El Gran Desmayo

Alter Serving Sickness.

He started to have the dizzy spells and headaches in churches. He was an alter boy. One sad Saturday night alter serving a funeral for a poor man who was murdered while helping someone who was being robbed. The robber grabbed a loose brick in the alley and bashed it over his head. He’d never been very sensitive to the many dead bodies carried up those church steps, until this one. Standing, holding the candle up for the reading. He saw the wet alley, the brick hitting his head. Water and blood. Bits of white and blue bone. He saw the body go limp. The reading was so fitting, beautiful, tragic. The Good Samaritan. He couldn’t hold back, and then the headache. He saw the brick come towards him, heavy dizziness. His knees began to shake. But he held it together. Focusing on the flame of the candle in front of him. His arms felt heavy. The glass around the candle shaking, clattering a bit because of his hands. Took a deep breath to calm himself. Padre Almodovar saw the single tear role down Alejandro’s cheek. Alejandro couldn’t tell if it was because of the sadness, this poor man’s sacrifice or the sharp pain, a thorn right above his eyes, deep into the brain, making him cry.


Adios to Church and Dios.

The headaches got worse. Until he had to stop serving funerals. Finally had to stop going to church all together. All the Tías and Abuela giving him the evil eye on Sundays, as he looked at them sad-eyed and sorry. No one believed he really had the headaches, except his mother. Everyone thought he was just making up excuses to not have to go to church. “But Ma that doesn’t even make sense. You know I like alter-serving. You know I like the songs, the service.” “I know mijo. I know, calma, calma.” He tried to figure out, the sharp pain starting under the eyes sometimes. Or at the temples. Like his hair was being pulled back hard. Or a pinch behind the nose that would grow into a pounding throb. Ma couldn’t take him to the doctor, what would she say? Mi hijo tiene dizzy spells and headaches in churches? What should we give him? Some holy water and Eucharist tablets? Una limpiada with a rotten egg, the cool shell rolled over his body?

Alejandro grew up. Out of catholic grammar school, off to catholic high school. But, for all those years he never entered a church. And he stopped believing in God too. One day, the voice that he’d talked to for so many years. That thing inside of him that he thought, called, God…disappeared. In the shower one day at college, gone. He was talking to himself. His thoughts and speeches, monologues and soliloquies were being directed to some strange force of narration in the back of his head. The voice was towards people he knew, or saved for stories. The great narrator inside his head. He thought, God must have been what man imagined his inner voices to be, his own thoughts, the worst, and most fantastic of us. The more imaginative of us humans, the creative, illustrious artistic shamans, we must have turned that voice, that inspired thing inside us, that rush over the skin, deep in back of the throat, tight at fingertips to create, that strange tingle, must have been the first thought of something spiritual…something like a muse or god. Yes, the gods are our self-narrations. The gods’ voices, our own…self-importance.


Santos in the Eyes.

One winter day he went to visit una amiga, Cristina. He’d never been to her home before in Humboldt Park. He walked from Fullerton and California to her house in the wet Chicago winter snowfall, the lights fuzzy, everything glistening wet with snow. Hungry for Cristina’s ma’s cooking. He could smell the arroz con gandules, lechón, acapurias, y tostones on the tongue, snowflakes melting into his clothes. He’d barely eaten that day, slipping along the sidewalks, trying not to get his boots too soaked in slush. Finally he arrived, up three flights of stairs to the apartment. Everyone was already talking and eating. He got comfortable, besos and abrasos to todos, and straight to the food. Sitting their eating in the living room he noticed the fireplace decorated with ornate vases, strange beautiful things that looked like fancy punch bowls. Four or five of them all in a row, with flowers and fruits, figurines and candles, beads and all sorts of things around them, inside them. His vision began to blur. The lights along that wall began to pinch at his eyes. He squinted and kept eating. The night went on and everyone left. He stayed talking with Cristina and asked, “Hey is there something wrong with the lights in here? What are those vases? Cus the lights along that wall are bugging me. She looked at him, her eyebrow raised, curious. “Esos son los Santos, Orishas. The Santaría…dioses.”


Debajo Iglesias.

