WEBVTT

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The last time I was in Tucson,
I went to a Mexican restaurant

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with the Sheltons where there
were some musicians playing.

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And when I came home I
wrote a poem about it,

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which it's a poem that
I still feel needs

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to be changed in some ways.

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But I thought I'd read it
because I felt in the mood.

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It's called "The Mariachis--

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A Glimpse."

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"Hot Mexican food, the pepper
sauce in a silver dish.

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Seven musicians wearing
yellow jackets, black pants

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with silver disks along
the outside seams.

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White shirt, string ties,
all with black mustaches

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corpulent bodies.

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The bellies hanging a bit
over the silver buckle belts.

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Trumpets gleaming like sunshine.

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The sad sentimental,
but lively music

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like sunshine on the faces
of pretty, but foolish girls.

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A deep fat guitar making bass
sounds with two strings of rope

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and the rest of gut, bumping
along with the melodies.

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It's partly player with the
biggest sideburns washing

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across his face for
women to love and touch.

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An old gray haired singer, all
the men worn cafe musicians

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yet somehow making
me feel that they are

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happy with the songs they play.

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I'm here, a stranger,
eating and talking

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with a nice local
family wondering

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what my life is about.

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Wondering about the
world in my place in it.

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I see another party of
local people about 20,

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they are sitting under
the Mariachi band.

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The face of a young Mexican man
catches my attention fleshy,

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but handsome with its mustache
and sideburns Ivy League

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suit very serious
like a young lawyer.

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But the expression
in the clothes

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barely covering his
sensuous reality.

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The heavy muscular man
underneath sitting possessively

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with his wife, whom
I just now notice.

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Pale almost phosphorescent
with pale auburn hair

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her face a mask blowing
out of the dark room.

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Underneath she's
probably thinking

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about her makeup or
the clothes she's

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wearing assessing
the costs of others

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are dreaming of some
maudlin housewife's wish.

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Yet her exterior is
fragile and poetic

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and you feel her
husband would kill

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to keep her would name
the face of any man who

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made an improper remark.

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I am haunted by the two of them.

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He's so dark and smoldering
and complex beneath

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his conventional exterior.

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She's so exotic on the surface,
contrasting in her whiteness

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to his passion.

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Her surface all
cold and powdery,

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like a clock with a phosphor
dial glowing through the room

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as you wake up in the dark.

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Her interior is so
empty and uninteresting.

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She nods time to
the Mariachi music,

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I dream of some
romance she might have

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with the best trumpet player.

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The one who leans
his head back to play

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like a drinker throwing his
head back for the last swallow.

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I sit there wanting to
steal away her husband

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with his dark passionate face
guarding his pale lovely face--

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his wife.

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I wonder about my
own life, why are you

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the man I love are not with me
passionately guarding my face.

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And know that it is
for civilized reasons

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that I am here
and you are there,

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and we will probably
never be together.

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You and your woods hunting
communing with yourself.

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My life hurts me
to think about, it

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is neither stable and calm with
a contented husband to love,

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nor passionate and exciting
with stolen moments of pleasure.

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You and I care for
each other yet,

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I feel you'd leave me tomorrow
if it were convenient.

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Have done it before.

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We'll do it again, without
even poetry on my tongue.

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It is ironic because
only I really

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know how impossible
it is to own things.

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How impossible to expect
life to be calm and good yet,

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you who can have what
you want on any terms

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and have every
security a man can have

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lecture me on foolishly
wanting some promise of faith.

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My mind is with that
dark young husband

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who guards his pale wife.

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And I know it is she
who will leave him

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her cares being foolish
and insubstantial.

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The moon is no friend,
but a companion.

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How lonely is this
desert we all call life."

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[APPLAUSE]

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