Long Conquistadores Poems

Now let us forget foreign captains
And Conquistadores myth
That colors the morning exuberantly
With exotics wars and phony fathers
Like a fine lady strolling along a rotten street
I have tasted lemon
And though I wince at my tongue's
Sharp reaction
I...

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My father's abeng blew up my mother's womb
And I was chained there
Nine months in darkness drinking blood
Longing for my resurrection from the tomb
Longing to break the chains
Holding me before my birth to a carnal earth
Longing...

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My family is everywhere like wild seeds sown
On the whim and bluster of a wind
Some left for Cuba before the revolution
Bring green stalks of sweet grass to sugar
And are still there, root sunken in the...

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That day before I crossed you
I saw the Thames
Where Wordsworth stood alone
To pour his heart upon the wave.
And I open mouthed wondered 
By the banks
Of endless history
For ever intransigent
On the Thames eternal transience.
And then I...

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How do I begin
The litany of my praise
Where so much is wrong
And we in the haze
Of material focus
See not the spirit dripping
Into soggy souls.
We see the goals
Extolled by what brings to ruin
Other blind places
While around...

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Jacksonville, at this hour, tell me
Do you miss me where the river flows
Through Florida's tangled history
Where the Mocama cotton grows

Do you see me driving early
To teach where the clansman name holds
Such reverence in history
For black...

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My island slept for years in the care
Of Tainos, Caribs and Arawak
Their canoes on the sea breast bare
Dreaming of milk from manioc
The swamps unscarred, trees secure
Batos and songs rinsed in the azure.

Then came doom laden...

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Villanelle : Who but Great Powers make World look like market place

Who but Great Powers make World look like market place
The crib courtyards of Russia China and US
Who reigns in the United States concerns all...

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   Mexico claims part of Texas as its own  
     Calls to invade the Lone Star State have lately grown

   Long-time Texans can hardly believe their...

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Father, your ship keeps me waiting here, my eyes
Peeling horizon for mast or sail
Where the frigates fly, and seagull, wind slanting, cries
I walk the sands silent shadows pale
Hungering for a deck to stand 
Beside you,...

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I watch you go quiet in mid-chatter.
You look up and inward,
your eyes deep-set and native,
I glimpse you,
not as that Irish girl brought up in the projects
but as an American legend, a promise
so very few have...

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We are new colonists and we embrace 
A hostile and unforgiving land. Lay 
Claim to clay covered gold by grace 
And the callous palms of tired hands, 
But the weary lesson lidded, did not 
Stay...

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Lust,
the phantom hand
that clipped our wings,
cracks a smile
as we tumble
like raindrops
cascading through
blankets of nimbostratus clouds,
exiled to this rugged
stone laden labyrinth

We were soaring eagles
galloping across the horizon,
banished to sprawl
these tainted soils
as vermin,
severed from our
celestial fountainhead

We are...

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This sea's end on a misnamed shore
Is not the terminus of your sin
Nor my beginning in the dusky yore
But we can in false time begin
To ridirect the world from the whim
And caprice of self-lost to...

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Mirror melted, and I enclosed in solid space of ice
Intersperse images, direlict of other's maiming vice.
Mimicry is not a benign deceit as you would think
Incontestable illusions brought my race to this brink
Cramped with penury and...

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I came to find again the fresh fountain
With footprints of Conquistadores framed
In mud: residue of a brick mountain
From behind which white anger once had flamed.
The missing fort was not all time displaced
But cougars dying without...

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Words have shallow meanings
Skimmed from the alien pool
Where aliens keep spitt of tongue
These borrowed syllables are not of my tongue
The taste was chewed from them long ago
So yearning to recover my voice
In words ancient as...

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All day long I read but cannot tell
Which would I bring back
Or what moor's good could they do now
Who did not prevent the coming of hell.
Back and forth, back and forth
And always back again
We go...

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I left my class tonight full, exhausted.
Every joint aches and barely able to walk.
The trip to the car was barely mustered,
and I reflected a time on the talk.
I had completed a three-hour class
and felt as...

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