when the mower wouldn’t start/ i couldn’t incur the grass
Category: Writing and Poetry

moved away then back
slept unquietly
in a mother's single bed
with lineless paper to write on
from geographically below
and sprained beneath the thumb

the mechanic started it hesitantly
sprayed and pulled
rocks struck from the driveway
through the lung

i tried six hours and forty-five minutes and
twenty-five seconds later
until it was one hour and fifteen minutes and
eighteen seconds later

the few putts and the sprain peaked
and diminished like sentence organization
when there's no bleach to dictate direction
like projected sales of a book released
slightly before the redemption of revelation
or the table pushed away

the confluence emerged
without proof of facial pile
i figured mechanical mowing
was amenable and so did s/he
the string that snapped back shouldn't
have taken the wrench with a running knot

and behind the mechanic i knew
we could take it back
be checked again
then intermit soundly with hesitance
stir solid with graphic interfaces
and prostate the thumb to ease
perhaps i could call you
on the telephone
for thirty dollars an hour
or sixty for your breath's duration


(C) 2007 luis h valadez

Currently listening : Best of By Ahmad Jamal

6:14 PM - 14 Comments - 28 Kudos - Add Comment

five men’s wounds
Category: Writing and Poetry

after i asked if you
ever enjoyed sex and you said
"well, certainly not the first
who barged in from the cold and
called me even colder"

and no more was to come
from the car home
from your hospital work

i had a dream we took
a crowded train into the city
we sat apart but so
you could watch a man
more grown than i
try to take me

i handled him away and
with different places to go
i went to find people
i didn't know anymore
you went to find work

and after i settled with
a past that didn't exist
i walked away from where they lived
clutching the sack full of lunch you made me

we rounded a corner from different ends
that reminded me of 21st and Chicago Road
and a lot with that dirt patch where your son

pretended to find the money
from your house cleaning
that you kept
in the envelope
in the dresser
you carried up the stairs
when it was clear
your newborn's father wasn't
coming back from mexico

there was a woman
you and i saw
somewhat like you
crying in the shallow grass

you crouched down to her the way i imagined
the bottoms of stoves and toilets taught you

i was walking by
with the juice packed
to my lips
as you looked to me

i thought to myself
if you could have
found her earlier
like your honeycomb
five men's wounds wouldn't exist
and neither would i

so i gave you my seldom smile and walked awake


(C) 2007 luis h. valadez

Currently listening : Anthology By Nina Simone Release date: 01 July, 2003

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Getting Punched in the Arm Over the Summer
Current mood: thoughtful

"Well, I've heard that he's been real broken up since his mother died, y'know. I heard that last night he just kept ordering drinks he wasn't drinking and food he wasn't eating. It's just like he craves this nourishment but he can't take it in."

Miguel Algarín is known as one of the founders of the Nuyorican Poets Café (a famed venue in New York city for poetry, prose, drama, music, and a breeding ground for what would become Slam poetry that began in the living room of his Manhattan apartment). He holds the status of Professor Emeritus for his more than thirty years as a teacher of Shakespeare, Creative Writing, and United States Ethnic Literature. He's published more than ten books of poetry, edited several anthologies, written for television and theater, and received the American Book Award as a writer and editor.
On a July night during the 2006 Summer Writing Program at Naropa University, however, Anne Waldman is explaining him to me as hurt, wounded from a hard life that the recent death of his mother has only further complicated. She's doing this in the knowledge that he is getting to me. She's not saying it but she knows I want to punch him and, of course, neither or us really want that (even if I do). He hasn't been sober since he arrived in Boulder and shows no sign of letting up, he's annoying me, he's being macho; in short, he's acting like one of my uncles, a stereotypical Latino man sizing me up every second that I'm in his presence. The previous night I sit near him at the Corner Bar. He stares at me hard. I cough and he angrily asks, "What, are you sick?" I scratch my arm and this bothers him, he asks, "What's wrong with you arm?" He speaks to me in a less than charming, abrasive, you ain't shit tone that growing up in Mexican family has made me all too familiar with, then he hits me in the arm, hard; I just stare at him as hard I can stare at someone I can't do anything with. He smiles and laughs.

