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1.

I come home again to Tijuana, I come home again to Mexico. I come home again out of one California into another, come home again from home into home, across the international boundary that slices through these cattle lands where I grew up, the coastal terraces rolling and stretching between island mountain chaparal and the deep, cold sea; these fragments of holy mother Earth hovering between the north and the south, between the desert and the ocean, between temperate and tropic. I come home again only twenty kilometers across the same landscape we human monkeys have divided between languages and nationalities and cultures and

the dogs are still howling on both sides

as I remember it was "coming home again" I wrote about
in my very first tijuanagringo journal published in august 2000 at
http://www.xmission.com/~gastown/xanadu/000808aa.htm and now coming
seven years later (I had already lived in Tijuas more than a year, then, and now, eight
next month...)

the steps of a pyramid
disguise my verse pattern line
as I remember how I was writing then

Now today I am different than then I am not smoking a hundred percent less than then than that then than that then that then than, but I indulge my dirty buy one cigarette, one cigarette only, one only, the only one I will let myself smoke today, sufficient for the day is the evil thereof and it has been what? Three; no, four days since I let myself have the earlier one. Now I let myself have one a day now only one it is a rush, a dirty secret, sometimes several days go by and I pat myself on the hypocrite back pat pat pat with the delicate whip you didn't smoke, gringo, welllllll hell and then it will come before again I fall into that delicious grunge again that filthy unholy fire & brimstone habit I will buy one cigarette (some of the snack-stands sell them singly, "sueltos", but no nun or monk will ever wash clean this spotted hand not all the perfumes of Araby out out damn spot that dog is howling again howlllllllll

I confess I am evil I smoked two, maybe even three I don't remember clearly but it was two weeks ago when I was last in the bar with David. But but but other than that then then than that not only one yes, only one. Mea culpa mea maxima mesopotamia culpa flagelata whip it whip whip whip it good babylon good dog howl amen.

I come home again and the loudspeaker cars are crawling in the streets selling things from house to house and you ask me do people really buy that stuff of course they do or they wouldn't crawl through the streets crying out bring out your old aluminum and broken metal, old batteries and refrigerators new lamps for old new lamps for old and

I am looking forward eagerly to the trip on Friday to Mexicali where that very afternoon and evening and the day after we will be joining with them to celebrate the anniversary of their institute for arts and culture yes. Oh yes. Mexicali. The other side of these mountains who make up the world where the peninsula is breaking off from her continent America amen.

I come home again to my home next door to home in another country a foreign land, a foreign language, a foreign culture that has always been my nearest neighbor as I grew up in California, in San Diego hard against the frontier, shuddering with passion and delight and fear and trembling everything from A to B between Los Angeles and Mexico.

I come home again and buy a cigarette from the vendor at the island of tacos beside the sea of taxis. Tell me, he asks, you who are from the other side, and yet, you speak Spanish, tell me, do your countrymen think of Mexico as the enemy?

Oh no, I said. Better we should say we are friends who, like friends often do, who have some disagreements and yet know we are the closest of neighbors.

He nodded his head. Glanced at me, wondering if... if I had something more to add to that, as my hand was still raised, my lips still open... yes, I did.

But, you know, I said – pero sabes que – you know that neighbors always fight one another for little things here and there all up and down the street.

He sighed, and laughed, shaking his head up and down gently, yes, we do, don't we. Offered me the lighter for my cigarette. I clicked the spark of fire and sucked in the first awful smoke of filthy, demonic power. Tobacco drug.

Maybe tomorrow I'll let myself have another. And maybe not.

2.

David wrote me a comforting note after he read my entry last week about how I was worried about being erased. I still am but he says not to worry he never liked her anyway. That's my problem. I do. Like. Her. All of them.

But the big challenge remains striking out for myself by myself. And the utter truth that Araceli warned me about: that I must not give my readings for free because that would undermine all her work. Well, she is right and I know it. I may not like the hidden threat of being dismissed, but I owe her a debt of gratitude you will thank me when you grow up for spanking you now, my father once said in my nightmares. Not only is poetry worth the money she has struggled to find from sponsors, but all her hard work is worth that money and respect. Too. Also. Yeah man ahem amen.

And the horrifying abuse heaped on her visually and verbally by the toes of the shark only proves again how much work she has done.

There are two women in particular who have made me see something special about the value and power of art, as a profession, as work, as a trade, as a commodity with value in the market of humanity. These two women are Olga Margarita Davila and Aida Araceli Mendez. Artists, teachers, curators, organizers. Two very different women, yet both dedicated to their different arts. I have been lucky to have known, and worked or studied, with both.

There are very few oases in the desert. They are two. I am only a lonely camel. Or burro. Gringo zeburrebra. Burrebra Zebra Burro Gringo. Hee haw gabacho. Crossing the line between language and text.

Who briefly raises his muzzle from the doggy-chow dish, on the sidewalk, street, and, who... sees.

Before being led home to sleep.

That the world of art is a world of jealousy, a world of minefields and rocket propelled grenades made up of words that create and destroy careers. All my young life I turned away from all of that, from the games and from the professional tricks and trades, all of my younger life I hid myself away in office jobs typing and talking until I finally spent five years preparing documents and answering phone calls for the managers of the City of my home where I grew up like cattle browsing on the hillsides.

So I hid myself away for forty years and only wrote for myself. Oh, I studied and read. Communication theory and literature and video and art, yes, and history history history up the wazoo. And wrote and wrote and wrote but hardly ever published or read at all until I turned forty-five and then fifty and I slowly said to myself, hey. I'm getting old. Maybe I should use this internet thing and publish. If I find even one reader, I will have found success. If I find two, it will be twice as great, and

and here we are

my left and write hand after I ran away to Tijuana to be an unitedstatesian artist working on borderline poetry in Mexico and to study Spanish more and better from the mouths of the people and from the artists themselves yourselves, friends, yes, right here, one step across the border frontier where I grew up in California, in the distant provinces next door to the end of the Earth where

3.

