poem: across the tracks

for a friend who lost a loved one yesterday

for: hder

it scares me, sometimes-

this morning and yesterday

I spent some time reading

Carlos Andres Gomez

and thought, I do not know his America

I do not know how

to look across the aisle and talk

to these kids who live at the fringes

of what we call survival, street style

I do not know the language

of gangsta', I have no cred

for walking home at night waiting to

be shot; I do not know how

to reach out to someone whose

world of needle fog is more real

than his job at 7-11

I do not know how to live

with this constant loss, this poverty

of soul, this dead end of opportunity

that is Carlos' world of kids.

my friend, I did not think I knew

how to talk to you.

what does a white gal know

of racism, anyway? I work

in agriculture and what the f**k

does a white gal in agriculture

know of the inner city walls

of decaying old Detroit?

except. maybe this. My friend

the taxi driver last week lost

his 24 year-old daughter-in-law

to childbirth, to preventable things-

and called it God's will because that

is how they control poverty here

with religion not just with guns and needles.

And last week a woman verbally

and then physically accosted me

for being white and walking

down her street in the company

of a male friend, and they objectify me

each day for handouts I do not

have the money to give, and

we get death threats for our work

sometimes, for taking a stand

on their rights and we are always

in danger of being shot, every day

we live with that.

I have been shoved up against

walls and felt up because

my body is not my own here,

my boundaries are not my own

to set... and your love, I think

had to live like that, too-

every day for being who she was

and where she was.

and they were both beautiful girls-

so very beautiful, as fresh lines

of grace in tired worn old places.

and I heard the echo in my friend's voice

of the pain- your pain-

it takes a helluva

lot for a Latino cab driver

to admit he is in pain, to cry;

just as much to break a Black fighter-

and I thought for a second

I understand; maybe

not the Black condition and maybe not

the Latin condition but I'll be damned

if I do not understand the human

condition, and our relentless march towards

the isolationism that kills us all

in the end if we do not learn to stand

and fight for what we see is true and good

and pure in this world. and I am pissed off

because they say the answer is more prayer

and not better doctors

and more choices in acessing

those doctors, and when we say

equality and when we say rights

and when we say empowerment

we are reminded that

we could be shot by the other side

for the conviction of our beliefs.  

Maybe I cannot communicate that

across walls of race and locality

and maybe this is a fool's errand anyway.

But it does not stop me

sending out a hand to you,

saying, amigo-

we are not the same outside

but our souls want the same things

for all children, and that makes us family.

And I tell you, my friend, I am willing

to walk those paths of loss with you

until you are strong again, and learn

from you,

how to navigate a language

as alien to me as my maize fields

and cloud forests

might be, to you.

You do not have to carry this burden alone.

Reviews

[Corset]

you have me bawling again, Marie, How you do that, or maybe it's because our friend is in such agony right now, or maybe it's because it just isn't f-ing fair when crappy life takes a big dump on you cause who? who deserves such a thing, to have to suffer such a loss, and this is where the races are are joined in humanity, in the pain of such a thing as losing a child, who can percieve such a thing and not go mad with the thought of it? with the possibility of it happening to ourselves as we kiss our daughters good night and thank all the powers to be that you, that I, can still do that and we will for our Dana, every day we will look at them and acknowledge that while we can we will also do it for our friend who can not, and when we do, we will do it for him too. Marie, thank you for writing this.

[Marie Anzalone]

thank you for your acknowledgment, Corset. It means a hell of a lot right now. I think the only thing we ever truly have to give each other other is the gift of real presence, but how powerful can that be? My heart breaks for our friend.. no I cannot imagine it, only through being willing to walk a path behind the eyes of others can I see it, glimpse it. But I will sit here and hold my hand out from across these boundaries and be there for him as long as it takes. It's all I have to give, all any of us, I think, have to give. Thank you, too, for what you also give.

[Corset]

I hope he'll give you the opportunity to do just as you have said, that he'll accept your hands and hold tight because he deserves someone who would do that for him and nothing less. God bless.

[Ars Goetia Poetry]

Very impressive work, wow.

