Blog 5: Poetry Because I Am A Poet

Poetry is home base. Poetry is my default setting. Poetry was my first love and once it managed to enter into my body, it lodged itself in one of the chambers of my heart. Reading poetry made me more reflective—it taught me how to listen to the sound of words. Words were a sound. They could sometimes sound like music even when there were no instruments in sight. 

I wasn’t always a writer, and it was poetry that made me want to become a writer. When I started this writer’s thing, I had a lot of romantic ideas about the poet/writer thing, romantic ideas that got in the way of my writing. I thought I needed to feel inspired (whatever that meant) in order to write a poem. Turns out all I needed to do was sit down in front of a pad and paper or in front of my laptop. And I discovered, too. That living was my muse. In order to write a poem, all I needed was to live my life and pay attention. When the romance fell away—that’s when I fell in love. There really isn’t anything romantic or glamorous about sitting in front of a laptop for hours on end. But I began to notice that there was something exhilarating about the quiet that surrounded me when I was at work on a poem.

* 

I have published six collections of poetry over the last three decades. My first literary awards were all for my work as a poet. I was a Wallace E. Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford University in the late eighties. I won an American Book Award for my first collection of poetry, Calendar of Dust, in 1991. I was awarded a Lannan Poetry Fellowship in 1993. It was obvious when I first started to write that I was going to be a poet. The problem with that idea was that I was not interested in limiting myself to one genre. It appears that I was incapable of being monogamous. Poetry may have been my first love, but it wasn’t my only love.

I’ve learned that readers pretty much stick to their genre of interest. Poets, poetry aficionados, and intellectuals (of which there are few) make up the majority of my poetry audience. Grade school-teachers only read my bilingual children’s books, No one reads my novels (not quite true but almost true) and my biggest audience, of course, are the readers of my young adult novels which include not only young adults, but librarians, teachers, educators, college professors, members of the LGBTQUIA2S+ community and readers who enjoy reading love stories and don’t care if a  love story happens to between two boys. Most of my readers don’t venture forth outside of their chosen genre. Which means that very few of my readers (even my most fervent fans (who are very beautiful and often very beautifully cray cray)) have ever read one of my poems. And It seems to me that most of my readers aren’t all that interested in exploring the poetry I’ve written. I’m guessing that they feel like they’re not missing anything. A few poetry critics would tend to agree. I know one poetry critic who holds me up as an example of everything that’s wrong with contemporary American poetry. He seems to spend a lot of time hating my work—which takes a lot of energy and is a waste of time. But it’s his time to waste. As for me, when I don’t like someone’s work, I shut the book and move on.

It's worth mentioning that I almost became a literary critic. I’m much happier as a writer. Happier doesn’t necessarily mean happy. I don’t want to overstate the presence of happy in my life. Just because I’ve bumped into happiness a few times doesn’t mean we’re intimate friends. Where was I? Yes, about becoming a literary critic. I don’t mean to dismiss literary criticism. It is its own thing and I’ve long since lost interest in that particular discipline.

I am a writer by desire, by discipline and by disposition. I don’t make any great claims for the poetry I write just as I don’t make great claims for anything I write. It’s not up to me to make decisions about the importance or unimportance of my work. I don’t have the last say on whether I’m a good writer or a bad one. My readers get to decide that.

My job is to write.