Alejandro went of on several trips to México, to visit family, to learn something about his culture, to regain the broken clay pieces of his Spanish, cracked along the years, to gnaw on the dirt and lick the sky’s brilliant, dirty blue. In one of those trips, visiting a church named San Matin de los Mayos, he walked in taking pictures of the gold leafed trimming along the alter. Snarling at the grotesque and outlandish, exaggerated and imposing grandeur of the décor. The obviousness of its intent to leave such an oppressive, heavy sense of awe, this new white God over the natives. To convert them by the shear force of this eye-soar of a church. Gothic monstrous spiked, gold and bloody imaged Jesús y somber Virgen painted thing. He learned the most ornate and “beautiful” gold-leafed churches all lit up magnificent and magical, the very best of the “best” churches in México were always the ones closest to mines. Where the wealthy Spanish miners would give gold and silver to build churches, petitions to God to keep the wealth coming. He thought, some strange sad offering of the land up to a foreign God, a god not of that dirt, those waters, that rock or sky. This new God ravaging, cultivating, carving deep into the earth god’s side. The old walls leaking, a draft brushed the back of his neck.

The blurred vision began, the slight throbbing around the eyes and temples. He squinted trying to read the small plaque at the entrance as he left. The church was built over native temples, left in ruins. The Spaniards’ custom, to convert the natives with this new God supplanted over the old. The holy land where the pyramids stood at least kept sacred, revered by the natives. Another conversion technique. The whole hill that the church was built on, actually the base of a temple, buried under years of green. The headache worse now. His eyes drawn to the wood floor. Old and worn. With wholes, notches in every other bored, that looked like for lifting the floorboards. He asked his tía standing along the side admiring a supposedly miraculous, still growing wooden statue of Jesús, “what’s these holes in the floor for?” “Ah mijo they’re for the dead buried debajo de la iglesia.” The headache burned for three days straight. He’d learned to keep quiet about it though. To live past it. To keep breathing. And most of all to avoid any more churches.


Visions at Teotihuacan.

Another trip to México he visited los pirámides de Teotihuacan. This time he was ready, anticipating the dizzy spells, actually looking forward to them. By know he’d come to accept them. To think of them as a strange kind of gift. Something of a link to the other worlds, those of the dead, ancient gods, the unseen, spirits, los muertos. He saw himself climbing the steps of those pyramids and the heavy hand of one of those gods coming over him, sending him tumbling down the steps. He might die. He might see or sense something. The meaning of these spells. His strange curse. His gift.

He climbed the pyramid of the Sun and the Moon. Nothing. Not even the slightest bit of nausea, no dizziness. Nothing. Only the cool sweat of the climb. No visions. No voices. Only the slight panting. The beauty of the mountaintops hidden behind misty clouds. The luscious green of the valley.


El Museo de Antropología, DF.

He went with his abuelos to the famoso Museo de Antropología en el DF. He’d gotten up that morning, a little nauseas. He thought maybe he was catching a cold. His nose slightly runny. He ate some cereal, a banana and some bread. And off they went to the museum. An hour or two into the museum. After he’d walked with Abuela through the halls of evolution, wondering what she could be thinking. Her strong Catholic conservative, old way, strict and condemning thinking. He noticed her quieter than usual. She usually had something smart-mouthed, almost instigating to say about everything and everyone. Her sharp tongue silent through the halls. Past diagrams and skulls of Australopithecus this and Neanderthal that. The many stages of evolution spelled out. The skulls and skeletons and theories behind glass for all the eager eyes. Her silence. What was she thinking?

They entered into the hall dedicated to Teotihuacan. He recognized the recreation of the side of one of the temples. The pyramid to the Sun. With it’s giant stone faces of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent and Tlaloc with his fangs, the rain god. He tried to read the plaques along the walls, many people walking around behind him. And the dizziness came. The squinting of the eyes trying to read. His stomach began to ache. He walked forward towards a glass window, searching for somewhere to sit down. A few steps forwards, he looked down at his feat, the walls and everything around him swaying. He reached down trying to kneel, but fell. His whole body heavy. He only heard the thud of his knees hitting the floor. Surprised. He was falling. Everything fading. The voice of Abuela, Ay Mijo qué pasa? He felt her at his side. Another voice and maybe someone lifting him from the other side. And then black. Down on his back. A circle of people around him. Voices. Se ve muy pálido. Da le aire. Quítale la chaceta. Da le aire. Esta sudando. Alza sus pies. Voices. The cool of the floor on his back. Everything black. His body lip.

Is this happening? Everything dark. Can’t move. Can’t see. One thought. Slight fear. Ay dios, I’m going to die hear. On the floor of the museo with everyone watching. Que vergüenza. No. No. Te desmayaste, ya. Levántate. La voc. The voice, calling from behind the eyes. No body. Darkness. The cool floor like fingers pushing feeling along his back. The voice. Get up. Your hand to your forehead. How silly, how embarrassing. Te desmayaste. Te desmayaste.

