Gang-boys

A tree marked
with a giant 7
and a giant 0
The 70’s came through here.
A stop sign tagged with T-Flats
no longer stops traffic
but serves to warn you
intruder
that you’re entering
Tortilla Flat territory.
Better yield.

I lived in the middle of gangs
sandwiched between
deadly loyalties
to the red, blue, the brown.
My childhood riddled
with gang-boys
who think, believe they are men
but each one
really a man-child.
Sagging pants
weighed down
by the gats they tote.
Glock, revolver in one pocket
bandana representing in the other.
Sporting perfectly pressed
blinding bright white t’s
cut-off dark work pants
with creases cutting the air,
hair shiny, sleek
classic like the filero,
thick white sport socks pulled knee-high
and dark knit gloves in the summer!
I knew some of them
talked and laughed with them
I wasn’t
allowed to befriend them
not allowed to cross
their path to nowhere good.

Willie, aka Will or Big Slim
with his pet iguana
and his magnetic smile
couldn’t help but want to talk to him
or have him talk to you.
Always very friendly and funny
but fled to the ‘burbs
to get away from the life-
to save his life.

Either on foot,
covered in thick Nike Cortez,
or on bikes
these lost boys
left their trail
of graffiti, fear and loathing.
To see them was to know
they’d lose their life
they’d lose the street battle
leaving loved ones
the community
the city
to continue
living the war.
A war they can’t see from their graves
or the luckier ones, from their cells.
A war
fueled by the push and pull
of la pandilla, la clica, the “set”
with its utter freedom
to roam the streets, incite fear
break the rules,
break faces,
break the bank with their street hustle
gives a young boy
a dose of “manhood” to the head.
To be manly and supported in that
to be protected by your brothers in that.
How cool to be “cool” for all the girls.
Cause, who doesn’t love a bad boy (even secretly)?

Those gang-boys
who think, believe they are men
but each one
really a man-child
pushed by tradition,
cause Smiley
has Baby Smiley and Lil Smiley
looking up to big tough tatted dad.
Pushed by threats,
pushed into throwing down,
blow by blow
dying block by block.
Sacrificing their lives
disrespecting that of their enemy’s
representing their hood hard
just to be worthy of respect.
In the end
after all the fundraising:
car washes
knocking on my door collecting funds
to bury her fallen son
“Here, here is a $5, I don’t want
to see anymore pictures of him,”
can’t look at her bloodshot eyes
After all the R.I.Ps have been sewn
sprayed on, etched on
to car windows, t-shirts, caps
sweatshirts and tattooed on
brown and black skin
After all this
who thinks about
respect?
Who thinks of the boy’s set?
Just a lonely painful
memory, relived
of how a gang-boy
who thought, believed he was a man
was really a child.

My Champ

Ama..
Hearing your steps
cross our shoe-box apartment
slow moving
dragging
like a champ
knocked to the canvas
as the city enjoyed its second dream
made my little heart a little sad.
You’d come home
your body beat-up
by fatigue from back-to-back
eight-hour rounds
at the factories
piecing together
anything your nimble hands
qualified you to.
No belt, no fame, no glory
barely a living
for your accomplishments
for ever unnoticed
blended with the exploitations
of others.
Just a tired body
always tired body
you plopped onto
the sagging mattress.
I’d lay there feigning sleep
didn’t want you to notice me
didn’t want you to exert more energy
to give me a tight squeeze.
I’d watch through squinted eyes
you pulled out your bag of healing
from under our bed
medicines from across the border
brought back by neighbors,
relatives who could cross the border.
I’d hear the swishing of bottles
You’d drench your arms and legs
the sting of the green liquid-
Rue infused rubbing alcohol
burned the inside of my nose.
You’d slap your hands together
smashing and melting the slab,
yellow ointments
thick like lard
applied hands
glide across your joints.
No relief
even for relief
your hands work hard.
You winced from the aches
thin skin around your eyes
folded like fans.
I wanted to massage your feet
hot with plump plum veins
wanted to drape myself over
your wilted shoulders.
Being poor wasn’t so bad
it meant I could sleep
next to your warm body
coiled like a snail’s shell.
No 10 count for you
cansancio always had the upper hand
you were out for the night.
I could smell you smelling
of botanica
felt your hands twitch
with leftover energy.
No relief
even for relief
your hands work hard.
Felt your heavy breathing
I’d stop my breathing
waited
exhaled
with yours.
No hugs at night
no tucking in
the way you used to
but my heart
beat with yours
my champ
my Mami.

Because I’m a Fucken Queer…till 2010!