I didn't come to Naropa to deal with this macho bullshit. I left Chicago Heights, IL (my ghettoized hometown) and moved to progressive Boulder, Colorado to get away from men who drank and spent their nights claiming superiority over each other, but the Summer Writing Program at Naropa is a different world altogether from Boulder or Chicago Heights and the forth and final week of this summer in particular takes the astronomical nature of this microuniverse to an entirely different level: Mr. Algarín is teaching alongside the legendary Sonia Sanchez and Amiri Baraka.

The Summer Writing Program is the foundation upon which the Writing and Poetics program at Naropa University was founded on by Waldman and Allen Ginsberg in 1974. It's legacy is reflected in the pages of it's annual magazine, Bombay Gin literature journal, and the plethora of luminaries it's given rise to, supported, and harvested (Jim Carroll, Diane di Prima, Akilah Oliver, and Harryette Mullen to name a few). Algarín and Baraka and poets of their ilk (including their infamous and troubled contemporary Miguel Piñero) have taught sporadically in the program since it's infancy while Sanchez made her first appearance in 2003 but has returned to teach each summer since.

I've been given the assignment and opportunity to be Amiri Baraka's faculty assistant while he is here in Boulder; the affinity felt between Algarín and Baraka is something I can understand as he is charming man with a sweet disposition, hardly the type of person that you'd suspect of being under attack from the Anti-Defamation League (see the controversy over the 9/11 themed Somebody Blew Up America). Along with Baraka comes the opportunity to see him interact with Miguel and Sonia and, as an aspiring poet, it's an opportunity I embrace.

In the presence of such greatness and history any young person like myself with an ounce of sense about him knows to stand-by and observe and that's just what I do. From the beginning things are chaotic: Sonia and Amiri are to arrive from Philadelphia and Newark respectively at the same time, but Mr. Baraka has not shown up. We find out later that he's been booked onto a later flight and meanwhile Sam Wall (Ms. Sanchez's faculty assistant) and myself are to pick up performance artist Karen Finley, who's angry at a school and faculty assistant that have failed to retrieve her. I try to explain to her that she'll be riding in the same car as Sonia Sanchez and possibly Amiri Baraka. I can tell her by her tone she doesn't know who they are and she doesn't care. Fortunately, as we settle on picking Baraka up later and ride towards their hotel, Sonia's peaceful spirit and no nonsense activist demeanor calm Finley down. She recounts how she was recently arrested as a part of Grannies for Peace for trespassing when the group attempted to enlist in the U.S. Army with the declaration "Take us, not our grandchildren."

Indeed, Sanchez is an attractive yet intimidating force, attractive because of her openness and caring nature and intimidating because of the power of her perception. She has published more than twelve books of poetry, was nominated for an NAACP Image and National Book Critics Circle Award, and has received the American Book Award, but on this day she's indirectly teaching me what to shop for. She can see right through me and she knows I'm observing what she buys from the Wild Oats down the street from her hotel as Sam and I accompany her and Finley to buy provisions for the week. Perhaps this is why she asks if I can find her brand of mouth rinse in the dental aisle. Everything is organic and fresh with Ms. Sanchez, who decides against the green bananas and looks for mangos and strawberries instead. She will later give me a package of her two-for-one strawberries along with a bag full of groceries she'll claim she cannot eat. She'll speak to an auditorium full of students later on the importance of demanding peace in this lifetime and how that peace extends to the body. "Just think about what you're putting in your body when you're drinking that beer tonight," she'll say.