Novela de las Lluvias.

The Climb.
Tláloc, dios de la lluvia. Today is a day storm, mo thunder, no lightning. It was raining this same kind of soft, sad and smiling rain when he went. When he went with Abuela, climbing up to the top of something he’d never dreamed off. Cloud covered green in the distance. Valley lined and scratched, deep scar-memory streets of an ancient city carved into the green green earth. México of today and more than two million years ago. The city of Teotíhuacan, before the Aztecs, city where the gods were born. Home of the Sun and the Moon. Enormous pyramids, massive man made mountains. A thousand faces, beautiful beasts, gods. Heavy pilgrimage of people, still made to this place, keeping the steps and stones alive. Tourists like him, but people. Sweat, blood and breath. Some kind of offering to these old old gods, he thought. Many feet. Panting lungs. Mouths open. Flashing of cameras like lightning. Keeping the gods satisfied, for now. Content to be visited by the mixed and moaning children of their stretched out, conquered and crumbling, almost forsaken, almost forgotten futures. Living pasts in their lineage of blood. The sacrifice of children around the bases, beginnings and means to ends. Tears of children dripped into ceremonial bowls to build and bless them.

Luis almost cried. Tremendous fear of this place’s power. Tláloc, the rain god, was there with them. Soft wetness on the forehead, keeping the climb calm and cool. People died climbing these steps. The rain, Tláloc, was keeping him and Abuela conscious of the climb. The slick stones. One step after the other. Living. Slowly.


Her Temple.
Abuela clutched her paraguas like a banister. Climbing up slowly. She walked down the steps backwards because of her knees. Her age, but she could still do this. In her heart and head this was some mix of a Catholic penance for the poor heathen souls sacrificed here. A penance for the brown of her skin, the silent suffering in her tha¬¬t longed for this place. Strange mix of her witchcraft ways, her Indian eyes, the water in them, not the pain of climbing but the truth of falling. Her fear, her certain fall from grace. Something racing, excited in her here when the tour guide told them this was Tláloc’s temple, the green of the mountains, the unending rains. Rivers. The fertility god’s power of flood and drought. A dryness in her. She remembered. Blushing up the side of the pyramids. She remembered what it felt like. Panting. She remembered. Heaven falling out of her. Onto the skin, all the gods in her, moaning. Sky falling. Dripping down the side of temples. The body was a temple, she prayed. She remembered what it felt like to defile it. To worship it with sex. To defile it, and like it.


Sun Storms In México.
Today is a day storm. Like the day they climbed. No thunder, no lightning. Same soft, sad and smiling rain. Something seductive in the smell of the Bugambilias bright pink-purple in Abuela’s garden. Abuela gone. Out to Church for some time, she tried to drag him with her, but failed. He stayed put watching the first drops of rain touch his window. And this is when he thought. He remembered. This is Tláloc, following me down from the temples, the sides of those pyramids, come to save me. Tláloc’s forever to his 14 year old body. His deep longing for love. His wild imagination. He knew that Tláloc was different. Not the fantasies and make believe of childhood. Nothing like Jesús and all his promises. Tláloc was real. As heavy as the clouds, as wide as those temples, as old as the earth beneath them, the waters dripping down. Constant, and pressing.

He knew this. He knew that Tláloc would be his lover, or bring him one. Though at his age he did not think or know that he could ever actually love a boy, that men could fall in love, hold hands and fit into each other. Kiss or know the taste of smiles, long lives or romance together. Tláloc was his only hope. Here in México visiting Abuela. Spending the end of summer with her here. Surprised by the everyday rains. The difference between here and the flat gray of Chicago with straight to the sky castles, pyramids to some god named Money. Here, the warm Sun god and then the soft-heavy showers, something constant. Bright colors and a greens he’d never seen before. A smoky, soft-sulfur, garbage and people, a corn kind of smell. Something about being up along the base of mountains. A lack of breath. This was the rainy season just getting started. He thought, I will make my offering to Tláloc in the jardín while Abuela is away. And He will come. He will come.


Offerings.
A million fingers, gold fingers touching his naked body among the potted plants, among the green. The 8 or 10 canaries in their cages all around the garden chirping to the clouds, singing with him, the whistling of his young heart. Cold but comfortable, his bare butt against the cool cement. The splash of puddles forming around him, his grandmother’s small cement garden, high cement wall with broken glass spikes along the top, reflecting the sun breaking in through the gray.

