Friends,I'll resume
posts on Jan. 3,2011

Cipriano “El Cippy” Gomez

El Cippy was
the kind of vato

who’d drink
hot sauce through a straw

he was
the kind of vato

who’d start a fight
with a troop of Girl Scouts

he had a sharp
and insulting tongue

even when he was
complimenting barrio girls

and in a knife fight
with rival vatos

you could count
on El Cippy

being right behind you
sí never in front of you

Dissin M

I heard Emily Dickinson
telling her dead neighbor

that she died
for beauty,

and I thought to myself,
what a liar!

1490TU, Discovering Dominga Urrutia

my camaradas pushed me
shoved me

no te aguites chignon
go on

I was afraid
to approach La Minga

at the baile
1963

did La Virgen
de Guadalupe

even exist then
to help out poor pendejos

still wet behind
the burro ears

somehow I
worked up the huevos…

holding Minga’s body
against mine

was like discovering
America

nomas que
aquel pinche buey

had beaten me
to the punch

Polar

rolling in the hay
with joanie

in her groovy
hippie sugar shack

taking the subject
out of it now

wow
it all comes flooding back

love out
of its banks

tsunami teeters
towards Sahara

a curious polar bear
leans in

shooed away
by layers of detail

are there
more pressing matters than love?

joanie’s blonde thighs
at the crack of dawn

Loving You In Winter

I’ve added you
to every moon

flying overhead
you make me dizzy

the sky
always thinks it’s next

I tremble
when I tell it no

the stars
crack like eggs

on this frosty night
love is terrifying

as I put on
coat and gloves

Hey,after you read this poem
go visit Catapult To Mars here.

A Poem By Lillian Thomas

'When I Saw the City in a Fog...'

When I saw the city in a fog -
the towers dimly there,
losing their heads in grayness -
I suddenly knew
the earth had dreamed us,
dreamed us all:
the weeds themselves
nosing out of slumber,
skyscrapers and radio antennae
blinking tired red eyes to heaven,
cars with muffled honks
probing the dark stillness with lights
like blind men's outstretched arms;
and me, shivering in wet shoes
because the park's damp privacy
was too inviting to refuse.
And when the earth finally awakens,
will we all collapse inside that head?

Lillian blogs here.

Terra Forming

in that little pop-up town
I wanted to be tearing off your clothes

caressing your thighs
each stumble so precise

the scene fixed with haste
until it blurred

sex dripping
on the moon

sliding this way
and that

this love
we are so careful of

has its daggers
and its stripes

parting is cheap
the earth scrapped bare

Mariposa Azteca

just when you thought
the barrio

and your fellow vatos
y rucas

would last forever
you have to face

the ugly verdad
de la cara

en el espejo
looking back at you

asi son las cosas
grita la cara

right to your face
which startles you & stings

then flies off
like a feathered mariposa

por la calle zarzamora
dust cayendo from its golden wings

the kind of dust
abuela warned you of

but you
did not listen, cabrón

for my grandson Aiden

My first publication. In a junior high school
newsletter. A poem about Columbus discovering
America. Hey,I didn't know any better.

God help us all,I just found
my 1966 poetry notebooks.
And some of them were published
in my high school paper.
Run for your life, ese!

Chuy Negrete And The Angel Of Dance

Chuy’s in town and we go
to Juan Seguin’s grave and to Quick Taco;
there’s another coup in Manila,
and the wealthy Contra leaders
meet with the sleeping President.
At Paperbacks Y Mas in San Antonio,
Raul Salinas talks about his trip
to the Switzerland mind jail,
and Ricardo Sanchez
lectures us on the young poets.
Chuy plays La Bamba de
Ricardo Valenzuela while his
mind’s eye focuses on la Christina.
A few nights later in San Marcos,
we are joined by Jose Montalvo
at the Café On The Square,
Chuy plays Las Mañanitas,
The Black Hat Poet reads El Sasquatch,
and the night ends
as soon as it gets light.

written on September 30, 1987

Rebecca And The Mexican Pyramid

The pages of your book are stuck together,
you say the poetry you write can not be right,
you drive backward in time
to the Mexican universe.
These are the things we can
and can not do,
the pyramids spinning
away from paradise.
You learn how to be
the perfect Mexican girl,
you cook, you sew, you learn
to take care of man,
and the years go on and on.
Now you are locked in a temple
which lies in ruin,
the jungle reclaiming its beasts,
the triangle ablaze,
and lava that can not be washed away,
higher and higher
over the Pre-Cambrian,
the Pre-Columbian.
I don’t know how you rise above it.

written on November 21, 1989

The Whereabouts

Where were you when they shot Jack in Dallas,
where were you when they shot Bobby in L.A.?