This is in sharp contrast to Mr. Baraka, however, whom I go to pick up at Denver International Airport later that night with my friend Tim. He is a sharply dressed man in his seventies, former poet laureate of New Jersey, once a sergeant in the United States Air Force, an Obie and American Book Award winner, accomplished poet and playwright, and a former Muslim spiritual leader turn Third World Marxist infamous enough to be featured in conservative writer and activist David Horowitz's The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America. I introduce myself and he asks me what my ethnicity is and where I am from. I say, "My parents are from Mexico, but I was born and raised in Chicago." He asks, "Are there a lot of Latinos in Chicago?" We get into the car and he smoothly says, "Hey man, let's stop at a store and get some beer." It's wonderment for me to see this man, such an influence on my work, such a thorn in the side in many an academic and political establishment—in fact, he'll tell me later that he was never paid the stipend that came with the position of Poet Laureate after the controversy over Somebody Blew Up America—walk around Safeway seeking beer and chips. In stark contrast to Sanchez, I will, in fact, not see him put anything in his body besides beer and chips the entire week I am in his presence, not even the water I bring everyday before the start of his class.

To observe each of these forces alone is one thing but to see them together is something else completely. As contemporaries they seldom if ever find the reverence in each other that this program of aspiring writers is gushing to give them. I bring my friend Leslie to see Sonia read, guaranteeing her that it will be a spiritual and inspirational experience. Sonia tears through calls for unity and peace, and the tragic story of a young girl sold by her mother to a drug dealer for crack. Her energy and power pierce through the audience bringing nearly everyone to tears, including Leslie, who later thanks Sonia for her reading and me for bringing her. I am surprised, however, later that night when I ask Miguel and Amiri what they thought of the reading. "What did you think?" Amiri asks. "I thought she was amazing. She definitely tore through the audience and got to us," I reply sheepishly because his tone seems to ask me where I stand more than what I think. "What did you all think?" I ask. "I think it was a typical later Sonia reading," Algarín replies. Baraka agrees and with that the subject was dropped. This is not to say that jealousy existed in these men towards this woman, but rather a lack of astonishment at something they've seen many times before and that they may not agree with.

This is not to say that Baraka and Sanchez share dissimilar political or social views; they do agree on many things. What's strike me most about them is the difference in their style of approach. "I'm glad you have the opportunity to work him," Sonia says to me in her room at the Boulder Quality Inn. I'm there to collect my black hoodie from her; I lent it to her to bear an overly air conditioned Dolan's Bar (along with adopting a macrobiotic diet, she is not a fan of air conditioning). I recount to her how fascinating I find the differences between her and her close contemporaries and she says to me, "It's good for you to see these different styles because not everybody does it the same way." She always speaks to me in a tone that is stern and understanding. I take the hoodie back and start to call my Sonia Sanchez hoodie.

Speaking to those different styles it's important to note that her visit to Dolan's is in the afternoon and is only taking place at the behest of Waldman, Baraka, Algarín and the like. Sonia drinks water and tries to rest whenever she can. Baraka and Algarín however are two people the 24 year old in me cannot keep up with. Whether it's late night readings at the Laughing Goat or excursions to the Corner Bar on some nights I pass them off onto other people (I have class in the morning) and just about anyone is happy to oblige. Some nights, however, I keep up with them and it pays off. I'm sitting with them at the corner bar with Anne Waldman and a host of aspiring writers (members of Illiterate Magazine amongst) when I notice Anne Waldman coming back and forth between our table and the Catacombs bar in the basement of the building. She tells us that Richie Havens is playing a set downstairs and he wants to meet Amiri and we need to get down there, so we do. It's amazing to even imagine standing six feet away from Richie Havens in room that's about 50 square feet with these people, or to imagine Baraka and him exchanging a cool handshake without too much affection, let alone experiencing being a young man with little credit to my name standing in such milieu of historical significance.