I grew up like cattle browsing on the hillsides raised to be slaughtered in the imperial wars my government keeps smashing its idiotic fingers into other people's bloody pies no no no will we never learn?

Yes. No. Yes. So then I grew up and got old, and eché la casa por la ventana para seguir a la poesia en la frontera de mi mundo & after I crossed the frontier into hyperspace Mexico Tijuana, then my own government decided to attack the war of Babylon. Why? Why do we do it all over again?

Mexicans ask me that same question in three different shapes: Why does he do it? Why do they do it? Why do you do it?

People are usually much more polite, the dance of Latin courtesy is real, but once in a while, close friends will dare to raise the topic to me: Why did your president go to war? Why does your government, they, go to war? Why do you, Gringo, you and your Americans, invade other countries? "He, they, you."

He. They. You. Point of view. Pronoun shift paradigm switch. Brain. Identity. Question. I answer. I say what I believe. Pronoun that "they" and "he" and maybe one day soon "she" honestly believe that 1) we puritans know better what God wants. And that 2) we are only defending ourselves by the same law the conquistadors used to slaughter the Aztecs: "get them before they get us" yes it is the same God Damned (I mean that QUITE literally – (although, fortunately for us imperialists, we can still repent and be forgiven) damnable lie (the same one that Satan used to attack the garden) the same hellish excuse that Lucifer whispers into the ears of every fascist puritan fundamentalist Empire that if we just go get them "over there" they will not come and "get us" over here. What the hell – Satan thunders at God (who commands love and devotion, not killing) – you think I'm gonna bow down before that piece of mud and breath? No, no, no, get the fruit, boys, I'm off to play serpent once and for all.

The only problem is that by going over there and screwing with them we will probably MAKE SURE that they will want to come and get us anyway.

It is true that there is no independence or freedom or liberty without strength to defend yourself, ourselves. BUT THAT DOES NOT include attacking and violating other people, and then

to top off our tank of oil and flaming gasoline, taking horrific losses ourselves in men and women killed and mutilated. Worse than merely "wounded" — much worse, mutilated, I say, MUTILATED this is what we are doing to other nations and to our own nation. To all the peoples of this earth, whose children we are. Back and forth parent abusing infant, infant screaming at parent, we are becomming like unto the terrorists and I don't know what the hell I am saying any more at all no.

The government says no, no, no, that Abu Greib is only a fluke, and an aberration "nothing" more (and therefore, I say it is also "nothing less"). AND Guantanamo is merely a harsh necessity. AND there are no rats and cockroaches running in not even one single hospital dump where our wounded warriors are laid aside and forgotten. AND Kidnapping people and packing them off to torture prisons is just a slight deviation, we'll call it "extraordinary" and even more satanic: "rendition" well I tell you, friends, that you and I will all render our accounts when the last trumpet blows, no, I do not need to lift a finger, I do not need to do anything at all, it is already written that those blasts of the ram's horn shall bring God down upon you, and you will, just as I must when I die,

we shall all render unto God what judgement day belongs to God. Because every life, all life long, from conception in the act of passion until corruption in the gasping rattle of death, it all, we, you, they, belong and belongs to God, she.he.it great spirit who makes the rain to fall on the evil as well as on the good. Bla bla bla bla bla.

I don't know why I even bother to rant and rave. Human sacrifice is an old, old practice and we will just keep on doing it, all of us, every country and every nation, no matter what generation after generation, in spite of God and prophets calling us, warning us, begging us to be free, once and for all, from that fallen nature and only... *sigh*

One teardrop falls from heaven. There is nothing more powerful than love. Unto the love of a soldier who gives up his – or her – life for another.

The coin is in the air, spinning. Babylon. Or the kingdom of heaven.

Repent, therefore, mythology, and turn from your bloodthirsty ways, o my brothers and sisters. For the enemy IS outside the gates and we are wasting our time looking for him where

OH SHUT UP DANIAL........ Okay. Preaching over for today. I embarrass myself again. Please. Bring our boys and girls home. Now.

4.

The truth is that the more I write, and no, what I mean to say is that the more I publish where people can actually see – and smell – this verbal movement flapping in the wind – the more I write and publish, then comes the more that I feel a growing network of conflicting loyalties.

A loyalty to tell the truth and expose those secrets which, as scripture says, must see the light of day, even if only in fictional form, not non-fictional no. But yes, still, told. Loyal. True.

Loyalties to my friends and family and co-workers in the past, the present, and the possible future, loyalties to not tell lies, not slander them, and sometimes, even, keep their secrets just as I sometimes feel I should keep my secrets...

Loyalties toward you, my reader and readers, one by one by one at a time, each of you like me and us and all we are all only one person at a time looking out into the world, yes. Loyalties to tell the truth and confess my own weakness and anger. Loyalties and responsibilities to tell the truth even when I am making up a fictional story to protect the loyalty I feel toward another person to not tell their name or make it clear who they really are not even while I must tell what is happening because of my loyalty to you and to myself and to that great big pie in the sky make believe old man floating in the clouds poof that angry hairy thunderer or sweet little cosmic muffin om aum om on the range.

A loyalty to follow the muse of inspiration, that God-given and evolutionaryistically grown talent to see and speak.

Antidisestablishmentarianism is supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

BLA Bla bla b l a a a a

Are we still here?

Until tomorrow, perhaps....