My job is to write—and to write as well as I am able. That means I have to push myself. I’m sometimes hard on other writers but I am never as hard on then as I am on myself. hard on myself because that’s the only way I know how to become a better writer. I don’t like to play it safe, and I’m never completely satisfied with my own work. I always tell myself that I’m much too sentimental—and that is one of the traits I have to tame in myself if I am to become the writer I think I might yet become.  On certain days, I tire of rewriting my own sentences. My writing has to feel true to me. And it’s hard to be true. But I’m alive. Very much alive.  The world I live in isn’t static. And the life I lead isn’t static. And that means I’m always experiencing and seeing the world I live in from a different point of view and it always looks and feels a little different. It’s a great irony that we are so afraid of change when change is one of the few things in our lives that is constant. I was born in 1954. The world has changed dramatically since then. When I went to college, the typewriter represented technology.  There was a pay phone booth on every floor of my dorm. There were three channels on the television sets we watched and along came PBS and then there was four channels. If you lived on the border, you could catch some stations from Juarez. If there have been dramatic changes in the way we live, there have also been radical changes in me. Mostly, I’ve become the man I wanted to be. Mostly. People I’ve known since high school and early college like to remark that I haven’t changed a bit in all of these years. That happens not to be true. I am an entirely different person than the young adult who graduated from Las Cruces High School in 1972. Every time I sit down to write, the world and the way I see it has shifted. And my work as a writer is to be true to all those shifts if my work is to have any relevance at all.  Nostalgia is very bad place for a writer to live. And it also makes for bad politics. The present often serves as a convenient whipping boy for the past. But nostalgia gives us not only a distorted view of the past, but a distorted view of the present.

As a person and as a writer, I have the responsibility to remember the past accurately (or at least make an attempt to do so) and to live in the present. And what of the future? A writer’s hope always looks to the future. I think all writers wish they could write a better world into being. Writing keeps me alert and it keeps me close to my subject matter. And writing also helps me stay in love with the world I was born into—and the people in it. That’s what I write about—people. And hell, are complicated. and they are a mystery. People can be unbelievably beautiful. But they can be difficult in the extreme. It isn’t impossible to stay in love with people—but it has to be a decision and it has to be a commitment. The human condition is a complicated thing to capture and place it on the page. It’s true, nothing that’s worth it is ever easy. But, I’m up to the task. Representing human beings as they struggle to understand their own lives and their own contradictions is the only thing worth writing about.

When I started writing, I thought it would bring me to a closer understanding of what it means to be human. But I don’t have a better or closer understanding of what makes a human life worthwhile. I no longer feel that I have to understand other human beings in order to love them.

In the end, I have to value my own work and trust that there is an underlying honesty to it without overestimating your own value system.  I rely on experience, but I rely just as much on my instincts. I have a very associative way of thinking which is very spontaneous. Because I am an artist, I cannot claim to know how my own process works. Writers, poets, artists—we make up entire families, entire worlds. But those worlds come from our lived realties just as they also come from the fantasies of a world that doesn’t exist, the world we imagine. Imagination can break your heart.           I believe writers have an important function in our society—and it certainly has an important function in my life and in the lives of millions of others. I like to say that writing has saved my life. I don’t believe I’m overstating my case when I say that. I write what I need to write to sustain myself as a thinking man, a thoughtful man, a man who is unafraid to feel and not afraid to make mistakes. Writing is the food I eat in order to keep on living. I would starve to death if I didn’t have my writing

Writing poetry is not an easy kind of work. And it’s probably true that I find writing easier than most people. I have a natural inclination to put things into words and place them carefully on the page. I love words and the way they feel on my tongue—and only a writer could say such a thing. I’ve been at this for many years and that does make my job as a writer easier. Easier doesn’t mean easy. Writers are unusual in that they engage in an activity that most people hate to engage in. Most people hate to write—and they’ll tell you flat out that they hate it. I can’t imagine saying something like that. Hating to write? What an awful thing to say.

I believe that the work of the writer is to communicate the sacred connection between human beings, and that connection must be taken seriously. I don’t care If you’re writing a poem or a story or a children’s book or a novel—a writer has a duty and a responsibility to be true to the office he holds. You cannot take a casual attitude towards what you do. Writing is serious business.

I find it painful that some of my young adult novels have been banned in various school districts scattered throughout the country. I also find it a great irony that the individuals who have banned my books have never read them just as they have not read the other books that they work so hard to banish from our libraries. I offer no apologies for the content of my writing. I happen to think that there is an authentic and undeniable morality that underlies my work. Nobody has the right to lie about my work and its intentions and it is ignoble and dishonest to claim that the books I write are hurtful to the children of the nation.