Where were you when they shot Malcolm X,
where were you when they shot Martin Luther King?

Where were you when they shot Tupac,
where were you when they shot Biggie?

Where were you when they shot John in New York City,
where were you when the music died.

Where were you when all we needed was love,
where were you when they shot John Lennon?

Where were you on that dreadful day
which never seems to end.


RIP Carlos Guerra

El Capitán

If the finback whale can communicate
over a distance of five hundred miles
why can’t we get through the three
hundred miles of telephone line; the
tectonic plates of our flesh shifted by
hotspots in the magma make us end
up as mountains or as deep ocean
trenches of emotion, the granite of
El Capitán hard like the edges of our
force fields.

But maybe whales have more
important things to say than we do.
When we talk we communicate
underneath the words of salt, and
layers and layers of it build up slowly
to a millionth of an inch, build up
like a fortress--- not even the end of
the universe can destroy it…

July 26, 1989

The Rat And The Arsenic
by Dr. Quetzalcoatl Sandoval

“The Rock Abrasion Tool is a powerful grinder, able to create a hole 45 millimeters (about 2 inches) in diameter and 5 millimeters (0.2 inches) deep into a rock on the Martian surface.The RAT is located on the arm of the rover and weighs less than 720 grams (about 1.6 lbs). It uses three electric motors to drive rotating grinding teeth into the surface of a rock. Two grinding wheels rotate at high speeds. These wheels also rotate around each other at a much slower speed so that the two grinding wheels sweep the entire cutting area. The RAT is able to grind through hard volcanic rock in about two hours.

Once a fresh surface is exposed, scientists can examine the abraded area in detail using the rover's other science instruments. This means that the interior of a rock may be very different from its exterior. That difference is important to scientists as it may reveal how the rock was formed and the environmental conditions in which it was altered. A rock sitting on the surface of Mars may become covered with dust and will weather, or change in chemical composition from contact with the atmosphere.”

One of the undisclosed RAT findings was an accidental and miraculous discovery of a fossil as it ground away the target rock. After months and months of analysis NASA found that the fossil was an arsenic based life-form. Yes, an arsenic based life-form. So now, Thursday’s bland announcement makes you prick up your ears, makes your heart race, oh how sneaky our government really is. Wait, but there’s more. Let’s bring in Wikileaks. Why are world governments trying, and succeeding in taking down Wikileaks. Because Wikileaks has those fossil documents and was about to release them. So the arsenic story was really a preparation just in case the beans were spilled prematurely.

reprinted by permission of Dr. Sandoval

The Kill List

Harry Moldsuch got his MFA from Warren G. Harding Junior College,
he thought that in no time he’d go out and conquer the poetry world.
Two years later he was still a nobody in the poetry biz, as most
aficionados of the game seemed to be calling it. The accumulation
of poetry prizes being the ultimate orgasm. Alas, Harry was getting
nowhere. Does my poetry really suck that bad, or is just that the
overpopulation of poets which is hindering my publishing career?
Yes, yes, he convinced himself in his depressed state.

Soon he had hatched a plan. He would start eliminating the surplus
of poets which was chocking America. He decided the criteria would
be this: the more accolades the poet acquired , the higher on the
kill list he would be. If you fall in this category, I would suggest you
seek police protection now. Or at least have your cell phone ready
to call 911 if you see Harry hanging around your exquisite poetry retreat.
And you other poets who happen to catch Harry bumping off a poet,
make sure you use your camera phone to document the killing.
It could come in handy when you write that fantastic poem which
of course would put you higher up on Harry’s kill list.

The NASA TV link for
today's announcement
is here.

Since I'll be on the road,
I'll be watching on the iPhone.
On the lower left hand side
of the NASA TV web page,there's
a link so you can watch on
your iPhone,iPad or iPod Touch.
Actually,you can see all
their live programming on that
link.

Tomorrow, NASA TV will hold
a press conference to disclose
that they have discovered
life on Mars.What the hell,
haven't they read my blog?
Of course there's life on
Mars---it's full of Mexicans!
Where you been NASA?