Abuela’s hair a thick gray cloud, short thick thick hair, all black and white waves. Heavy sky crashing, down the weight of her hands slapping his face, his naked nalga slap, slap face, slap nalga. She slips in the rain, her skirt soiling with the splashes. The fall from above, thunder of voices. His tears, his smiling, his calm calm crying. Something wet inside him let out in the excitement, for the first time. The first of many. Terror in his heart bursting, into calm warm wetness. His hands along himself, his hardness pointing to the clouds, to Tláloc when Abuela stormed into to the jardín a thousand cachetadas and curses. ¡¿Qué carajó haces, niño? ¡Que cochinadas! ¡Dios mío, no! ¡Ay dios! Slap. The splashing.


Rain Falls.
It never stopped raining those months after. Tláloc was smiling on his new lover Luis. And Luis would have to wait until waterfalls, camping with his new lover-boy in college back in the States. He’d wait his whole life for the one or two loves after. Deep deep, sacrifice and offering kind of loves. The kind he’d knew he’d have to wait for. The kind Tláloc promised. That stung like cachetadas. Soaked deep the bones.
Tláloc was smiling. And Abuela, well, she never mentioned it again. Said her rosaries and did her benedictions. Stewed in her kitchen, a little afraid of this devil-boy in her house. Something familiar and old about him. This boy-thing she loved. She needed. She could not condemn him, the way she had herself. The way she had the first time and forever after she had stopped her offerings to Tláloc too, with how many lovers, how many men in the night. While her husband slept. In that same jardín, she had tasted the rain of skin, her husband’s and other men’s. She had held their fury, thunder bolts pulsing in her palm. To her breast. Inside her. She had seen Tláloc smiling. His pink hanging swell of calm after. But she was afraid.

She hid her face under Church and shroud. She had forgotten and forgiven those sins a thousand tears after her Panzón had died. After she erased all fear of infidelities, fear it was her sin that had killed him. That everything in life could really come down to something as self-centered and ridiculous as self-suffering, Catholic guilt, for everything and anything bad in universe. What sin had she committed to deserve this boy? This beautiful monster. The feathers from the birds, the specks of birdseed, feathers and bits of soil stuck to his wet naked leg as she dragged him sobbing into the house. She thought of Quetzalcoatl. The feathered serpent. His face along the pyramids. Tláloc with his fangs. Neither they, nor this boy, nor anything inside her or her past could explain this curse. Something in this orange, red and yellow house. Something in the blood. Repetitions, the consistency of histories, time. Rain, and this kind of sadness. Sad, soft and smiling.


The Way to Words.
He could see a brown church out over the rising mountain, heavy mountain with many homes stacked on top of each other all along its side. With their white and blue and yellow sides, their red, gray and orange roofs, thousands of mouths open, windows with wide palms begging, streets with thin limbs and tangles of black black hair and specks of white and yellow around the eyes. Dogs dogs dogs. Sniffing in the streets. Scratching behind bitten ears. Fleas. Among the garbage. Panting. Begging. Begging. México with its mountain knees and breasts and hips bent over shoulders and the rounding off of wide belly hills, deep valley’s under blue-gray thighs.

He saw a magic in México, that only shown in the dark shadows after storms, the smell of smoke wet and tires soaked in stink, and everything hazy with a moist gray. Los limones on the limón tree out back looked a brighter green, and the yellow painted walls glistened a thick orange-gold. The purple Bugambilias and spinned nopales seemed a little overstuffed spitting out their pedals and spikes. Everything green seemed stretched out taller, and the soil in all the pots, black pupils sprouting bushes, thick branches tickling the sky to tears. Everything alive and wet. Even the church that hid its arched neck under spiny Crosses out on the mountain seemed to soak in some of the vibrant blue, it’s brown steeple seemed a little confused, full and fatter, under the clouds, it’s arches bent in awe of the rains. The other half of the mountain not yet stacked with houses, not carved with streets, was the lushest and saddest green he’d ever seen.

This is where he fell in love with a new god, some son of Tláloc who could keep him, warmer than the rain, longer than life or love. This is when he fell in love with words. And began to write. He began to write the forever of words in his heart. He had asked for a lover, for Tláloc to come, to love him. But instead of a body, flesh and beating heart. Tláloc came as the words. A flood and constant crashing of words. His first, last and only lovers.


