I'm going to read you one that--
here's one I think that we all can
understand as poor students.
And then this will be it for this book.
Cruising back from 7-Eleven esta mañana in my '56 Chevy Trokita.
Beat-up rankled farm truck clanking
between rows of new shiny cars.
Hey fella.
Trees need pruning down here.
Grass needs trimming, man yelled down to me
from his third story balcony.
Sorry, señor.
I'm not the gardener, I yelled up to him.
Funny, how in the Valley, an old truck
symbolizes prestige, and in the Heights, poverty.
Worth is determined in the Valley by age and durability,
and in the Heights, by newness and impression.
In the Valley, the atmosphere is soft and worn.
Things are shared and passed down.
In the Heights, the air is blistered with the glaze
of new cars and new homes.
How many days of my life I have spent fixing up
rusty, broken things, charging up old batteries,
wiring pieces of odds and ends together.
Ah, those lovely bricks and sticks I found in fields
and took home with me to make flower boxes.
Old cars I've worked on, endlessly
giving them tune-ups, changing tires, tracing
electrical shorts, cursing when I've
been stranded between Laguna Pueblo and Burque.
It's the process of making do, of the life
I've lived between breakdowns and breakups, that
has made life worth living.
I just couldn't bear a life with everything so damn perfect.
[LAUGHTER]