I sit here watching the news, sad news for all us gays. I speak for us all even though I know some of us gays out there don’t give two shits about marriage but the truth is that the repealing of Prop H8 is more than about granting the queers the right to marry it’s about standing up to being relegated to the status of second class citizens. So I sit here and shed a tear cause I’m a fucken, a fucked over queer. I went to a conference a few months back where I heard a prominent Chicana Lesbian author speak on the subject of gay marriage and she was not necessarily in favor of us being granted the right to partake of civil marriage (and gain from the numerous economic benefits that come with it) cause she said it made us to normative too domesticated. Also many Queers see marriage as one of the key pillars of heteronormativity, a major factor in the preservation of heterosexual culture. So gay marriage is not radical enough to change the moral sexual compass of our society? Just listen to the religious rights reason for opposing gay marriage:

• Gay relationships are immoral
• A gay household is not a stable enough environment to raise kids
• Same sex marriage will lead to polygamy, bestiality, necrophilia…etc, etc
• Gay marriage STILL = sodomy in the minds of many. It wasn’t until June 26, 2003 that the US Supreme Court ruled said laws unconstitutional. 
• Gay marriage is a slap in the face to masculinity.

 So given all the phobias and stigma that surrounds homosexuality why do some queers see still the gain of this civil right as not radical enough? I guess somehow getting married or having the right to marriage somehow absolves us from being seen and treated as queers.

 I live with my partner and her son we have a quite household. I pick him up from the sitters, we play together we eat dinner together as a family but believe me when I tell you that we are anything but normal. Some of my neighbors won’t even look me in the face and many of them were not too proud to flaunt their ‘Yes on 8’ signs during last November’s elections. And when I take my boy to the bus stop I get stared at and then have to hear and see him dodge the many questions flung at him by his peers, some of them older than him; “yo is that a woman or is that a dude?”  “hey, hey, is that a girl,”  “she looks like a boy huh?”. My boy doesn’t answer he just makes his way to the back of the bus.  So tell me how would being married to my partner change any of this, how would our bond sanctioned by the state of California protect me, us, him an eight-year-old boy from his peers’ ignorance?  It wouldn’t necessarily but it would assure some peace of mind if I (or she) were ever happen to be hospitalized, arrested or worse deceased that she, my partner can rest assured she won’t be deemed powerless by the laws of our land. 

So the California Supreme Court spoke out on Tuesday (May 26, 2009) upholding Proposition 8- many of us were devastated but not defeated and like I told my sister, who is also a big gay, the fight isn’t over; this is so much more than civil unions it’s about human rights.  The fact that five states - Massachusetts, Iowa, Vermont, Connecticut and Maine - have approved same-sex marriage during the time that California judges were deliberating over Prop 8 and recently it has been reported that at least three other states New York, New Jersey and New Hampshire, are seriously considering the matter show that this is now a national issues. So I expect to meet again in 2010…and not be fucked over. 

Tejano

Para Joe J. 

If I ever have a boyfriend

Quiero que sea como tu

Pelon, chaparrito and if it's not asking too much

Que tambien sea Tejano

So he can have his corazon mas rasquachi que

black velvet

Un hombre con la suerte de una mujer sufrida

Que se hace garras por un poquito de romance.

Un pelon bien acholado

Whose inner chola goes wild

Al oir el 'Bidi-bid-Bom-Bom" 

Compton

I read somewhere…oh yeah on myspace that you know it’s true love when “it’s complicated”. Compton IS a complicated city.  I’m sure you’ve heard of it?

Various stories, news reports flashed on television, interwoven with the lyrics of gansta rappers like EZ-E, Dr. Dre and The Game. Surely you’ve bobbed your head to their beats? The tales these rappers and news reports tell are not make-believe stories but they make folks  believe what’s only half true and the other half  folks fabricate on their own  cause folks just don’t know no betta'.

COMPTON!

Did your mind conjure up something all tingly and California-sun warm? There are tales that people tell tales I have to hear whether I’m checking in at a small inn in Santa Fe, New Mexico or taking a tour through the Polynesian Cultural Center in Oahu, Hawaii. I hear the tales of my city.   “Is it as bad as they say,” asks the Miami transplant now residing in a slower paced Santa Fe and working in Guest Services at the small inn.  He hands me the key to my room I give him a blank stare.  “Compton?”  He says as he points at the address on my driver’s license when I don’t answer his question. I didn’t know what to say.  I was dumbstruck and got doubly-dumbstruck cause I can’t believe this question still dumbstruck me.  I hear it all the time. 

Cut.

Flash forward a few months after New Mexico. 

Scene: the beautiful island of Ohau:

  “Hello, my name is Lemeki and I’m from Compton,” the Fijian tour guide cracks a joke before he started his lecture on Polynesian culture to the attentive all-tourist-filled audience.

