Song Bird

Mr. Bones watches
the poet putting
a poem together,

like a bird
pecking at the seeds,
arranging them

before a meal,
each seed has its place,
each place its time.

It is a measly meal
that must be made sufficient.
With no heart,

a heart must be made.
The blind man
must have vision,

the mute
must speak poetry.
Robert Creeley has flown off

to
another
tree.

Dolphin

Mr. Bones is a bottle-nosed dolphin,
he doesn’t care what people say
about his aluminum can thinking.

The homeless collect his thoughts,
they sell them
to buy the necessities of life,

be it bread, cold cuts or beer.
Mr. Bones rides the pressure wave
of a super tanker

carrying stolen oil
to bring to America
so that the same oil companies

can price gouge the American people.
Mr. Bones swims
just below the surface of the poem

breaking the surface
just long enough to tell us,
"Don’t be so complacent!"

before heading
back out
to sea.

The Stick Is Passed To Mr. Bones

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451,
which book would you memorize?
Fahrenheit 911.

Have you ever had a crush
on a fictional character?
Yes, Sylvia Plath’s busty sister.

The last book you bought is:
The Fine Art
Of Police Brutality.

The last book you read:
The Teary-Eyed Confessional
Poetry Of John Ashbery.

What are you currently reading?
The Barefoot Paul McCartney
by B.S. Naipaul.

Five books you would take
to a desert island.
Thirty Minute Meals by Rachel Ray,

How To Blog On A Sandy Beach,
Where To Hoist The American Flag, and
Chicano Poets Always Live On Deserted Islands.

Who are you going to pass
this stick (3 persons) to and why?
To Henry because he’s a stick in the mud.

To the second little pig who built
his house out of sticks, and to those of you
who keep sticking around.

Bonified

Mr. Bones makes
no bones about it,
walking as he does

always towards the truth.
He don’t buy
the lies

the Administration’s cronies,
the owner, tells Fox News to air.
The announcers

are gutless wonders
who tow the line
because there’s a check in it.

They’re paid
to spread manure
and that’s what they do.

So, Mr. Bones shoves
the talking heads
out of the anchor chairs

and tells America the truth.
The Star-Spangled Banner
becomes limp.

And all the oxygen
is sucked out of the lungs
of you and me.

Passed out on the floor,
stars shattered from the fall,
pink stripes all tangled---we have no flag.

Mr. Bones Bites The Bullet, 1980

The nutcase fires the bullet
and Mr. Bones
steps in the way,

it pierces his chest,
breaks a rib,
just misses his heart

and exits out the back.
John and Yoko
run up the stairs,

lock the doors
behind them
and worry

about the fate
of the man
who just saved their lives.

Henry gets someone
to call an ambulance.
Mr. Bones is gonna make it,

but only by the skin
of his teeth.
The Dakota rises out of sight.

The past is not the past
if it never happened.
Time crumbles in a heap,

a melted area
of the city
memorizes Henry and Mr. Bones.

John is an old man
playing the piano
with a cane,

grandchildren
littering the playroom
with Beatle toys

that give
peace a chance,
give peace a chance.

Henry, 1969

Mr. Bones jumps
into the backseat
of the Lincoln

just in time
to shove the President
down to the floorboard,

he pulls Jackie
down, too,
and the motorcade

speeds away
from Dealy Plaza.
They catch Lee Harvey Oswald

and two CIA agents
red-handed.
Jack Ruby kills all three

to protect the other conspirators.
John Kennedy
pursues the Final Frontier.

Soon there’s a man on the moon
holding up a sign that says,
" No Viet Nam".

If you look close
in the helmet’s visor
you see Henry’s face.

A Chicano astronaut
monitors Henry
from the LEM.

Henry Had A Dream, August 28, 1963

Mr. Bones pulled
Jesse Jackson out the way
so he could grab

the Reverend from the balcony
back into the hotel room.
" What’s the matter

young man?" The Reverend uttered
as bullets rang out
and people scrambled.

The Reverend looked
grateful and shook
Mr. Bones’ hand.

One man can not stop
discrimination
or injustice,

one man can not stop
the evil ways of man
and one man can not stop

this evil country.
But Mr. Bones and Henry
try their best

and then
they head back to the Bat Cave
until Dubya the Butler kicks them out.

Dreaming In Colors

She’s dreaming in colors,
she’s dreaming
in brown.

My princess is brown,
Mexican, Tejana and proud.
For a thousand years

she has endured the oppression
by the Spaniards,
by the white man,

by men of her own color.
My princess is brown,
and she’s lived with oppression

and discrimination and rape
all of her brown life.
She’s always dreamed

of a better life.
So, every night she dreams in color,
she’s dreaming the color brown.

