The Last Days Of The Brown Buffalo

After the thousandth or ten thousandth Canto al Pueblo, sometime in the 1970’s,
after listening to a lesbian chicana read her manifesto (manifestos were popular
at the time, hell, I probably wrote a few myself) anyway, after Oscar Acosta (later
to be known as the Brown Buffalo) read a chapter of his still unpublished novel,
and after I read my poems in front of an audience of fourhundred people, Oscar
and me went out to the back of the public school (that’s where this particular poetry
reading was being held, on the east side of Austin, raulsalinas’s old stomping
grounds, his pony tail waving in the barrio air), anyway Oscar and me went out
behind the school to relieve ourselves. Just as we were about to zip up we
noticed a blue and white Volkswagen van crawling by like a snail, lo and behold
it was Juan Rodriguez and his family cruising on by on their way to South Austin.
Oscar and me headed on over to Joe’s Bakery, poetry makes you hungry as hell.
Oscar ate two or three orders of carne guisada, I ordered the Mexican pancakes.
Two weeks later we set out to Michoacan, but ended up in Acapulco. Enjoying
the sun and the women. We’d get drunk every night, and head to the exotic bars
where women in their thirties or forties would have sex with great danes. After
a few weeks of this, we headed up to Mazatlan which was a sleepy little town
back then. In some back alley, we bought marijuana from these dark Mexicans
who tried to cheat us, but Oscar beat the crap out of them. Their girlish gritos
were nothing like Father Hidalgo’s. Soon it was time for me to head back to
Texas, unlike Oscar I had a job and family, a brand new daughter who I was now
missing badly. It was the last time I saw Oscar, and probably the last time he
saw me.

Ironically, these two brothers Oscar beat up went on to found the Tiburones
Cartel which was the forerunner of Mexican drug cartels. They grew their dope
on the island of Tiburon, which in English would be Shark Island. It’s located
in the sea between Baja California and mainland Mexico. When I left Mazatlan
I accidently put Oscar’s army jacket in my duffle bag (didn’t use suitcase back then)
and I still have it somewhere in my garage here in Gringolandia, where my
neighbors work for Google, Apple or teach at Berkeley.


The Apple Store

My Ipod Touch
is made by ten year old kids in China

while Steve Jobs
heads to the front

of the liver transplant line.
That’s what I call backbone,

that’s what I call spine-----
there’s an app for that!