The taxi speeds down the highway
zig zagging to miss the potholes.
It slows as a horse and cart crosses,
followed by the owner's dog.
On the other carriageway people wait
hoping someone will give them a lift.
An old Cadillac smokes its way down the road.
In the town, buildings are like well-worn pairs of shoes –
they fit, still function but have seen better days.
But the people are well nourished, clothed and clean.
Smiles of genuine happiness are all around.
This is a country which lives to a different pulse -
Ché its heartbeat,
Fidel its lifeblood.
People are living the revolution where others have failed –
common wellbeing before personal gain,
society’s hallmark is equality and colour-blindness.
Educated and cultured, enjoyment is beyond the material.
Musical rhythms set the daily pace.
There is a determination to live and succeed despite hardship.
But is it only hardship when seen through Western eyes?
The freedom of spirit is to be admired.
But what does the future hold?
The greatest challenge is yet to come –
influx of other peoples from not so far away.
¡Cubana!
Proud warriors of black and white
Debunk the bad extol the worse
Your Che Guevara shirts fit tight
I’m not a customer of those
You cannot take me for a nation
Considering the hues I see
I’m wrong in your simplification
With which I strongly disagree
I see more colours of the spectrum
Won’t pick the one you use for me
I note the tints you would expect from
An unbiased watcher of the sea
You see the truth before it fails
It cannot be improved by you
Turn off the light, see colours fade
Perhaps except the midnight blue.
I saw your grandmother
in an old black and white photo
it was in a silver frame,
she was buck naked in a Buick,
I thought: 'Hey you.’
I saw you on a
`who's your baby-daddy' show
you were in the audience;
you had a pic of the killer
Ernesto (Che) Guevara
on your T,
he looked like me
and I said, ‘Hey you.’
Behind old photographs
all our secret lives
remain radioactive.
At the funeral home
I watch you enter the flames,
saw silver frames melting
and I thought: ‘Hey you.’
Who remembers subway token,
Nickel, penny, silver dollar
Man who wrote his inuner story
Was he stranger to the glory?
Moonlight dust and darkness blurry
Lipstick lost its cherry color
Love transformed into tradition
Havoc mirrors intuition.
Acts of God correct translation
Means the end to Man adventure
Covid 19 - earthquake horror
Did we spend the time we borrowed?
Rap - stupidity atonements
Blood in movies, rivers, oceans
Faceless global politicians
Brave new order and ambitions.
Hitler, Lenin, “Che” Guevara
Souls are dead, screams in Nirvana
Lovely breakfast in Savannah
Times are eaten by Giraffe.
Fossils feed the intuition
Vicious lies in schools by teachers
Wearing condom on banana
Mimic intercourse for children.
Activists are all united
Feminists scream in excitement
By the laws they introducing
Common trend of current season.
No one is asking questions
No one is giving answers
No one is charged with treason
No one escapes from prison.
Who requires subway token,
Nickel, penny, silver dollar?
Man forgot his inner story
He prefers the slang of color.
4.2013 - 3.2020
Revving the Ante
She ploughs down the sidewalk on steeled chrome
A free spirit victorious of sorts over senile dementia
Got a quad-bike for her birthday and defeats her age
Che Guevara bandana nestles her orange purple hair
Bells and whistles attached to a gargantuan lip ring
A modern crusader in cruise control defying the odds
The sweet smell of illicit indulgence drifts on the path
To heavenly peace with painful joints doped into joy
That she never surrendered when age has crept in
She sports the number tattoo on her kind forearm
Of times she surpassed from evil camps to survive
Her sunken cheek bears an inked motto ‘sod botox’
The world is too poisonous without cheeky remarks
And turmoil has given way to mindfulness’s peace
In which she flows past barriers and speed checks
One day she was not there any longer on the road
Of infinite wisdom screeching through memory lane
But I shall take a tender leaf from her journey and pray
13th March 2020
‘One has to grow hard but without ever losing tenderness.’
I did not know that my hero was a sex god as well
But he wrote The Motorcycle Diary without any Zen
‘Every day People straighten up the hair, why not the heart?’
Never contemplate a revolution on a bad hair day
So he sported an iconic bandana to dress for a war
‘Don't Shoot I'm Che I'm worth more to you alive than dead!’
A bullet reaches as far as the range of a shell
Revolution rises from residue to the living
‘Democracy represents the dictatorship of the exploiting classes’
No opium for the masses and the jungle for a home
Pistol in belt tongue in cheek and always controversial
‘Better to die standing than to live on your knees’
He lived by the sword for the benefit of ploughshares
A doctor turned renegade marxist Central American style
‘We have no right to believe that freedom can be won without struggle’
Justice does not appear without shadows from Nowhere
He killed fewer people in battle than Trump or Obama
10th February 2020
All sentences in quotation marks by Ernesto Che Guevara
The thorns-in-sides are various
which mar incumbents’ slumber.
Could Belgium bear Lumumba?
Would Britain brook Makarios?
There’s Bolsheviks or Mensheviks,
Parnell or De Valera:
Marat had Robespierre, or
the Romans, Vercingetorix.
There’s Che Guevara, Spartakists,
the Mau Mau, Mata Hari,
the Contras, Carbonari,
Hamas, Harmonious Fists.
The song that stops the show?