I do not write to start wars between people. Poetry has taught me that writing offers us peace in a time of war. We could all use some peace. I wish that Americans weren’t so afraid of poetry and so afraid of what they might find there. What are you doing? I’m reading a poem. Get over here! Stop that! There were no books in our house. I grew up in poverty and most people from my background believe that poetry is an elitist art form that has nothing to say to ordinary people. Well, I come from ordinary people—and I am an ordinary people—and poetry has always had something to say to me. It was poetry that led me write fiction. It was poetry that taught me about the rhythms of the English language and the possibilities of using those rhythms to draw readers in, to ask them to pay attention, to ask them to listen. I always found that poetry offered me insight and consolation. The human condition is my only subject matter, and it has offered me more than enough material for the books I have written. I happen to like people. While it’s true, that in some specific cases, there are people I don’t like, I have never judged the entire human race based on those specific cases.

Poetry has brought me to a better understanding of who I am and a better understanding of my fellow human beings. Poetry has taught me to listen to the lives of others. The pain of others. It May seem to be an odd observation, but poetry presented me with clear expressions of pain. And I found that pain to be irresistible. Irresistible because it was necessary.  Yes, poetry offered me pain, a human voice in sorrow, the wounds of a life lived in the midst of chaos. Life can be devastating. Life can be, and is often, cruel. Poetry does not seek to avoid pain. Instead, poetry seeks to examine the pain that all of us feel in the living of our lives. Pain is not something unnatural. Pain is not sent to us as a as a punishment for our wrongs. Pain helps us to heal. In fact, pain is central to our lives and without it we cannot love. And yet, it seems, so many of us do everything in our power to avoid confronting the pain we carry inside us. I suppose we don’t really believe that pain, when faced with an honest and open heart, can be transformed into joy. But I believe that it can. I have always believed that. I believe that when we write, we must go to the place of the pain. And in so doing, we have the potential to bring something beautiful into the world. Beautiful things don’t always appear to be beautiful. Writing poetry taught me that. Writing poetry taught me a lot of things. And most especially, poetry taught me to be vulnerable on the page. Poetry taught me to brave. Here are some of the poems I have written over the years that moved me while I wrote them. I hope you find something in these few poem that nudge you toward a better understanding of the life you are living at this very moment.

Arriving At the Heart of Tragedy

No medicine in the world can do thee good
--Laertes

There are certain things that cannot be
Undone. Lot’s wife glanced back at Sodom as she was
Fleeing—and just like that she became a pillar of salt.
Who knows, maybe she adored her beloved city
More than life itself and only wanted to say adios.
Maybe she was thinking I can’t believe that God is doing this.
Or maybe she wanted to see if she could escape
With one little transgression in her pocket—
Like cheating on your diet. I wonder if she had time
To curse herself for her arrogant stupidity or curse God
For being such a stickler? Him and his fastidious conditions
For salvation. I wonder if there was one last moment
Of terror and wonder, too, how one last moment of terror
Would feel. Lightning and thunder in the heart.
That’s what I think. One of my ex-wife’s ancestors lost
Everything—his cows, his horses, his barn, his house,
His property. Everything lost in a lousy game of poker.
What in the hell was he thinking? I picture him walking
Home, grumbling at his great misfortune, shaking
His head, cursing his life and wondering what words
To use when he made the sad and solemn announcement
To his wife corazón, I have lost everything we have ever
Worked for.  Would he add: I had a full house, a good hand
But—I think he must have talked himself into believing
That it was meant to be, that it was fate, that it was all
A part of a grand scheme—that he was nothing more
Than heaven’s pawn. He kept his wife’s glare in the darkest
Corner of his heart till the day he died. He would never
Be sure if she had truly forgiven him. You can’t take back
A poker hand. Another thing you can’t take back: the words
You speak. Everyone knows that. Somehow it doesn’t stop us
From saying inane, insipid, hurtful things. Family courts
Are teeming with women and men who couldn’t take
Back all the mean things they said to one another.
At a certain point I’m sorry becomes a hollow phrase. I want
A divorce. You can’t take back those words.
Hell, you just drown in them.   