Communications and Communions.
Something of witchcraft, he watched as she would throw a handful of her toenail clippings into the bushes, eggshells around the soul in her jungle of potted plants in the house and outside. Once he gained the courage to ask her why, and she said it was to help the roots grow strong like toenails and keep the seeds fertile like the eggs, or so he understood in his mix of Spanglish. Abuela really talked with her hands. He could always know what she meant and how she meant it by her hands. Pinches and slaps. Hugs and serving. Long fingernails perfectly cut and filled for hours con la fila while watching novellas or humming some witch chant she called the rosary. Perfect cuticles, not like his, a mess of bitten fingernails, dirty under-nails, hangnails that split up the finger stinging sour when he sliced limones for limonada, guacamole, or squeezed over carne. He learned to love that sting.

Abuela could always tell if he’d been eating enough fiber or if he needed more iron by the condition of hands, the fatness of fingers, the color or thickness of nails. She’d always slap him to stop biting his nails, to stop gnawing at hangnails. Buena gente no hace eso. Buena gente tiene los manos delgados, doblados, limpios y un poco debil.

But, despite all the care, creams and clippings, polish and filings, her hands had a wideness about them, a roughness that was less scratchy and more sandy, something heavy in the way she held pots, a flexing of muscles around the wrist that he’d never seen in any ones hands but hers, as she flipped and smashed and stuffed and swirled and sliced and pinched and pulled and peeled her way through the kitchen. She was a true witch in the kitchen, everything a spicy smoke, a sour stirring, simmering sweet, dark brown, red, white, yellow and green bubbling around her.

He loved to watch her cook. And so he learned how to cook. A new religion. The taste of words and the pressing of food, forks and spoons. Pens and pencils, became the way of all things. The only way to make it through the days until he would return completely changed. A new kind of monster, all pens and feathers, fish scales and snake fangs, smoke forks and espatulas for fingers.


The House on Bosques de Agua.
The more figurines added to the collection, the larger the army, toy soldier Saints and Virgenes to protect the house. Saints, Vírgenes and Jesús among the dirt. Hidden under flowers. Poked in the eyes and sides by nopales. Half buried faces brown with dirt. Once praying white, hands now black with mud. Abuela stayed in México with her flowers. In her jardín. Her potted plants all along the cement wall, concrete floors. Pots all in rows, pots hanging from pots stacked on pots. Green gray, brown clay. She stayed tending to her many plants. Her Rosas Negras, her tall long, pink tipped Floripondias, her round gold Copas de Oro, her lonely Niñas del Barco. Her Bugambilias y white specked colgando Corazón vines. Her pajaritos singing to the Orejas de Elefante. Her house quiet again, the clocks striking rhythms with each other, all three in the sala a tick 1, tick 2, 3. Los orejas de elefante listening to her mumbling rosaries. The birds singing to keep her company. She stayed alive to keep the plants and birds, the children and grandchildren that did not leave, did not fly away and reroot in a different country soil and sky. Drinking water safe to drink, they say.

The strange boy-thing that had invaded her silence, her routines, some summers ago was gone. Like the men that she had seen and stopped seeing, gone. Long before the vines started up her, the faint smell of fertility faded and turned to the smell of wet green, perfume and flowers. Soft scent of birds and birdseed like sand and pan dulce in the nose. Her Espinada Corona de Cristo with its four, small red flowers, four drops of blood. When she pluck the flowers, their white milk, sour smell. She watched the hanging shells, slightly swaying with the earthquakes through the years. The walls with generations, faces, daughters, sons, sisters, friends. Picture frames of her wedding, smiling, gray gold-tipped fading, cracked and crooked on the walls. Votive candles and the many statues of la Virgen, Saints and Jesús on Crosses covering the walls. Littering the shelves and table tops. The insides just as much a jungle of cluttered things as the outside with green. Vines inside and out of her, tilting everything. Crawling up her nyloned legs. Tickling the tummy. She laughted. When she died. She smiled. No rain.


Everything Left in His Name.
She fed the birds and remembered. Him sitting watching the feathers one morning. The rhythmic squeaking of one canaria with her feathers stretched up, mounted by an orange male. He sat watching, enthralled by their panting squeaks. No words. No questions. She pretended she didn’t see him sitting there staring. She knew that he knew. And he did. No words. 14 years old. He knew. And would start to know. Some secret of living. Some mystery of insides all coming out. The stretching. Panting squeaking of something hard, flexing inside. Something soft to something long, fat and rhythmic in us all. A throbbing in the guts, outward. No words. She discovered the mystery without explanation. No one had told her how or when or why, no one had told her with shapes and pictures, diagrams and long long names the way it would happen. It just did. Surprised every time. Some mystery of a thing when she bled, and some mystery of a thing when she got pregnant, when she gave them life, when they fell out of her like so many other things she had seen fall from fat furred or feathered creatures in San Martin, her home town.