[LJW]

I have missed you. Back now and reading again, reviewing a bit. I can't review this. I don't want to.
I want to say some things I've never said out loud. Because what I just read gutted me and left me hanging; alone and dripping blood.

The 1st time my husband got pulled over with me in the passenger seat, they asked for his license and registration and pulled a gun at his head when he reached for the visor. The cops told me to get out of the car. They asked me if I was ok. There had been a carjacking a town over. Wasn't my kind of car but "there's probably more in the area." Once my husband was pulled out of the car,thrown on the hood, and body searched because he was driving down a street that sells drugs. Tore apart his car. He had just come from a max security prison as part of an outreach program helping inmates get and stay clean. He had many years clean. Has even more now. Man doesn't even swear. Smoking a cigarette outside OUR OWN HOUSE last week real late in his robe and slippers in 20-degree weather and the cops spotlighted him and put him in the back of the cruiser, woke me up to verify he lives here.

My youngest daughter. Biracial. I got asked so many times if she's adopted. "What"is she? Cape Verdean. Her dad was from Cape Verde. "So she's not black, right"? She never said she was any part white till she was 18 years old. I don't blame her. My psyche is filled with too much of this S**T.
TOO MUCH. It has helped to write about it over the past couple of days. Reading this bled me.

Human cells regenerate. I am grateful for this.

[Marie Anzalone]

I cannot even begin to imagine how much livign like you described would infuriate me to the point of drawing blood. Except, there is always something, right? For me it is one of my co-workers here. He was assaulted 2 weeks ago, and his family threatened, because he helped pass an ordinance in town against spary-painting some posts in town for political purposes. He put himself through grade school by working to pay for classes, and has since earned no fewer than 4 college degrees. At events here, he is seen as "kinda smart, for a Maya." If I bring him to the US to visit, which I plan to, he will be looked down on for not speaking English. if I bring home a Latin spouse, which, if I ever do end up with anyone, is the likely scenario; half of my own family will be offended unless his English is flawless. We say crap about getting ahead in America, but when you ook at a map of economic distribution, you see that about 12 suburban areas account for 1/2 of the wealth in the US. There are some barriers that people just cannot cross, no matter how good of a human being they are. I ahve dealt with the "you're not good enough" thing my whole life, too- for being smart in a piss-poor and stupid town; for being a child out of weldock; for being the child of divorced parents; for having the wrong last name; for going to the wrong school; for not "looking the part," for being female and unmarried; for having white skin and being assumed an "easy lay." And so it goes. And still... if anyone did what you described to my man, I would want to rip their throat out. With my teeth.

[LJW]

I used to get furious. More hurt for his soul than furious. Then furious. I had to make the decision to turn it around. Amp up my own compassion for others, any race, any time.

[Marie Anzalone]

I think I understand that completely.

[h d e rushin]

thanks for listening......right now I am thinking ten thousand thoughts at once.
dana

[Marie Anzalone]

I would be far more worried if you were not

[h d e rushin]

marvelous.. I've been away from thought for awhile.

on this week when we celebrate the birth of MLK, the locked arms of SNCC, the freedom fighters
who with unwavering faith welcomed the hoses, the german shepherds, the terrorist taunts, are who are now
(by poets and laymen alike (genitivally) heroic. But the true heroes of the "Black American
liberation movement" were the gendarme legions of all colors, races and religions who decided
not to turn the other cheek, but to hit back. It is a fundamental idea of survival, taught by
parents on the playgrounds of the world, that if someone hits you..you hit them back. But
you never really achieve any sense of equality because you can never hurt the person quite
as hard as they hurt you.

Riding behind the hurst, going to the cemetary to bury a good soul, I stopped to notice just
how destructive people can be to houses and neighborhoods. The same neighborhoods, that
as a little boy, my father wished to move to. What happened here happened everywhere
at once. People lost their homes, people couldn't make a living wage, young people disillusioned
dropped out of school, families burned the furniture to heat the house, the occupiers of
businesses profited off of the sorrow by flooding the streets with alchohol, drugs and guns.
Women lost their dignity and boys their masculinity. I'm not talking about the streets of
Guatemala, but a city in the rust-belt-industrial-heartland of America. We poets can close
our metaphorical eyes and imagine ourselves anywhere/ yes we are that accomplished. The
prophetic doctrine of MLK is true now. There are no more boundaries. No more religious
divisions, no more ethno-experiments, no more diffusing sympathy for those who don't belong
(or didn't make it) and no more magic spirits believed to take human forms to help us. It's just us.
Us, making every day a new adventure. Crossing the land, Donner family style, on our way to
better situations.