I see Sonia for the last time at the weekly SWP book signing where her eyes penetrate me and she asks about my state of mind in a way that states she knows more about me than she'll say, she tells me to stay safe, and signs my copy of Does Your House Have Lions? with the inscription "Things will get better." I avoid Algarín for the most part except when Amiri will ask me to lead him the location of the classroom that Miguel has drunkenly forgot. Amiri gives me a copy of each of the chapbooks he's been selling for my birthday, and the last time I see him Tim and myself will be taking him to the airport. He is recognized by an African-American man in his forties wearing an LAPD shirt who remembers seeing Baraka speak on English Literature's debt to Irish Literature; he mentions it before walking away. As Amiri shakes our hands and bids us farewell, we see the man again speaking to another about just meeting Amiri and when he last saw him spoke; indeed we are reminded his reputation is much larger and infamous than his charming demeanor and sweet smile would imply.

Currently listening : Siamese Dream By Smashing Pumpkins Release date: 27 July, 1993

6:30 PM - 8 Comments - 10 Kudos - Add Comment

Capricorn on the Second Cusp
Current mood: restless
Category: Romance and Relationships

Slower,
I hold an offer
the same as any that feigns to dictate sorrow.

Longer,
I hold that whatpastmind
I do not want to increase.

You would be paid
what you are worth

but I have not gone
to heaven.

Currently listening : American Psycho By Misfits Release date: 13 May, 1997

5:48 PM - 7 Comments - 18 Kudos - Add Comment

Dawn (Translation of "La Aurora" by F.G. Lorca)
Current mood: awake
Category: Writing and Poetry

Dawn

New York Dawn has
four mire columns
and a black pigeon hurricane
that splashes putrid waters.
New York Dawn wails
on immense staircases
looking between the edges for
drawn anguish spikenards.
Dawn arrives and no one receives it in their mouth
because neither hope nor tomorrow are possible.
Sometimes furious swarms of coins
drill and devour abandoned children.
The first to go out know in their bones
that there will be no paradise or defoliating lovers.
They know they go to mire of laws and numbers,
to artless games, to fruitless toils.
The light is buried in chains and noise,
in the shameless challenge of rootless science.
The neighborhoods have people that vacillating insomnious
like they've recently discharged from a bloody shipwreck.

F.G. Lorca translated by l.h. valadez

Currently listening : Famous Monsters By Misfits Release date: 05 October, 1999

5:59 AM - 7 Comments - 10 Kudos - Add Comment

Section 18
Current mood: awake
Category: Life

there's an altar in the house
veneer oak dresser

a cloth draped over
artificially aged lumber

a four foot crucifix
pained Christ

a rosary hanging from His neck
Christ pained

candlesglasssaints and gabriel
AZTEC GOD ASSIMILATED

john paul II in a frame
leftover from Polish tenants

michelangelo's pietá
a glass reproduction

a picture of the harvest Virgin
holding a prince son
miniature her
like an extension of her appendage

Currently listening : In Utero By Nirvana Release date: 21 September, 1993

6:48 AM - 8 Comments - 14 Kudos - Add Comment

potato peeling
Current mood: disappointed
Category: Life

I like them because I have memories of peeling potatoes for my mother so she could cook them with eggs, chorizo, or red sauce for the family;

I like potatoes because my family had no money and potatoes were cheap and filled us up easily;

I like potatoes because I woke up to them when my mother, who worked every minute she could, wiped time to make breakfast on Sunday;

I like potatoes because they were there when there was absolutely nothing in house.

Even in saying these things, there is much more to my declaration on potatoes.

So how do I peel away at these layers the way I used to peel the potatoes?

Currently listening : Life After Death By The Notorious B.I.G. Release date: 25 March, 1997

10:36 PM - 6 Comments - 13 Kudos - Add Comment

Kil-lahhh!
Current mood: hungry
Category: Life

Kil-lahhh!
(after Harriett Mullen)

