POEMS FOR THE PIGS

I jump into the fray again. This time unintentionally. When I show up to Santa Fe, I find out the republican governors from all over the country are meeting at the conference center to discuss conservative policy. Somehow I didn’t get the memo. There are protestors on every street corner. But it’s nothing like Philly in 2017 when the GOP showed up a week after the inauguration.

We protested for over a week, with snake marches leading to organized marches, leading to dance parties, leading to tens of thousands of people surrounding the hotel all those pigs were hiding in. Inside, the traitor in chief probably told everyone that his supporters had come to celebrate his victory, but outside the energy was livid. The marches didn’t really lead anywhere, but that was the beginning of so many activist groups finding alliances in the streets. It was a time to see each other and find hope in the multitudes that love was still possible even in tyranny.

In Santa Fe, things are a little more low key. Mostly Women’s Marchers sans pussy hats holding signs that outline that Santa Fe is a sanctuary city and accepts refugees. No action, but frankly, it’s just exciting to see so many signs walking through the streets, mixed in with the usual amount of summer tourists, heading towards relieving a group who’s held a corner for a few hours or stopping to take a bathroom break. The retired mothers of the city taking their time off to push through some progressive messages to the backwards Man, himself.

They stand outside the El Dorado hotel picketing the buses full of governors’ aides that pull in. They stand outside the Cathedral of St Francis de Assisi catching the evangelicals who want to see architectural history. Anywhere where the buses drive through, they are there to greet them.

I set up my typewriter in the plaza next to a group doing a silent vigil for the children at the border separated from their families. They hold signs with simple mantras like “Free The Children” and “Everyone Welcome”. In front of them there are a dozen or more baby shoes. The symbols there are heavy.

Meanwhile, I write poems for children about dreams of mermaids and family road trips. The dialogue being translated through poetry. It doesn’t escape me how there’s no difference between these children who get to live out their freedom and the ones currently locked up in cages, maybe never seeing their parents again.

An afternoon turns to evening and I change my location several times, till I find my prime spot for the late night dinner crowd, and that’s when it happens. I’m not quite paying attention because there’s so much going on. But out of the corner of my eye, I see one of those huge busses pull over and a dozen or more suits get off of it. They are surrounded by police and secret service, who seemingly appear out of nowhere. Suddenly, the streets around me have been cleared.

It’s Mike Pence who stops and reads my Dream Poet For Hire sign. He’s chatting to Susana Martinez, who I guess is giving them all a tour of her state’s capital.

“Write a poem about me and my wife,” he says.

Obviously, I’m boiling over with malice, but I’m the Dream Poet and with my mask on I put on a good show entertaining his midwestern interest.

The poem writes itself, keys mumbling away. It talks about how love can’t be defined by time or place, age or gender. It’s a spark that speaks beyond the limits of our patriarchal understanding. Love thy brother, love the human race in all of its manifestations, love thy mother, love this planet and all the ways she holds us in nurture. Love is love is love and hate for the love between two men or two women or two people who choose not to define themselves within a binary does not erase the divine essence within that love, something that is so magical it inspires all of us to keep living through the madness.

I fill the page and read it back to him. His icy eyes look at me with a smile that says he knows I gonzoed him, dropping the bill in my case anyway, and slipping the poem in the breast pocket of his suit jacket. He moves over for the next one, which happens to be Governor Martinez.

“Write a poem about immigrants,” she says.

Again, I smile and put on extra airs. The poem coming full throttle. I write about the state of New Mexico still being a foreign country. How families are just moving between their ancestral homes. I write about the Pueblos. How this is their land and our borders hold no power. I write about the railroads, about the white settlers, about the slave owners. I write how an elected official in a state that is still Mexico, and before that stolen land, better reflect on who she represents. Amnesty for all refugees, I write. Open the borders.

There’s a silence after I read the poem and I think I’ve gone too far. But again, there it is the bills dropped and the poem stowed away somewhere safe.

Next it’s one of their aides.

“Oh, you write haiku, I see. Write a haiku about Washington DC.”

Sinkholes everywhere
the swamp sinking as it drains
swamp things go kerplunk.

Someone asks, “Are you related to Brett Kavanaugh?”

“No relation. The Kavanaugh’s are a proud clan of peacemakers. No way he’s really one of them.”

And then that’s it. They get bored and move on. And I’m left there wondering if it really was even them, or perhaps just another tour group of Texans.

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SUMMER OF LOVE

I fall into the dream and don’t look back. The Muse is there. Her green eyes transfixed on the form my body takes between foolish leaps of inner revolution.

FALLING. Falling. falling.

The way two bodies merge in such tranquil motion. Atop mountain boulders. Beside the trickle of wet streams. Upon the shores of desert lakes resembling surrealist paintings from another century.

She the High Priestess. The Queen of Cups. A faerie springing from the leaf in the wind. The waterways that flow through us. Blood lines that brought us to this place together.

Funny how you can fall for someone in an hour and a half car ride where for the last half hour, half the car is asleep and the other half is saying to himself, “Well, at least she exists. I was starting to think I’d been holding too high expectations. But now I see she’s out there. I’m satisfied just to know she exists,” and not expecting anything beyond the crossing of their transits.

But two stars built of the same cosmic dust tend to find an alignment in their gravitation at least for a short bit.

“Wouldn’t it be interesting for two people to go on the road together traveling to national parks across the country, sleeping together underneath the stars, finding waterfalls to lay each other under, climbing trees to hang upon the view in one another’s arms, so that when finally they conceive a child they could say this starseed was conceived in a beautiful place,” she muses.

Warrior rambling between revolution and lovemaking. Her soft embrace a sacrament to boost both their life forces. Even in conflict, their conversation of peaceful resolve. Gaining a better understanding for communication that lies beyond the tongue. Eye gazing till the gold of the sun adds depth to their inner light. Magic that illuminates the path they both stand on.

“You’re such a romantic,” she says.

“I’m one of the last,” he replies.

Poetry read out loud during these long car rides. Roads blocked because of the forest fires, but with every orgasm another monsoon to douse the flames. Soon the earth is wet and fertile again. He, her humble Pan, pantomiming the flute as they climb the rocks and go swimming in the river. She, his Artemis, her beauty soaking up moonlight, soaking up river bends, bouncing upon forest undergrowth in tune to the beat of his heart rhythms.

Purple lupine line the roadway. Datura blooms on every city street corner.

“I love how you’re such a Dreamer,” he exclaims.

“What do you mean when you say that?” she asks.

“It’s something in your eyes.”

“Oh, you mean the madness?”

“Perhaps that’s what it is. But how I see it, you have one eye focused on this plane and the other sees deeply into the spirit world, beyond it.”

They talk of hallucinogenic trips they’ve took. Lessons they’ve learned. Ceremonies they’ve held. They eat mushrooms while sitting at the edge of a painting and examine the fractals that overlay their bodies.

Green chile and lime sauce. Enough to move a peyote button to skip across the roof of a purple adobe cavern.

Time melts. The sea splits in half. They move between worlds unseen by the general populace. But their motions are felt. Must be all the love. The look on each one’s face. A little glimmer of hope in this great wasteland of chaos.

The dreams they craft. Drifting out. Rippling out. Writhing from skin on skin contact. Everywhere they go, the rains follow. She commands him with her hands to grab her breasts and ride the infinite crescent moon she holds beneath her dress.

Both panting, but not exhausted, they connect the worlds and bridge their passions in a way that only lovers can.