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Pocho Deer Song
After the Yaqui traditional
El Venado says: you, who do not have
Enchanted legs, what are you looking for?
Que buscas? Hear me, I say:
I am the pocho alive in the wilderness, and I tell you
Poetry is as extraordinary as eating tortillas in the kitchen.
One of the deadly sins is being ordinario.
We are not ordinary.
Haven’t we deformed the national electorate? Haven’t we
By sweat and cunning tweaked the national mercado?
Don’t we have numerous prestigious think tanks?
Remember:
Chew roses before you write your poems.
Let your friends devour you, make yourself their banquet.
Each lie, alive in the dark is forever young.
Remember:
Writing is an intensified accident.
You never really know the answer, you die without knowing.
If you have to know, don’t ask.
Like anyone else I require:
Brisas suaves
A little bubbly
Ecstasy
Is it true you often think only because you feel?
Isn’t the first author of the world human feeling?
Is the impulse to suicide part of the literary instinct?Speaking solely for myself:
I spy devils. Is it true you often think only because you feel?
Isn’t the first author of the world human feeling?
Is the impulse to suicide part of the literary instinct?
I fumigate my lecheries with ceniza de pinyon.
I am sometimes poor.
I am soft, gentle, never self-assertive.
I can yelp like a dog.
I respond to classified ads.
I am the Pocho alive in the semi-wilderness.
Shall I not become a free loan association for La Raza?
Shall I not greet a man without paying 6% for the effort?
Don’t we become beautiful when we love the unseeable?
Will the whirlygigs sing again in the Mayan evenings of my mind?
I am the Pocho alive in the virtual wilderness.
I have spilled myself before the dawn.
There are yet noons and dusks to be splashed.
I am the Pocho alive in the fantastic wilderness.
Sometimes I sprinkle cominos over myself.
But even then, as I am walking out the door,
I am still the same flavor.
El Venado says: It used to be much better
But it is still going on, the wilderness still listens,
Listens to itself – even now.
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