ODE TO ROQUE DALTON



SURE I CANT WRITE!!!!!!!!!! LET ME REJOICE IN THIS INJURY THIS
TRAUMA!!!
FOR I AM HERE AND IT IS ALL MINE! THIS MEAT I S ME—AND I
will love who I am! But not this hideous stone temple that
is me. Look, I'm covered with boils, flapping the spirit wings
that breeze my brow within the mire. If flesh could be decadent
then that would be me. I read, "Mi poesia / es como
la siempreviva" "My poetry's / like the everlasting /
paying for its price / to life / in rough-edged terms"
by Roque Dalton —sweet, bitter voice of a man,
who hurled himself against the barracks,
while I stride in near-freedom, constrained mostly
by a monstrous image of myself that
I've made the God of Me. I'll love this pain
as Roque loved his and I'll say
my chains are vanity, presumption,
love of glory and pride shaped into this body—
edifice that I meant to flow, that I claimed
did move like water or wind above
old muscled gravity.
I have made myself a monster
like a gun in cowboy boots,
while I claimed to be a smiling child,
a soft-eyed boy in search of intense
and pinkish pleasure
and found a deep
and dark regret. A dark yet sweet offense
repeated robot like, has made me a metal mask
without pity for my spirit's coiling.
Once I spoke of fire but now I've carved
the fire into a thing of wood and painted flames
of a stained self, denying guilt, in guilty
splotches on the walnut grain.
And here, here in the heart of silence,
is my chance for birth. Surely
there is guilt, I won't deny it, and it's mine.
Why not let it be beautiful? I made
it from the spirit-matter of my Messiah.
I was not starved, beaten, tortured,
burned alive, as a Central American poet.
But WHATEVER IT WAS, (monster kink
of Leviathan, to the babe I was,
so long ago) I felt it flame that much.
HE OR SHE SPEAKS TO ME THAT MUCH
(The Burning Babe)
and in
real Life I meant to burn
and keep the torch aflaming.



*


"Nos olvides nunca
que lost menos fascistas
de entre los fascistas
tambien son
fascistas":
"Don't ever forget that the least fascist among fascists are
also fascists," says Roque Dalton. —I am the fascist
of myself, and not the smallest that dictates with rod and with roar!
It is not wrong to see Che as Jesus (Dalton did).
Though I would not kill I would spraypaint Che's face
on the clouds over the sunset sea where they are purple
where the mist tangles the orange bridge and its searchlights,
for Che's face is the face of a lion. But I have made my lion
into a creature of green, scented plastic and iron
and not the creature who smiles at the spider and lies down
with the lamb. The god I mirror is my fascist image
of self —but it is better to be a lion of flesh,
alive, and willing to die, in the mountains!
In the flowing mountains of spirit I am a flower of meat,
a scarlet trumpet bloom on a lost stone temple
—but not, not, the monster I push forward on my knees in silence
as I crawl covered with boils.
Let me love the artists and actors who are ????
ACTION PHILOSOPHERS,
let my selfishness turn to the rose of rage
with bronzy thorns and the petals of self-forgiveness.
I will love all that struggles, even in the mire
and pit of silence. SURE, I CAN'T WRITE!
LET ME REJOICE IN THIS LUXURY
that gives me a chance for birth.



___________





1985, spontaneous writing in deep turmoil

I will love all that struggles, even in the mire
and pit of silence.

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