Only prayers and jolts of things changed. The boy had come to México to change. To grow feathers on the chest, snake scales on the legs, nopal spikes on the chin. Turn something in between the legs into a warm nest and perch. A passion and a poison.

She lit candles that nigh and every night after the day storm, after seeing him sitting in her garden watching the birds. She knew this. She knew he would be a roaring thing. Insatiable, long-suffering thing like she was. Candles in his room, what used to be her children’s, even after he left. Waiting for him to return. And he would. Something in that house every summer and then every other summer until she died. He came to keep her company. To share the morning strolls, walks to church and to the carnicería. They shared those tremors only seen and felt by the hanging vines, the seashells on strings over the door, the wind chimes. The lights going out, and sitting with candles, un pan y cafesito for mirienda, moonlight and the silence they shared. So many storms. TV at night and Spanish lessons.

She’d leave him the house. It’s many secrets. The candles and the couch cushions he’d drooled on, but especially her jardín. Her green thumb, and the name of everything green he could ever see in life. All the names and secrets to keep them alive. She would leave in his name: White, Yellow, Orange, and especially Red and all its shades. She would leave him the feathers and the cages of canaries. All the figurines and their plastic eyes. The photo albums and all the frames would be left in his name.


Her House, Her Name.
He comes to take the home. To cry in the jardín without her. Tears over all the thorns, over her colgando white specked Corazón. He stays to spend the years in solitude, in hers and his. She taught him how to be a flower. How to blossom an amazing beauty that no one could have. Something that when plucked would wither and die. Something that could only, when alone. Stuck in its place. Staring at the sky. Open for water, half buried alive, but living. To be tough, and to keep the silence. To stay still within the solitude. Safe. Calm and strong in the solace. He stayed with the house. With her memory. Keeping the flowers and her alive, her altar always bright with something, flowers and candles. Keeping the plants. Watching the birds.

He keeps a journal where he writes his stories, his life unlived, among the many pages of pressed petals and leaves. Little maps of the way to a man’s hearts, into his pants, plant names, measurements to keep them alive, recipes for how to keep him and how to get rid of him when he gets too loud, too demanding. Keeping her name, her house the same scent, her flavors in the kitchen and mouth. Always on the end of his tongue, her name. In his kisses to the few lovers he’d ever bring to the house. In the goodbyes and the forever’s. The never, I love you’s. Her name. He keeps her name so much that he forgets his own. And one day thinks he is her. Wakes up and calls himself Sol, la Luna, la Lluvia. He keeps her name and calls himself, her. Calls himself her name, Soledad.


After Forever.
Soledad will learn to love. But will betray himself and his lovers, with words. Love affair with paper and pen, Tláloc’s son, his first and only love. He becomes Abuela’s secrets. The plants and the spice in her recipes. He feeds his lovers and sees them to the door. Their sacrifice of sex, their water into, his ceremonial bowls. He would be the housewife, cook for them, see to their needs. He loves it, the heartache. His freedom, his silence. Secrets. She had buried hers with the flowers. His in the page. Secrets that would crawl down legs, up the tears and out the tongue. Soft, smiling sadness. His words, the rain. His words, sweat, spice and birdseed.


Thank You’s to Tláloc
Thank you Tláloc, he prays. Whistling something long and up the spine from behind. Something about the way he thinks clear when pissing. The sound of liquid falling on liquid. The way he stands forever in the shower, inspired by the steam, the many touches of falling water, somber walks alone in rainstorms that conjure up the wild imagination, soaks him deep to write and love. Wetness of insides, the spill of himself into his lover. Moist excited throbbing of his heart, racing to tell. Thudding blood to eyes, hands to lips, to tell. To write. He becomes the falling rain. Every raindrop. Every storm. Tickles along his lover’s leg hairs, stomach and back. Sea and puddles. He becomes and undoes himself with every stroke of pen. The small spills, puddles and sticky wetness along his lovers side, spilling out from him, long hard moans. Every prayer of masturbation in his heart and his head. In his hands, the raindrops. In his hands, himself. In his hands, the tight hold around pens. The touching of his fingers slight and slender over lover’s skin. Around his and his lover’s dick.