*

The whole world is littered
With what ifs. What if Eve hadn’t tasted of the fruit
From the tree of good and evil. If she hadn’t done that,
Then everyone would adore snakes and none of us would
Have to work. Imagine, hanging around naked all day, not
Having to go to work. You know, if we had to hang around
Naked all day, maybe we would take better care of our bodies
Instead of covering them up with designer clothes. No
Work would mean we wouldn’t have to worry
About illegal immigration (and we would have to invent
Another reason to hate poor Mexicans). What if Othello
Hadn’t believed that low-life, manipulative, lying bastard,
Iago? He and Desdemona would have had a nice life
And beautiful biracial children. What if Orpheus
Had not doubted, had not looked back to make sure
Eurydice was following him out of the underworld? If
Only he hadn’t doubted. Instead, his promise broken,
Eurydice descended back to live at the side of Hades
And Persephone, and he, Orpheus, drowned himself.
All that work for nothing. Sometimes, I think we look
For ways to be unhappy. And more than that, we want
To elevate our unhappiness into the realm of tragedy
As if we were all auditioning for a leading role
In the Royal Shakespeare Company. But why
Does everything have to be so tragic? Who can stand
To watch the dysfunction of the Macbeths? It’s all
Such a bloody mess and what’s so original about
Ambition? And what if La Llorona hadn’t drowned
Her children in the river? What story would we tell
To scare our children into behaving? And what
Kind of solution was this, anyway? See, Mexicans
Are like the English: They are in love with tragedy.
Only Mexicans take their tragedy home every night—
The English leave it at the theater.
All of this has something to do
With Catholicism and Protestantism and history. 

* 

I hide keys in the garage
So I don’t have to worry when I lock myself out.
I have spare glasses everywhere so that I will always
Be able to see. I have more than taken Elizabeth
Bishop’s advice to lose something every day. But
None of this qualifies as tragedy.
I keep thinking of the man
Who forgot his infant child in the car as he rushed off
To work. He was in a hurry, running late, preoccupied.
His wife called in the middle of the afternoon, wanting
To know why their son was not at daycare. In a panic,
He rushed out of the building. I keep seeing this man
As he reaches the place where he parked the car, knowing
That the heat of the day must have—no, please, God, how
Could I have forgotten, no, God, no I see him as he flings
Open the back door to the car. He is inconsolable
As he holds his limp son in his arms. How could I have
Done this? What have I done? What have I done? 

* 

Many years ago, my ex-wife gave me
A sculpture as a gift: Quetzalcoatl is lying down
On a small and lonely boat. He is in mourning.
He, too, is inconsolable. Tenochtitlan has been razed
To the ground. Cortéz has won the day. Quetzalcoatl alone
Has escaped to tell the others: Mexico has fallen. He is
Floating out to sea, holding in his hands an image of a world
With a cross firmly planted into its core.
The Christianized world has arrived
With an army that cannot be turned back. The Aztec
World has been destroyed by fire. For Tenochtitlan
There will be no resurrections—and for Quetzalcoatl
There is only this eternal and solitary travel in a sea
Of endless sorrows. I try to imagine what it is like to feel
The weight of that kind of grief. Lightning and thunder
In the heart. I keep seeing the man, a dead son
In his arms why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,
And thou no breath at all? The world is in ruins.
We are left cursing and clutching at our bitter hearts,
Wondering, wondering why we are not dead.            

That which has been done can never be undone.   

The Fifth Dream: Bullets and Deserts and Borders

A man is walking toward me.
He is alone.
He has been walking through the desert.
He has been walking for days.
He has been walking for years.
His lips are dry
and cracking
like a piece of spent soil.
I can see his open wounds.
His eyes are dark
as a Tanzanian night.