She’s dreaming the dream coming true,
she’s dreaming as hard as she can.
She’s dreaming in colors---all of them brown.

Centipede Child

Mr. Bones wakes up
one morning
and to his horror,

he’s a centipede child,
long, with hairy legs
that never end,

hairy even though
he’s so young.
He always

thought himself Child Harold
and not
some Kafka nightmare

killed by apples
like Adam and Eve.
Mr. Bones undulates

away from paradise
and then hears God say;
"Get your ass back here, Mr. Bones!"

Wriggling back to Wrigley Field
he answers just in time
to see that Mighty Eve has done struck out.

When he wakes up,
Mr. Bones can’t get
a leafy taste out of his mouth.

The Immense Weapon Of Your Hair

for Nancy

Just back from
the beauty shop,
your red hair

in a perm,
the evening dress
back from the cleaners.

Your eyes flash
their Irish attitude
no one will challenge

unless they wish
to lose their head
just

to kiss the Blarney Stone.
Time spinning backward,
the hour hand

passing the minute hand.
The puny second hand
no thicker

than one of your hairs
curled in a fashion
of the day.

I’ve been ready
for an hour,
babe.

Elegy For Karnak The Magnificent

What has big, huge ears,
no brain to speak of,
and failed

his testosterone test?
I don’t know,
what has big, huge ears,

no brain to speak of,
and failed
his testosterone test?

At this point
Henry, made up to look
like Ed McMahon,

looked over at Mr. Bones
who has made no effort
to look like Johnny,

and says,
"Hereeeeeeeeee’s
Dubya!"

A Mamas And Papas CD In The War Zone

All soldiers have
this in common,
if they’re at war,

they want to go home alive.
Their mouths tell you
one thing

but their eyes
can only tell the truth.
There is no mission

except the mission
to haul ass back home.
Suddenly, the concussion

of a bomb stuns us,
all eyes look everywhere---
there’s the smoke.

When we get there
the carcass of a car
has been raped,

a lone tire
stands idiotically
by itself

waiting for the damn car.
There’s an Iraqi lying nearby,
one of his legs

looks like hamburger meat
on Hamburger Hill.
The dead

are always innocent-looking.
A Marine smokes a cigarette
and says to us,

"You from Texas?"
"Yeah, you?"
"California dreaming."

And
every war is like a
Monday.

Back at the hotel
we got the smell
out of our nostrils

but never
out of our
minds.

The dead lie down
on the insides
of our eyelids.

Pictures At An Execution

The faces of the children,
the faces of the children,
we try our best

to read their faces.
The war is indeed in their faces
ingrained like sand.

The men and women
are no different,
and though the women

have to cover their faces
you can still see it
in their cloth expressions.

But, the most telling tale
is in the eyes
of our own soldiers.

It doesn’t matter
what the higher ups
have taught them to say,

their hearts tell
another story,
a story told in body English.

Baghdad Vacation

We fly in by
Russian cargo plane
fearing for our lives,

landing with a thud
we breathe
a sigh of relief for now.

A contact has
acquired three bicycles
which we

will pedal
all the way
to the Green Zone.

The one thing
about this country
that overwhelms you

is the dust.
This is a desolate place
getting destroyed every day.

The Iraqis
hate the Americans,
don’t be fooled at home.

We finally arrive
at our hotel,
broken-hearted.

We are
under no illusion now,
this will become

a conservative Moslem state.
Allah shadows
the American troops,

the soldiers turn
nervously around,
but they can not see him

blinded as they are
by their own American-biased
wrong-headed point of view.

KabOOm

Bugs dropped his carrot
and scampered
back into his hole

just as Dubya
pulled the trigger
and performed

his own assendectomy.
The mushroom cloud
rose from Dubya’s behind

and climbed into the sky
as the Star-Spangled Banner
was played in the background

by Los Taquaches de Aztlan,
the most popular conjunto group
north of the Canadian border.

When the anthem was over
they launched into
La Cola Del Presidente Bush

"the tail of the Presidente Bush
is nomas near
his tush…"

Part Two.

You Owe Me A Coke

The blast has startled
Bin Laden
out of his cave.

Bugs puts his paw
on Bin Laden’s shoulder and ehs,
"Eh, what’s up Doc?"

A CIA drone flies overhead
and mistakes the carrot
in Bugs’ hand

for a nukeylur weapon.
Bugs moons the drone
with his cotton tail.

Meanwhile, back at CIA hindquaters,
the photograph
of the carrot

is studied very carefully.
Millions of dollars are spent
in analyzing the pitcher.

Eventually the CIA
orders Israel
to bomb the carrot field.

Carrots improve your eyesight
so they must be
destroyed,

otherwise, Israel
and America
might see the truth.