“It Ain’t Necessarily So”.
We are the freedom fighters, fighting for survival
Hopefully the next generation follow the same road in their arrival
I wanna make a list of the real ones
Certified legends the true dons
Nelson Mandela led the struggle against apartheid and became president
Heritage of a small village, that’d part of our resident
Marcus Garvey, leader of the Pan-African movement
Wanted us to go back to Africa for improvement
Malcolm X was a warrior in the fight against racism
But people feel he was some type of convict because he went to prison
Martin Luther King brought equal and civil rights for his brothers and sisters
Walked 54 miles for freedom, must have had blisters
Che Guevara was part of the Cuban revolution
To sought out the madness Guerrilla warfare solution
Muhammad Ali, the greatest boxer to step in the ring
Was against war, that’s why I call him king
Fellow freedom fighters, fight for your freedom.
You are lovely red
Flame of forest everywhere
Red Che in the air
---------------------------------------------
March 3, 2016
Syllables: 5-7-5 (www.howmanysyllables.com)
Che is Che Guevara
soak up the side streets of Montmartre,
Paris, Pigalle on Boulevard de Clichy
class less art combusts then drips
- street beggars & tourists cant
writer Rubbish pastes lace traceries
ala mode decoupaging decay
his cut-paper layers grace anoint
no longer anonymous walls
stencilist C215’s “simply a cat”
defies sourpusses not to smile—see
heaven art yes art with style
the banality of poverty held at bay
pureed souffléd life wolfed-down
colors synced
spray-cannoned Lothario’s like David Walker
entrance Picasso’s on the brink,
Romani-hearted paint peddlers
of the Republique
- street beggars & tourists cant
Thom Thom’s décollage rip-cuts
the billboard scene titillates the unseen
—culture-lovers—can-canned Lautrec’s
bedded with Che Guevara politics
come tilt with the masse
come play your part
in Montmartre
near Pigalle on Boulevard de Clichy
where wicked pissers defy
cliché
First Published in Clockwise Cat January 2015
I saw a photograph of a hand
in a museum
thin and emaciated
It does not matter whose hand was this
a blackman, a white, or a colored
A male or a female......
It was an active hand of a factory worker
might be a hand of undernurished African refugee
or a hand of an AIDS victim....
It was a fisted raised hand
with a slogan in a procession
for human rights.....
It was the cut hand of doctor Che Guevara
sacrificed for the latin American people......
I walked down jazz alleys with stingy cigarettes
and a head filled with typewriter dreams,
silently praying to sidewalk gods
for the inhaling of coconut rum,
Chicago and Havana,
minds heavy with thoughts of steel and uranium
in the years before cold war, red missiles,
and the rusting sickle of Russian terror,
seeing dusty men gathered outside newspaper stands
waiting and plotting, in quiet conversations about Che Guevara,
and in America, small bankers with obscene moustaches
fingered money with a capitalist fix, primarily
out of the silk lined jackets of a charading middle class,
that got stuck in first, like early model Cadillacs, blooming
in the 60's like early spring lilacs, violent purple, pink,
and the blue of acid blotter fractal brothers and Grey's
later paintings of cross-sectioned life, where Jesus was spread out
and examined in new eyes of a public embracing science and
the sub-atomic nuclear buzz, in the years before computers
and solitary confinement of plastic and lamplight, in the years
before the war on multicolored terror and human entropy,
here, the rising fist was a message, not a punchline.
My wonderful family,
God saved in disguise, gifted mother nature,
Michael Jackson altered and awoke my genes,
Rabindranath Tagore provided an insight into survival,
Leonardo Da Vinci killed my inquisitiveness,
Ernesto Che guevara convinced me “I'd better die standing than live on my knees”,
Kurt Cobain showed there was something in the way,
Enigma took me to utopia,
In books I found solace,
In ordinary people I found the meaning of extraordinary,
Eyes reflecting soul of emotions.
I
I woke up this morning with tears in my eyes,
your face was in the morning paper;
they shot you dead like a dog,
hunted you out all day and night.
II
They said you'd always been a bad seed
and youths were dying because of you;
they said you're a criminal on the run
with a dirty face and shaggy head.
(Refrain)
But I know you better than they do,
you preached love to all the people;
you fought for them, young and old,
you lit up their nights with your heart.
III
And now as I see you lying dead,
it seems my dreams have vanished as well;
they can call you names, any names they want,
but I know there's only one like you,
there's only one like you,
there's only one Che Guevara.
(Repeat Refrain)
You lit up their nights with your heart,
you lit up their nights with your heart,
you lit up their nights with your heart.
“If you tremble indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine.”
- Ernesto Che Guevara
S he walks head high, resilient, Che t-shirt on, crimson red
O fficially a Mistress of Passion, armed with Marxist ideals
C an I keep on living like this?? Why must my people suffer for Political Pigs?!
I njustice fills the world, however equality could be
A chieved if greed was terminated and wisdom was acknowledged
L iving in harsh conditions, optimism
I ncreases by daily rations of inequality, that’s all that is given, to her
S mashed by life, by government, she strives to change the world
T inkering with timid minds of the meek
The Revolution Starts Today!
Los resultados no quizás sean hoy, ni mañana, pero
Si empieza en todo, debe empezar con nosotros
¡Viva la Revolución!
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