I'll read you two more and then we'll call it a night.
Two more.
My dream in life has come early.
Two beautiful children, loving, friendly wife,
farm that is the mirror of this poet's soul.
And then the world of nightmares, terror, injustice,
addiction, violence burst in.
I cannot disengage my world from the rest of humanity.
Wind chill factor, 11 below.
All night, wind thrashes bare-chested trees like a West
Texas tent evangelist.
His and congregation on their knees lisp
in furious contempt sin, sin.
Old tool shed behind my house fisticuffs
itself to nail loose tin.
Horse pasture gates clank confessions of crimes.
While rain stampedes on the patio,
neighing like black stallions fleeing gunshots of thunder.
Miles south of here, night scopes pick up human heat.
That green fuzz helicopter dash panels.
A mama whispers, shh, mijito, shh.
Nomás poco más allá.
And dunes of playing dead people jackrabbit under strobe lights
and cutting whack blades.
Shh, mijito.
The child whimpers and staggers in blinding dust.
Men, women, children, not caught scratch sand up
to sleep against warm underbellies of roots
and stones.
Eventually, Juanito comes to my door,
sick from eating stucco chips.
From walls of temporary shelters,
he scratched his meal off.
And Enrique, who guzzled water at industrial pipes,
pouring green foam out at the El Paso-Juarez border.
And Maria, steaming with fever like a meteorite.
Where I come from, Señor Baca, a woman's womb is a rock.
Women dragged beneath their bellies.
Children born from me have become dust
under death squads' boots.
And Juanito, Senor Baca, they came at midnight
for my brothers.
I have never seen them since.
Each judge's tongue is a bleeding stub.
And each lawyer's finger is a coffin nail.
And Enrique, you can trust no one, Señor Baca, please.
Each person's eye is a damp cellar,
where thieves and murderers sleep in my country.
They have found refuge here at Black Mesa.
The sun passes between our lives, as between two trees
side by side now.
One gray and one green.