Compton.  It’s the place where drive-bys occur, where every one of my middle school years is marked with memories of racial riots among Black and Latino Compton High youth trying to annihilate each other. Black on brown violence, no title on the line, no million dollar award- shit not even the pride of bragging rights.  Just plain ignorance-laden poverty-driven violence. I never understood why they did it nor how my sisters, all three of them, managed to study in those conditions. I knew I didn’t want to go through it and I fled, found a different rout towards my high school dimploma.  On a big bumble bee of a bus that chauffeured my ass to C.A.M.S (the California Academy of Mathematics and Science).

Cut. 

Flash back to my 9^th grade year. English class, students are seated in a circle cause it’s group work time.  Not sure what the assignment was cause we we’re talking and not necessarily working.   “So do you have to wear a bullet proof vest?” asked the curly-top Jewish boy in my group. My homie, Mike who also got picked up  in Compton, turned to look at me and busted out laughing. Mike saw the “beat down coming on” expression on my face, turned to Jewish boy and proceeded to bust out laughing in his face.

“What do you mean?” I asked in my most mean-mugging face. 

“Well, you know, you live in Compton and, you know, there’s a lot of gang ware fare there.”

“Oh, I said. Yeah I hear you but my vest is in the cleaners today and my glock is in the shop.” I’ll spare you the details of how the rest of the conversation went down, just know that no, he didn’t get a beat down just an angry lecture. Compton = gangs?  I’ll admit to that but there’s so much more.  There is also poverty and underserved communities. As I mentioned before I attended high school at C.A.M.S, which by the way, Los Angeles Magazine ranked as the 4^th best high school in Los Angeles this year. I would say 95% of the students who attended got bused in from their respective districts and all the students were at the top of their class in their respective middle school.  I rode on the Compton and South L.A. bus. Just to tell you, in order to remain a student at C.A.M.S you had to maintain a certain GPA which I don’t recall at the moment nor could I find said information on their website. If you didn’t maintain that GPA then you were placed on academic probation.  My first semester, which also happened to be the first semester ever at C.A.M.S, was the school's first semester and practically everyone from the Compton/ South LA bus was placed on academic probation and required to take a tutoring class, which we all affectionately called the “dummy class”. I think the administration was surprised but obviously ready and willing to address the problem. This was my first experience seeing the inequality in the quality of education I received in Compton and what other students in other districts like Palos Verdes, Long Beach, Torrance etc. had received. I was one of the lucky ones though because I had been tracked as a gifted and talented student, which meant I got the opportunity to learn from the best teachers at my Compton schools.

Compton.  The Williams sisters first learned their game here, at the imperial tennis courts to be exact.  But not even their fame and winnings would spare them from later learning that their sister, Yutende Price, got shot down in a drive by.  Compton. It’s quite a distance from here to Beijing, China the destination of the 2008 Olympics where Tayshaun Prince and Lisa Leslie got their necks looped with gold medals for being the best basketball team in the world. For Lisa this would be her fourth, Mr. Prince is also a member of the 2004-05 NBA championship team the Detroit Pistons.

Compton home to 100,000 inhabitants 51% of those are Latinos, no longer a chocolate city. But the change in racial composition is not the only change that Compton has undergone. After receiving a State Enterprise Zone program, Compton has experienced a lot of business and industrial expansion (we got our own Best Buy and a Magic Johnson 24hr Fitness, ya’ll!) new houses have been built AND a new senior center is in the works.  My city even has it’s own district comprised of 24 elementary schools, eight middle schools, three high schools, and one adult school, which also serves as an alternative school.  The district maintains five alternative learning schools unfortunately our schools have not yet reaped the benefits of the State Enterprise Zone program at least not from what I’ve seen and read in the papers. The sad thing, I would say downright heartbreaking thing, is that across the nation, the world, things are so financially hurting that a few shops at Compton’s new shopping plaza have already closed down. We’ll see if Best Buy is a best bet in this city at this time.

As far as I can remember the educational system in Compton has always left one wanting more. Sadly enough in 1993, my junior year of high school, Compton Unified got taken over by the California Department of Education due to gross, funky ass mismanagement of the dirty presidents.  In 2004 Compton Community College lost it’s accreditation again for mismanagement and fraud.  FUCK people, when can we stop fucking ourselves over?  

I want to say that I am leaving but I’m already gone.  Writing from my new place, new home full of pine smell and homie feel. But still want to share what I felt as I arrived to here. 

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Part of me is afraid to leave mostly because I have to change my route to achieving my dream, changes and very unexpected surprises and leaps in personality.  Just another way of saying that I feel like I’ve grown.  It’s not so much just the moving part, the literal move from one space to the other, I feel that I’m trying to be present and aware of her…my love.  Give a relationship 5 years, that’s sort of like the rule of thumb, huh? I didn’t really believe it until that day when I heard it twice in one day.  It was one of many things that I experienced in 1 day- it was a deja vou day, I suppose.

