So I had a great moment, my second day here,
where I thought to myself, man, I would love a ginger ale.
And I saw that the 7-Eleven was two blocks away.
And I was like, this is an easy distance, I can make it.
Mind you, Farid Matuk here, had already told me--
warned me really, against venturing out in the heat.
And I was like, I'm from the valley.
I can handle it.
It's going to be fine.
I made it about a block.
And then I texted Farid.
I was like, you live like this?
You all live like this?
Very grateful for the heat, makes the brain work
differently.
And I'm going to get to some new stuff, but before I do,
I'm going to read you some of Desgraciado:
(The Collected Letters).
And this is a book that came out last year.
And this is a book that I wrote like it would
be the last book I ever wrote.
I threw everything into this book.
I threw my life into this book.
I broke my life into this book.
This book had to happen, or I wouldn't be here.
And this is a series of love letters written
to Spanish friar by the name of Diego de Landa, who
on July 12th, 1562 attempted to eradicate
the Yucatec Maya language on a platform in Maní, Yucatan.
In which he demanded hundreds, if not thousands of codices
be burned on that platform, along with hundreds of idols,
and the desecrated bodies of my ancestors.
He would go on to stand trial against the crown of Spain.
He didn't fill out the right paperwork
to be using inquisitional tactics.
That's not a joke.
That's really what happened.
Bishop Toral sent him back to Spain, and he won that trial.
He won that trial and he came back to the Yucatan
with a promotion.
And wrote a text called "Relación de cosas pasado
in el Yucatán," which is often treated
as the foremost pre-Spanish contact
text for the Yucatec Maya people,
and you can see why that's maybe a little problematic.
And this book actually started because of the great Farid
Matuk and Susan Briante.
I took a workshop with them at Naropa University
summer writing program, and was presented with a prompt that
would change my life.
Write a love letter to your worst enemy.
I could think of no worse enemy than Diego de Landa.
And I spent the next seven years writing to him.
So here are some of these love letters.
Dear Diego.
I want revenge.
I don't know how else to put it.
I don't want anything back.
I want something new, a newness from the ruin.
I desire the death of my enemies.
Enemies like the wars of the '80s, the '90s, the housing
market crash, the banks, the bankers, the war itself.
I keep telling people that I know
I won't see these empires of capitalism and white supremacy
crumble in my lifetime.
But in the dead of night, I keep writing these little flower
pots, plump with bombs of luminous memory.
I try and connect other wires across the synapse
seeking out an alleyway escape over the wall in one motion,
50 cinder blocks high.
I keep trying to imbue these poems with schematics
of a different future.
I keep trying to explain that bricks bounce,
but with enough force a cinder block won't.
Sugar in the gas tank to break their transit down.
I'll be honest with you, Diego.
I want more than just revenge.
I understand revenge is just one elemental dimension
of what comes next.
I know that ultimately there are things more important
than revenge, like liberation.
Education as liberation, it's more than
knowing how to use a tool or two.
It's the whole damn bag.
It's a constant exchanging of tools.
It's a constant reassessment and re-calibration
of yourself, your tools.
It's understanding that you can be wrong.
It's knowing that ultimately you are both insignificant
and the whole entire world, all at once,
everything and nothing.
It's more than just you.
Liberation is a constant process.
Liberation is a perpetual trial and error,
it's not any one thing.
There is no end-point.
And maybe that's the point, there
is no point at which a thing ends necessarily.
It's a matter of knowing that thing
is dealt with and discussed.
I will never write enough letters or poems
to cure the world of its ailments, and still I write.
Still I remember, still I choose to work
against the face of constant death, this empire of misery
and dust.
I know that I am but one pen, one poet, one person, one, one.
And yet, I contain multitudes.
I am every highway I have ever wandered weary or wired,
I am 10,000 hours and then some.
I am the aching mountain of haunted earth.
I am the architectures of cellular memory, the overly
antsy, the sick with feelings.
I am the ocean of right now.
I can't help but throw this whole body
of flesh and language at the threshold of history
and all of temporality.
I have to try.
I have to.
All I have ever wanted was to be alive,
and then I learned it's more than that.
I, idiot tongued manifestation of reckoning
named after a song, self-made seraphim of the middle passage,
marred by the many manifestations
of living in this reality of thought,
and matter, and wave, living beyond revenge,
living long enough to see one's enemies fall,
that's the real dream.
Narrating the remembering, recording the recall,
sealing the synapse, understanding the subject,
and not being swayed by it.
Staying with the endless madness of the mess,
staying mad, remaining vigilant until everyone is free.