He discovers I have been watching
though he has long ceased to care
what others see. I ask him
his name, ask him what
has brought him here, ask
him to name
his angers and his loves.
He opens his mouth
to speak—
but just as his words hit
the air, a bullet
pierces his heart.

I do not know
the country
of this man’s birth. I only know
that he is from
the desert. He has the worn
look of despair
that only rainless days can give.
That is all I know.
He might have been born
in Jerusalem. He might have been
born in Egypt. He might
have been the direct descendant
of a pharaoh. His name
might have been Ptolemy.
His name might have been
Moses. Or Jesus.
Or Muhammad.
He might have been a prophet.
He might have been a common thief.
He might have been a terrorist
or he might have been just
another man destined
to be worn down
by the ceaseless, callous storms.
He might have come
from a country called Afghanistan.
He might have been from Mexico.

He might have been
looking for a well.
His dreams were made of water.
His lips touching
water—yes—
that is what he was dreaming.

I can still hear the sound of the bullet.

*

The man reappears.
It does not matter
that I do not want him
in my dreams. He is
searching through the rubble
of what was once his house.
There are no tears on his
face. His lips still yearn
for water.

*

I wake. I begin to believe
that the man has escaped
from Auschwitz. Perhaps he sinned
against the Nazis or because
he was a collaborator or because
he was Jewish
or because he loved another man.
He has come
to the desert looking
for a place he can call home.
I fall asleep trying
to give the man a name.

*

The man is now
walking toward a city
that is no longer there.

*

I am the man.
I see clearly. I am
awake now.
It is me. It has taken me
a long time to know this.
I am a Palestinian.
I am an Israeli.
I am a Mexican.
I am an American.
I am a busboy in a tall building
that is about to collapse.
I am attending a Seder and I am
tasting my last bitter
herb. I am a boy who has learned
all his prayers. I am bowing
toward Mecca in a house
whose roof will soon collapse
on my small frame.
I am a servant. I shine shoes
and wash the feet
of the rich. I am an illegal.
I am a Mexican who hates all Americans.
I am an American who hates all Mexicans.
I am a Palestinian who hates all Israelis.
I am an Israeli who hates all Palestinians.
I am a Palestinian Jew who hates himself.

I am dying of all this knowledge.
I am dying of thirst.
I am a river that will never know water again.
I am becoming dust.

*

I am walking toward my home.
Mexico City? Washington?
Mecca? Jerusalem?
I don’t know. I don’t know.

*

I am walking in the desert.
I see that I am reaching a border.
A bullet is piercing my heart.

To the Desert

I came to you one rainless August night.
You taught me how to live without the rain.
You are thirst and thirst is all I know.
You are sand, wind, sun, and burning sky,
The hottest blue. You blow a breeze and brand
Your breath into my mouth. You reach—then bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
You wrap your name tight around my ribs
And keep me warm. I was born for you.
Above, below, by you, by you surrounded.
I wake to you at dawn. Never break your
Knot. Reach, rise, blow, Sálvame, mi dios,
Trágame, mi tierra. Salva, traga, Break me,
I am bread. I will be the water for your thirst.

Confessions: My Father, Hummingbirds, and Frantz Fanon

Every effort is made to bring the colonised person to admit
the inferiority of his culture...
—Frantz Fanon

And there are days when storms hover
Over my house, their brooding just this side of rage,
An open hand about to slap a face. You won't believe me
When I tell you it is not personal. It isn't. It only feels
That way because the face is yours. So what if it is the only
Face you've got? Listen, a storm will grab the first thing
In its path, a Persian cat, a sixth grade boy on his way home
From school, an old woman watering her roses, a black
Man running down a street (late to a dinner with his wife),
A white guy buying cigarettes at the corner store. A storm
Will grab a young woman trying to escape her boyfriend,
A garbage can, a Mexican busboy with no papers, you.
We are all collateral damage for someone's beautiful
Ideology, all of us inanimate in the face of the onslaught.
My father had the biggest hands I've ever seen. He never
Wore a wedding ring. Somehow, it would have looked lost,
Misplaced on his thick worker's hands that were, to me,
As large as Africa. There have been a good many storms
In Africa over the centuries. One was called colonialism
(Though I confess to loving Tarzan as a boy).