 I heard that twice in one day and once from my own mouth.  So I can’t stay in one place, marry my dreams to a site.  They come with me- they are my part; a part of me.  I say this as I’ve packed up most of my shit in preparation to bounce from the CPT. I want to work with the youth here, in this city, I want to have the talented ones, the expressive ones, the accomplished to the 10^th degree, the motivated one.  Yes it sounds elitist but the truth is that they can all be…

Accomplished, expressive, talented, motivated

I just want to say that it’s about over coming challenges.  Hopefully the students

Will see it too

 

It must be true.  I have a riddle for you…

“Cual de los dos amantes sufre mas pena? El que se va o el que se queda

Answer: El que se queda, se queda llorando

Y el que se va, se va suspirando.”

Not mine but...

I liked it. I found it while web-surfing the other day. It’s what I do in between my writing (some times), to look up facts for my story, to scratch an itch or just kill some time while my own ideas are idle. Sometimes I open one too many tabs, lose track of unnecessary windows and finally reload after reload- I don't remember my way back to my purpose of going on-line in the first place. All this to say that I ran across this quote

"Our lives are shaped by the significant truths we say or don’t say." I read it in this article:

http://life.gaiam.com/gaiam/p/RelationshipFixHowtoTellDifficultTruthsSoPeopleThankYou.htm

I am a writer but still plagued by miscommunication. It's the feelings; they get in the way. I want them when I need to induce more writing but feel so uncomfortable when they are happening “live and direct” in me. And when they're happening they require all of me. It's like trying to talk when you're yawning, not only is this a pet peeve of mine and not too mention somewhat gross and unattractive. Think for a second...who do you know that has a sexy yawn? But above all, when yawning, you need your whole mouth do it. You're jaw movement is practically involuntary. Trembling like it's cold, but it's not it's just you opening your mouth wide and sucking in deep! That's how involuntary my feelings can be- but there not supposed to be. (rolling of eyes) I know. So just read and enjoy why it’s important to tell your truths- in order to do that you have to be honest to yourself.

What up G!!

Hey Homie!

Just kidding. How are you Juan? It has been a while since I’ve written to you.  Been through a lot actually in the last few months; have been healing from various injuries from exercising mostly my shoulder, hand. They feel a lot better because I’ve been getting pricked with needles; acupuncture it really does help. That and the extra deep massages they game me each time I went to a session. I recently got over a little health scare. The doctor found an ovarian cyst…so I had to wait out 3 months to see if it was dangerous to my health or not.  It wasn't. I’m abut to turn 32 so technically I’m considered low risk para esas cosas. Still it makes you think the things that are yet to come for me as my body ages. Not sure if you remember but I’ve always been an active person, physically I mean I’ve always liked to run, be outdoors work on my body and now my bones ache. Still I want to run a marathon! It’s one of the things on my “bucket list” things I want to experience before I die. 

I started teaching. I’m working with high school students at Roosevelt High in East LA. It’s an after school project that I am overseeing.  It’s a fun thing to be involved in because it has so many layers. Well first let me tell you that it’s an oral history project, students are going to interview a few older-female-activists that have shaped and influence the communities of East L.A. and Boyle Heights.  They will interview them, on video camera and then we’re going to take all the video footage to create a documentary called “Las Grandes de East L.A. and Boyle Heights”. I’m really excited about the whole project but have been a bit bummed cause we’ve had such low attendance.  Only two students have come consistently and of course we’ve continued the project with only the two of them.  Actually we’ve had really good sessions with them, they have liked the class discussions and the materials we’ve shared with them so far. I think they’re into it.  Ok I know they are I should stop being in disbelief about it.

This Sunday we’re going to go see a play called “Boyle Heights” I figured it's a good way for them to see te we work others in the community are creating about this community. At the end of the project students would have contributed to the preservation of history of that community.  They are being historians. So back to the layers…well you have the youth, Adilia (program assistant) myself, Dionne (professor at Cal State LA) and Susana the (lead teacher at Roosevelt) and finally the older women activists that we’ll be interviewing. That makes for a whole lot of generations!  It’s awesome for me too because I get to visit a high school campus very different from the one I attended. Here they have 5,000 students and the campus is pretty big, my high school had 500 students and we took classes in bungalows. So it’s cool to see the jocks, cheerleaders, activists, rebels, cholos, chachas, nerds, loners. Roqueros and what evers walking around.

 

Dude! Let me tell you the one thing I am totally grateful I didn’t experience at my high school that they have there is the rat problem.  This one time we were meeting and then we saw one race from one end of the classroom to the other. But hey look on the bright side-the district is spending money on uniforms, 2 per student. So it’s nice to experience the contrasts in my high school experiences.  I almost can’t wait to get to the end of the project cause I know the work we create is going to be so awesome. Just like the process has been. 

p.s. got the image from www.museo.org/site I believe it's from their current exhibit "inside/Outside North&South.  No artist name listed