You are my inspiration beyond my Jesus
my role model beyond my Julio Caesar Valadez
my sexy emulation when you scream "Kil-lahhh!"
You are my "jackin' mugs all day" when my hood movie ends
my vocabulary teacher beyond my Ms. Smart
You are my "don't mess wit den foos on Main" beyond my religion
my gov mint beyond my lawful breath
You are my lover through rape
my rapist and personal trainer
my "lift dat bar punk!" when I tear
You are my intimidation for the sake of lustful fear
my Latin beyond my King
my King beyond my Count
my Gangster beyond my Disciple
my Four Corner beyond my Hustla
my Vice beyond my Lord
my Eight beyond my Ball
my Solid beyond my Four
You are my sleeping with the dog beyond my big target on my back for
ridicule, harassment, violent humiliation, death, lock-up, painful initiation, alcohol erasing trauma, numerous children livin' in my momma's basement off what little I make sellin'
You are my mothers concern beyond her eighty-hour workweek
You are my role model beyond my Julio Caesar Valadez

Currently listening : Divine Intervention By Slayer Release date: 12 March, 2002

1:34 PM - 7 Comments - 10 Kudos - Add Comment

mis abuelos dog and turtles
Current mood: awake
Category: Life

i used to sit
on a tree stump
on the branch
and mud front porch of
the house we lived in
on 21st
i had a grandfather
who didn't speak (in-glaze)
and had no teeth
and was not by blood my own
and i never understood
what he said
without his hands
or anything from grandma
without her hands
who also spoke without glaze
and also only easily ate
tortillas and stewed frijoles
but they watched me
and i knew that
and i could play
and be watched
and it wasn't like
one of those shows in Oz
where you can see
a young woman on the toilet
it was being watched
and playing
and a tree stump
on branch and mud
and abuelos living without
their country without
their teeth but with
their family and their
branch and mud porch and
a child by blood not theirs
but watched nonetheless

and some years later
i had a chair
and a log and nail porch
and a canine
(the name sake
of a deceased best friend)
to watch play
and he knew that
and he watched me
to make sure the
door wouldn't close
without him

and in a few years
i have a drywall and carpet room
with a box spring and mattress
and no chair
and glass with turtles
(one my namesake
the other the namesake
of a deceased best friend
through their mother)
to watch play
and they seem to notice
and they balance and play
and eat vegetables
and listen to jazz
and wait for their mother
the way i waited for mine
while grandma and grandpa
who by blood
were not mine
watched me
only i waited by default
and they wait
through hers

(inspired in talks with ms. gardiner)

Currently reading : Skin Tax By Tim Z. Hernandez Release date: 30 October, 2004

9:55 AM - 5 Comments - 14 Kudos - Add Comment

Stabbed in the Neck
Current mood: cold
Category: Life

Luis Valadez (24) died on July 11th, 2007, hours before his 25th birthday, in what at press time investigators are ruling a homicide. He was shot seven times in the back and then stabbed once in the neck while painting over the LKN tag on his sixty-six year old mother's garage.

According to a note, he had just returned to Chicago Heights after "realiz[ing] that the world they made is for them and that the hope they instilled in [him] must have served to make [his] inevitable disillusionment and decline sufficient enough for [him] to lose [his] capacity for moral understanding." The note goes on, "They must have wanted me to walk into that new mall on 28th street or one of the incense and bullshit shops or one of the stupid-ass burrito places on the hill and unload on some motherfuckers. This would be widely reported in the media as illegal immigrant violence or the act of a violent criminal from an unsavory background and geography. Inevitably, this would propel legislation to further encapsulate and isolate their world from our likes for anything more than labor." These statements, along with some illusions to what detective Rich Vega referred to "sexual terrorism that the victim may have experienced," and some apologies to family members and friends are all that is being disclosed by the Chicago Heights Police Department at this moment. The presence of this note has lead some to suspect that Valadez's murder was in fact an act of suicide, however, Vega points out, "It's impossible to shoot yourself in back once let alone seven times, but we will investigate the possibility that the victim may have stabbed himself in the neck."

He leaves behind his eight year old dog Jake, turtles Lucky and Luis, siblings René, Ponch, Elsa, his mother (who declined to comment on her son's murder), and estranged father (who could not be reached for comment).

Currently listening : The Very Best of Willie Hutch By Willie Hutch Release date: 25 August, 1998

1:33 PM - 13 Comments - 22 Kudos - Add Comment