I want to share some new work, some old work some of you
have heard me read.
My new work is trying to get into some new areas of my life
and what I'm interested in.
But a lot of it has to do with our people.
Chicano people, the Mexican people.
I'm going to read you three pieces that
are related to this.
The first one is called "Cinco de Mayo."
And it's pretty self-explanatory.
I'll just read it.
"Cinco de Mayo celebrates a burning people, those
whose land is starved of blood.
Civilizations which are no longer holders of the night.
We reconquer with our feet, with our tongues,
that dangerous language, saying more of this world
than the volumes of textured and controlled words on a page.
We are the gentle rays ablaze--
our hands hold the steam of the Earth,
the flowers of dead cities, the green of butterfly wings.
Cinco de Mayo is about the barefoot, the untold,
the warriors of want who took on the greatest army Europe ever
mustered, and won.
I once saw a Mexican man laying on an upturned sidewalk,
leaning against a leaning pole, on 18th and Bishop,
one 5th of May day.
He brought up a near empty bottle to the withering sky
and yelled out a grito with the words ¡qué viva Cinco de Mayo!
And I knew what it meant.
What it meant for barefoot Zapoteca Indios
in the Battle of Puebla, and what
it meant for me, there on 18th Street, among los ancianos,
the moon faced children and futureless youth,
dodging gunfire and careening battered cars.
And it brought me to that war that never ends--
the war Cinco de Mayo was a battle
of-- that I keep fighting, that we keep bleeding for.
That war against our servitude that a compa on 18th Street
knew all about, as he crawled inside a bottle
of the meanest Mexican spirits."