What’s Happening?
At this moment, fires of a riot are everywhere. The men call into the smoke, We Want Justice! Eyes blear from smoke. In a cellblock the size of a moderate community church, fifty, sixty fires are spewing everywhere. My eyes are crying. . . . the water is turned off, the air-conditioner off, a sandwich for lunch, no breakfast, no supper, the men scream, We Want Justice! And this morning a Mexican is shot to death, two weeks ago another Mexican was critically shot, and the Black gangs are locked down, the Chicanos and Whites are locked down, and fires burn and burn before each cell, voices scream and scream, We Want Justice! The entire prison population quits working in fields for three cents an hour, in the factories for a dime an hour, and fires engulf the tiers, illuminate cell after cell long deep eyes stare from. Behind the flames and arms cloaked in smoke is the cry, We Want Justice! My cell fills with smoke, I can’t see anyone or breathe, and six hundred men cry, We Want Justice! The fire! The fire! And men cry out, Strike! Viva La Huelga! La Huelga! Music is playing above the flames, above the smoke, and I am weeping with my hands over my face! My cell fills with more smoke! I can’t see the bars! The whole cellblock is a huge billow of smoke! Over the floor sewage reeks ankle high! Urine and feces! Everywhere, flooding, and the water is turned off, garbage piled up for weeks catches flames high! High! Smoke and more smoke and more smoke! No one can see anymore, but hear the raging cries, Viva La Huelga! We Want Justice! Men are screaming in their cells, behind the bars, behind the smoke, flames and weeping, Men . . . we live like this. . . . this is rehabilitation! Grotesque Murderers! Ignorance! Waste and Blood! Beatings! Robbery of Dignity! Sickness of Soul! And through the smoke men’s voices call, how you doing over there? You ok? And some yell, play the song I like, I love! Play the one about the man that lost his woman! About the one the fights for his freedom! Through the smoke! The fire! The Murderers! Play! Play! Let my soul feel once more the shudder of those days! When I was free and human! Let me hear it and weep! And the songs play, and the men sing along, old sad faces and voices alive in the fire, in the smoke and bars in their cells, they sing! From far away in the night, you can see the big cellblock, a sparking mountain of rock, jutting up, higher than the mainyard walls, up, with six hundred men in it, you can see the square windows filled red with fire, from the flues on top of the roof shoot sparkles, sprouts gray smoke, at the windows red against the night flames jump, pouring flames through broken windows, expelling black gray smoke, in the night surrounded with blackness, and inside in the fire and smoke, in foot deep sewage, are the cries, We Want Justice! Viva La Huelga! And the weeping, and the hate, and the blood! And the despair, and rehabilitation! Inside this furnace are the men, human beings, voices crying, screaming and eyes weeping! Poor Whites, poor Blacks, poor Chicanos, poor Indians, who yell, turn the water on! Let us flush our toilets! Let us drink some water! They bang against the bars, shuddering rows of steel cages! They bang against steel bars with broomsticks! In the midst of flames and music and blood, in shit and grime and smoke and scars and new wounds, they scream, turn the water on! And I am weeping! I am sick! I have had enough, and yet every day I go on, while this poem is read aloud by someone, I am going on, and the sky is filling with black smoke, the windows are filled with flames, and I weep! My eyes burn! My lungs are black with smoke!
Who Understands Me But Me
They turn the water off, so I live without water, they build walls higher, so I live without treetops, they paint the windows black, so I live without sunshine, they lock my cage, so I live without going anywhere, they take each last tear I have, I live without tears, they take my heart and rip it open, I live without heart, they take my life and crush it, so I live without a future, they say I am beastly and fiendish, so I have no friends, they stop up each hope, so I have no passage out of hell, they give me pain, so I live with pain, they give me hate, so I live with my hate, they have changed me, and I am not the same man, they give me no shower, so I live with my smell, they separate me from my brothers, so I live without brothers, who understands me when I say this is beautiful? who understands me when I say I have found other freedoms? I cannot fly or make something appear in my hand, I cannot make the heavens open or the earth tremble, I can live with myself, and I am amazed at myself, my love, my beauty, I am taken by my failures, astounded by my fears, I am stubborn and childish, in the midst of this wreckage of life they incurred, I practice being myself, and I have found parts of myself never dreamed of by me, they were goaded out from under rocks in my heart when the walls were built higher, when the water was turned off and the windows painted black. I followed these signs like an old tracker and followed the tracks deep into myself, who taught me water is not everything, and gave me new eyes to see through walls, and when they spoke, sunlight came out of their mouths, and I was laughing at me with them, we laughed like children and made pacts to always be loyal, who understands me when I say this is beautiful?
Ah Rain!
Sweet scented, dripping from eaves and darkening plaster walls. Muggy air! Goblet heavy and dark goldfish filled with rain! In the forehead of my brow is thunder! My heart orange-colored, my body an orange grove dripping with rain and pungent with acids and roots, dead leaves, thunder! thunder! thunder! in my forehead lighting my darkened grove, shook branches and petal dripping and bough snapping, soft earth I plunge seeds to like sword tips, in the crackle of sky my soul is, in the sweeping winds, I lift my head high, expand my chest to breathe! breathe! breathe! breathe in the wood and green leaves, in the musty earth, the rotten compositions that create in their rot such famished beauty, sweet and thick with life, dunked heavy in rain, to swirl in our mouths life, life, life. Body that I am, bone hard, black handed babe, heart that I am, crushed raging aflame timber, soul that I am, a hard chicken-pen dirt, rain seeds, spitting down seeds, the sun claws like a morning rooster. The rain, rain, the rain, I put my head down, so humble before my master Rain, I drench my body, shimmer, clothes wet, my religion is Rain, my anger, hate, love is Rain.
These poems are from What’s Happening, Jimmy Santiago Baca’s latest book of poetry (Curbstone Press, 321 Jackson Street, Willimantic, Ct. 06226, $4.50). Jimmy’s work has appeared frequently in THE SUN. We started corresponding when he was serving five years for selling drugs. Imprisoned at the age of 22, Jimmy taught himself to read and write in his cell. After his release he lived in North Carolina and is now back in the Southwest, writing, about to become a father this Spring.
— Ed.