Tapping away at keyboards. His keyboard, the sound of constant tapping on roofs and windows. Dripping into eyes. Cold over clothes. So the words and the water say, remove them. Naked under clouds, he is. Naked in the soul. He sits in his, and her jardín. Closed up tight so no one can see him out in the sun, out in the clouds. In the rain. Soaked. Writing. Touching himself. Like he was that boy again. Something new. Something terrible. He is that boy again gushing words and. His many dances. His many songs. His many deep moan prayers, offerings of cum up to Tláloc, to keep the rain coming. To keep the words falling from sky to his lips. Lovers from earth to palms and his hips. Fingers numb from all the typing. Tight tingles when inspiration comes, all forward flooding the forehead, gushing out heart and hand. Numb from the cold when he waits in rains for something and someone and some words to come.

His heart tapping time and rain deep down away, and into him. Out through palms and back in through mouths. Out through words. Back in again, water. He sits shivering in the puddles, shaking soul out from flesh. He is that boy again. He is that boy, staring up at her from the floor. Wet with himself. Dripping tears. Their loneliness together.

She taught him well, that love is only finding someone to sit alone with watching the rains.

Padre Pedro and the Water He Soaked Up.

He thought he could swim across himself. To another side of this. Where he would wake up and Sun would not be God and Moon would not be Holy Spirit. He dreamed of before, when he was closer to Earth. His hands and feet and ears and lips were closer to Earth. Infant crawling, everything to his lips, everything to his tongue. And there was no “truth” then, only everything in front of you and behind the eyes, soft song like suffering youth.

Padre Pedro was 47 when it came. The rain. Inside the sacristy, sobbing something out of him. And it never stopped raining. The Church grew colder and paint began to peal. The smell of something dead began to moist and rot its way from under his robes. Under the white and the embroidered gold from Sisters in a monastery somewhere, somewhere.

He started praying to St. Somewhere instead of the sacraments and began to eat meat on Fridays to forget this endless lamenting. Padre Pedro grew into the statues and danced with the candles in his heart when the storms started and the rain came. But this wasn’t a flood. He was done with bible myths and crucifixions. He was done with the guilt for guilt for guilt. Of never knowing the left side of his hand or his penis, and always something like a plank in his eye, supposedly. He was done with being a blind, deaf, mute, beggar. He wanted to live. So one day, he started himself.

Over and over. This dream came. Of a beach on the other end of the universe with palm trees and people. Beautiful people walking all over, naked. He was never foolish enough to feel ashamed for this dream. To confess and raise high hell for something as beautiful as a dream. No, he was not that kind of priest. But he wasn’t one of the wishy-washy ones either. He knew the books inside out, and he knew where he stood. Somewhere between St. Peter and the dirt. Yes, somewhere between the raindrops and dust. Maybe he was ashes. Yes, he would be ashes mixed with spit and a little bit of sand smeared over his thigh.

This was where he was when the rain came. He couldn’t pray. There were no prayers left. He had accepted his fate. The fate of his world. He would be Padre Pedro forever and he was at peace with this when the rain came. So he started himself back to that place, started an ocean tide over his feet and the slightest cool breeze, and laughter. Laughter, like angels and hands and many fingers were what started the rain inside the Sacristy one Sunday night, before the sunset and the Church would slip from orange rainbow colored stain glass blurs on the walls, sliding into deep dark sleep, despite the candles that never slept and always had prayers in their smoke.

He thought one of his old prayers on reserve had started this, started the surging of water around him. But it was just a broken window, a tree branch through St. Selena’s eye, the patron saint of beautiful, young Tejana singers slain by something like Satan, an over protective father, or no one knows which conspiracy to stick with. Kind of like Jesús’s crucifixion, Madre Teresa and Princess Diana’s deaths all thrown into one brown beautiful, crossing over success story, gone sob story. Padre Pedro was sick of all the sadness in his Mexican sanctity. So he started to smile, started to sing Bidi Bidi Bom Bom in his head when the first cold drops began him. Pushed him up and open like a miracle, to interpretation, the water started smothering candles and caused all sorts of sins to not be forgiven and souls not to be saved, because those candles went out. But Padre Pedro was all smiles.