I love you. You're heart is pure. And I am not so naive to believe that poetry is colorless. It is not.
But like the belief in the God that is the basis of bible prophecy, we miss the point if we just
point out the second class classifications. Janae was starting to believe that poetry was this rare
combination of experience and intuition rather than of formal theory and human suggestions. And of'
course I was of little help, running around with my serape's of gold and ego. But since she was a
daddys girl, she often looked over my shoulder to see what I was so eger about...and look she did.
Growing fonder each day of the sepia of conjoined language, poetry. Writing a poem on the fridge
with magnetic letters by movement and pure accident, she stood long and was proud. The exact same
way that we become proud when the poem of meaning is completed.

You're an amazing writer, a poetess without equal, and I wish you were here with us. So thank
God for the internet, for technology, for connectivity. Because otherwise, solutions in an appropriate
coordinated complex, would take weeks. And by then the sting would be over.




nicely written.
dana

[Marie Anzalone]

Post her work, dana. You owe yourself that much, at least.

I read a fascinating psychology journal article not long ago, that warns us against relying heavily on the very negative picture of humanity painted by scientific studies of the last 5 decades or so. NOT because they do not adequately portray human nature- but because they were by and large all conducted in the US and Western Europe, using US and Western European citizens. When compared to every other culture on the planet, US citizens rank as the most psychotic and sociopathic... by a margin so large that our data almost looks like an error. Great Britain ranks second. it is the edge places that our psychotic breakdown really happens. It's like we are some large gilded glowing mass of pure decadent energy. One little challnge, and the whole thing breaks open to reveal the completely hollow dusty interior.

We venerate our heroes after-the-fact, but find it truly uncomfortable to stand at their sides. Why is that? Is a constant sense of inadequacy? the competetive need to be the best at everything- and realizing that being a great leader requires a humility we will never achieve? Or soemthign more sinister- an actual deep-seated desire to see Good fail?

I am not a religious woman, dana, but I am spiritual. Deeply spiritual. I had to learn to be comfortable with aching discomfort. I tell my religious friends, "Yes, but Jesus needs YOU to be his hands and eyes and ears and heart in the world."

[Jack...]

Marie, this was so very cool and so very...human, or at least how I would perceive. To take the time to help another, to reach out when one's burden may be too much, to smile at someone who seems pained...simple kind gestures are worth more than anything we could give. Very nicely done

[Marie Anzalone]

Jack, thank you so much for your thoughtfulness in this review. I truly believe that the most precious gift that we have to give each other as human beings is the humble gift of presence- the ackonowledgment and willingness to sit with great joy or great love or great pain. I think maybe we are all supposed to learn a little of that along the way. Wishing you blessings on your day, my friend. Will be around soon to return some favors- finishing a big off-screen writing project right now.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

it's the best we can do sometimes...just reach out a heart to someone....often we say, "I couldn't begin to know how you feel"--but if we go back and reflect on all of our experiences...even some we have forgotten...that knowing is there more than we might admit to ourselves...we have all felt like uncomfortable outcasts spurned...in one way or another at one time or another.

this poem really moved me.

[Marie Anzalone]

thanks, jacob, it is nice to see you back on my page. I honestly think the most profound thing that we do for others is simply be present for and with them. Isn't that what we mean when we say, "I am here for you?"- that, "I am willing to be present with your hurt, your pain, your loss, your need?"

How many of us actually can do that, then?

[Emily B]

my sister, you always amaze me, you say the things in my heart that i don't know how to say, you fight wars i don't even know how to get to

i am blessed so greatly by the gifts you give

[Marie Anzalone]

I think if we looked carefully where the roots intertwined, we would find that we all fight for the same things- it is just our methods that differ, maybe? thank you for the words today.