WEBVTT

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I want to share some new work,
some old work some of you

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have heard me read.

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My new work is trying to get
into some new areas of my life

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and what I'm interested in.

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But a lot of it has
to do with our people.

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Chicano people,
the Mexican people.

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I'm going to read
you three pieces that

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are related to this.

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The first one is
called "Cinco de Mayo."

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And it's pretty
self-explanatory.

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I'll just read it.

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"Cinco de Mayo celebrates
a burning people, those

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whose land is starved of blood.

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Civilizations which are no
longer holders of the night.

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We reconquer with our
feet, with our tongues,

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that dangerous language,
saying more of this world

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than the volumes of textured
and controlled words on a page.

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We are the gentle rays ablaze--

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our hands hold the
steam of the Earth,

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the flowers of dead cities,
the green of butterfly wings.

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Cinco de Mayo is about
the barefoot, the untold,

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the warriors of want who took
on the greatest army Europe ever

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mustered, and won.

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I once saw a Mexican man
laying on an upturned sidewalk,

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leaning against a leaning
pole, on 18th and Bishop,

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one 5th of May day.

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He brought up a near empty
bottle to the withering sky

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and yelled out a grito with the
words ¡qué viva Cinco de Mayo!

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And I knew what it meant.

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What it meant for
barefoot Zapoteca Indios

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in the Battle of
Puebla, and what

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it meant for me, there on 18th
Street, among los ancianos,

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the moon faced children
and futureless youth,

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dodging gunfire and
careening battered cars.

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And it brought me to that
war that never ends--

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the war Cinco de
Mayo was a battle

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of-- that I keep fighting,
that we keep bleeding for.

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That war against our servitude
that a compa on 18th Street

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knew all about, as he
crawled inside a bottle

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of the meanest Mexican spirits."

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