                                              In my thirties, 

I read a book by Frantz Fanon. I fell in love
With the storms in his book even though they broke
My heart and made me want to scream. What good
Is screaming? Even a bad actress in a horror flick
Can do that. In my twenties, I had fallen in love
With the storms in the essays of James Baldwin.
They were like perfect poems. His friends called
Him Jimmy. People didn't think he was beautiful.
Oh God, but he was. He could make a hand that was
Slapping you into something that was loving, loving you.
He could make rage sound elegant. Have you ever
Read "Stranger in the Village?" How would you like
To feel like a fucking storm every time someone looked
At you?

                                                             One time I was

At a party. Some guy asked me: What are you, anyway?
I downed my beer. Mexican I said. Really he said, Do
You play soccer? No I said but I drink Tequila. He smiled
At me, That's cool. I smiled back So what are you?
What do you think I am he said. An asshole I said. People
Hate you when you're right. Especially if you're Mexican.
And every time I leave town, I pray that people will stop
Repeating You're from El Paso with that same tone
Of voice they use when they see a rat running across
Their living rooms, interrupting their second glass
Of scotch. My father's dead (Though sometimes I wake
And swear he has never been more alive—especially when
I see him staring back at me as I shave in the morning).
Even though I understand something about hating a man
I have never really understood the logic of slavery.
What do I know? I don't particularly like the idea of cheap
Labor. I don't like guns. And I don't even believe
White men are superior. Do you? I wanted to be
St. Francis. I took this ambition very seriously. Instead
I wound up becoming a middle-aged man who dreams
Storms where all the animals wind up dead. It scares
Me to think I have this dream inside me. Still,
I love dogs—even mean ones. I could forgive
A dog that bit me. But if a man bit me, that would be
Another story. I have made my peace with cats.
I am especially in love with hummingbirds (though
They're as mean as roosters in a cock fight). Have
You ever seen the storms in the eyes of men who
Were betting on a cock fight?

Last night, there was hail, thunder,
A tornado touching down in the desert—though I was
Away and was not a first-hand witness. I was in another
Place, listening to the waves of the ocean crash against
The shore. Sometimes I think the sea is angry. Who
Can blame it? There are a million things to be angry
About. Have you noticed that some people don't give
A damn and just keep on shopping? Doesn't that make you
Angry? A storm is like God. You don't have to see it
To believe—sometimes you just have to place
Your faith in it. When my father walked into a room
It felt like that. Like the crashing waves. You know,
Like a storm. This is the truth of the matter: I am
The son of a storm. Look, everyone has to be the son
Of something. The thing to do when you are caught
In the middle of a storm is to abandon your car,
Keep quiet. Pray. Wait. Tell that to the men
Who were sleeping on the Arizona when
The Japanese dropped their bombs. War is the worst
Kind of storm. The truth is I have never met a breathing
Human being who did not have at least one scar
On his body. Bombs and bullets do more than leave
A permanent mark on the skin. I have never liked
The expression they were out for blood. 

                                              There are days

When there are so many storms hovering around
My house that I cannot even see the blue in the sky.
My father loved the sky. He was trying to memorize
The clouds before he died. I confess to being
Jealous of the sky.

                                              On Sunday Mornings

I picture Frantz Fanon as an old man. He is looking up
At the pure African sky. He is trying to imagine how it appeared
Before the white men came. I don't want to dream all the dead
Animals we have made extinct. I want to dream a sky
Full of hummingbirds. I would like to die in such a storm.