not to be grasped,

to no avail.
The coffee tried to become
a solid,

but Henry drank it
like a rock.
He stirred Mt. Kilimanjaro with his spoon.

Of Famous Chicano Poets

"Chicanos were crossing
the Bering land-bridge
long before

any white man
accidentally discovered America,
the arrowheads

have barrio written
all over them." Henry insists.
When he finishes his lecture

he answers questions.
"Did that chicano culture
leave any written literature?"

asked an English-speaking-only Hispanic.
"Few examples of their writing
have survived, unfortunately,

a few lines of poetry
here and there,
but not much else." Henry

shook his head sadly.
Pyramids of chicano labor dotted the State of Texas
and the stagecoach traversed between them.

Lascaux

"get back, get back,
you don’t know me like that!"
Ludacris

When the guests had left
Henry went into the bedroom,
closed the door

by putting a gigantic stone
in the cave entrance,
cave paintings on the walls greet us.

The antelope stand gracefully,
the horses are in mid-stride,
the arrows

fly through the air
at prey unseen.
Our animal instincts

are only satisfied
by their satisfaction.
Afterwards, Henry shaved.

His chin held hair
against the razor.
A trapezoid lay by his lover.

Girl Interrupted

Mistress Bradstreet
sits up in bed,
finally,

the commotion in the other room
has become too distracting.
When she opens the door

she sees Mr. Bones posing,
his hand shoved in his coat
right at the heart

like a little Napoleon
imprisoned all over again
by this trio.

Bones, Henry, and Norman.
Norman’s hair is disheveled,
his sweater bearing the scars

of battle.
In the portrait Mr. Bones has a mustache
while in real life he don’t.

Her nipples harden
underneath her robe,
and she gives Henry a look,

to replace
the Mona Lisa’s
smile,

and
as difficult
to figure out.

“Henry, darling,
you promised they’d be gone
in an hour.” she whispered in his ear.

“I know, honey, but
you know how Bones is.”
Not much else Henry could say,

except a word or two
that would make no sense---
Bugs Bunny came around the corner.

Like Prisoners Of War

The H looks good
on the hillside of the room,
hemoglobin running

through the crossbeams,
the elevated train
rattled the snow loose.

Mr. Bones sat for a portrait
by Norman Rockwell,
behind him out the window you could see

the loosened snow.
Snowflakes tortured
like prisoners of war

in this and every war.
Mistress Bradstreet lies in bed.
She looks like a flower,

each petal a rose,
and if you look close,
every shade of red is represented.

The Henry Heist

On a trip out west
to old Los Angeles
Henry stumbled upon Venice Beach

like he said, the old one not the new.
The he-men and the muscled-women
had shorts up their crotches.

But, Henry watched
the ebb and flow of the Pacific
and it didn’t bring anything to mind.

He did notice how the town
was turning brown,
though, of course, it had

always belonged to the brown ones.
He went up to the Hollywood sign
and stole the letter H.

"God knows if it’s going
to fit in my apartment?"
Henry strained

as he drug it
to the taxi,
the taxi driver protesting.

The letter H thought
"What hutzpah!"
but, otherwise did not resist.

Tender Buttons

Gertrude leaned over
to kiss Alice’s nipples,
sang Olaf glad and big the national anthem,

the war was going on and on
around Henry’s head
as the Germans poured into Paris

like French wine,
and human bodies became the cuisine.
Henry was relieved he had once fled

to the boroughs of New York City,
but now the war was over
and he heard that Gertrude had died,

apparently, a rose is a rose is a rose
until it’s not
Henry wrote to understand his friend.

The lights flickered in the apartment
as no electrons came through.
Picasso’s portrait of Gertie

hung on the wall.
The cubist nature of us all,
round peg into square hole.