But, by the time
the Israeli jets
drop their American bombs

Bugs has moved the carrots
to an undisclosed location---his mouth.
All you hear is the crunching

of carrots in a dim cave.
Bugs and Bin Laden look at each other and
both of them say, "Eh, what’s up Doc?" in unison.

The bombs miss
and kill innocent children…
collateral damage…shalom…Gollum…

Mr. Magoo, ugly American,
can’t find his way
out of his mansion.

Shoulda Left The Weapons Of Mass Destruction
In Saddam Hussein's Paws

Elmer Fudd
is a hunting
for that

screwy wabbit
in the cartoon forest
made up of

(from what
Mr. Bones can see)
only one tree.

Hey, wait a minute,
that ain’t Elmer Fudd,
that’s Dubya!

He’s poking
his weapons
of mass destruction shotgun

into every hole
in the
red white and blue forest.

Suddenly…oh, no, Dubya accidentally
shoves his shotgun
up his own behind.

Bugs, chewing a carrot,
sticks his head out
from a real hole

in the ground
and barely
has a chance to say

"Eh, what’s up Doc?"
before Dubya blows up
his own Republican asshole.

from the Republican Planet of the Apes

Ironically, Charlton Heston Pushes The Button

Bugs was trying
to stop Marvin
from blowing up

the oit
when Mr. Bones
asked Henry,

"Marvin Hamlish
is trying to blow up
the oit?"

No, Bones, you idiot,
Marvin the Martian,
you know, the

tiny alien
who wears
Roman soldier outfits!"

"Oh, yeah," said Mr. Bones,
"This Marvin pendejo
is a lot

like Dubya
and his gang
of Nazi think-alikes.

They spend billions
on war
and then they claim

that the poor
have got to go.
Maybe they can

fire up the killing fields again.
Exterminating the poor
and the disadvantaged by "legal" means,

hell, exterminate everyone
who don’t agree
with the Republican agenda…"

Mr. Bones didn’t
finish his tirade before Marvin
did, indeed, blow up the oit!

Beyond Martin Luther

"it’s beyond Martin Luther,
upgrade computer,
we’ve got a long way
to go…"
Long Way To Go
by Gwen Stefani

Martin Luther King, Jr., Junior,
Junior, Junior, Junior,
spits out his words,

you have to
cuz you live in America,
don’t you!

the dream gets woke up
by the racism
stronger in 2005 than ever,

the dream gets
turned into a nightmare
by Dubya and his hatchet-men,

they want to enslave
the black man, the brown man,
all the wrong men…

we got a long way to go,
the white girl is right
there’s no doubt about it,

we got a long way to go, Jose,
freedom has indeed been attacked---
not by terrorists but by Dubya Atta.

Mr.Bones Impersonates Lalo Delgado

Stupid Chicano,
see that America
with its big army

in its nuclear hands,
it doesn’t want to help you,
it wants to carve you up

in God’s name,
and you let it.
Stupid Chicano,

hear America
shout curses at
people of color.

You try to write
but they take away
your pencil and paper

and since
you can’t write
you explode in Iraq.

Stupid Chicano,
remember him flunking math
and English,

he was a Picasso
and he helped America
paint Guernica in Fallujah,

and he has died.
A thousand masterpieces
of dead children hang in his mind.

Big Pimpin’

Please, MTV,
pimp my poetry.
You pimp

Eminem while
he’s pimping
the King of Pop,

you pimp
Jessica Simpson
acting dumb

you pimp
Paris Hilton
lip-synching fellatio.

You pimp Madonna
French-kissing Britney
Spears,

you pimp La Malinche
to the gold-hungry
Spanish goons.

Please, MTV,
pimp my poetry,
cry the young chicano poets.

Pooh And Eeyore Wish Dubya Was A Frog

and croak.

The Liberty Bell
Under Dubya

sold
a s
scrap
iron by
halliburton

David Letterman’s Top Ten List

I. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me…ha ha ha…
II. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth…ha ha ha…
III. Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain…ha ha ha…
IV. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy…ha ha ha…
V. Honour thy father and thy mother…ha ha ha…
VI. Thou shalt not murder…ha ha ha…
VII. Thou shalt not commit adultery…ha ha ha…
VIII. Thou shalt not steal…ha ha ha…
IX. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour…ha ha ha…
X. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's…ha ha ha…

I don't want to talk bad about tonight's audience but we had a lot better crowd last time we did

the Ten Commandments.

Whose Woods These Are I Think I Know
(we’re illegal aliens, mojados, shhhhh)

the mother’s shooting at us
(Henry, Mr. Bones and Me)
we didn’t see the desgraciado
pinche no trespassing sign---
our little horse must think it queer

to stop without the migra near
but we have miles to go before we pees
unless we disappear like Weldon Kees.