The sacristy, where the sacred objects were kept, chalices and candles, and the precious wine to blood the alter boys took swigs of when no one was looking, was where the rain started his thoughts. After the rectory and Sisters, some parishioners and a couple Sunday offerings, checks and a garage sale in the basement to save St. Selena’s eye, the stain glass was fixed, the cardboard removed, the Sacristy mopped and everything back to normal. Except some water had gotten into Padre Pedro’s shoes. And he remembered something about sand between his toes and holding His hand. Holding His hand in the sand, before all of this. Back to the beginning, a boyish fantasy before he sold his soul to Salvation, Eternal Silence, Certainty like security blankets. He told himself there was nothing to lament anymore, Bidi Bidi Bom Bom. Bidi Bidi Bom Bom all the way to the Lake. To the rocks. And the air had gotten colder since he’d last been there. Before, before, holding His hand there, scared of something.

Told himself he wasn’t swimming towards the eyes of that man like a vision in his dreams, that lover he longed for that looked a little like Jesús, standing on the sand, robe slightly open exposing brown body. Loafs of bread and thousands of fish for thousands of people waiting for him there, waiting for their marriage on those sands. He tried to tell himself he was just swimming away from the sadness, from the silence and suffering, the blood and tears and smell of incense always heavy in him, in his hear and hot behind his eyes, coals for burning incense always. He swam to the other side of himself and never came back. He swam, thinking there would be fish somewhere in the ice water of Lake Michigan in November. Where had Jesús gotten all those fish from then? Why were all the people naked if the water wasn’t warm? He swam. And never came back, never came back.

Don’t say, Amen. Don’t say, this is a prayer. Don’t sing a song. And don’t cry. Was his last sermon. Don’t die never having lived. Don’t die stuck in all this silence. There’s nothing sad about me. There’s nothing sad about me. So I’ll see you on the other side of yourself. The other side of suffering, is how he became Saint No One, No Where, patron saint of all those who can’t or never knew they could. Patron Saint of all those who are stuck, can’t swim, or think they’re not stuck and think they can swim. Swim despite the sinking sensation and the sound like world saying, No. Patron saint of Someday instead of Sunday, and the other side of what we think is sin, truth and water. To keep us believing in miracles, he turned the entirety of Lake's waters into whine when he started swimming, each breathe of water in let out deep violet sacrament of himself. Each breathe thinking, one day he'd wake up, a small boy-like man in his arms and this will be the way it was meant to be. Warm, floating in his arms kind of miracle.

Lake gave back the robes and scapular, his glasses and his left shoe to each rock that asked for it. And kept the rest of him for itself. An offering for Lake's prayers, miracles and sufferings into sleep, soft sounds and soothing ssssshhhh of waves, saying his saint name. Saint No One, No Where. Lake had enough water to give Padre Padro. To fill him. And love him, the way he had never been. Lake found him his place and held him safe there, a secret that no one would know.

I sit at the rock that hides his left shoe in its cracks. Looking out over Decembered ice Lake. And do not sing, do not cry, do not pray for Padre Pedro. I smile, a Bidi Bidi Bom Bom kind of smile. And Lake smiles back something like a saint.

Lost Word Latino

He is the end of every unfinished sentence. That thought that lingers after read and lost Chicano poems. A book that holds you tighter than birth. Like almost but not quite, could have and should have. The fuss and frustration of cum. He is a thousand words wrapped in newspapers cus he can’t afford wrapping paper or cus he hates capitalism, consumerism and looks for every ism in the dictionary to make sure he doesn’t let any of those cucarachas escape. Like being back in the basement he grew up in. The thrill and dread of turning on kitchen lights at night. Black dots scurrying behind plates and under the toaster. The hunt, and satisfaction of destroying them, stomping them out, crushing their bodies under napkins like smashing stereotypes. The disgust. With himself and the world. The crunch of death and power. The oozing out of life under his fingers. Dirt and something sweet. Rough bitten dark under nails from digging.

The world is cold basements to him. He can only walk through basements, through life, he is always underground. He thinks this is why he is so pail. This is why he is shy and palms sweat when he doesn’t know you. He shivers in his sleep even in summer, always needs blankets.

No matter how much Ma complained to upstairs heat only came in short bursts and faint gusts, sucked out by thin windows wrapped in plastic, draped with old blankets that might have worked in Mexico but made no sense in Chicago basements. He’d come out of lukewarm showers dreaming of cement to seal off this dungeon, to trap in breaths. Thin body shaking, drops of water vibrating off light brown skin or maybe dark peach or orange. He gave up assigning colors to his blood like culture a long time ago. But he still wishes he was darker, so people wouldn’t be confused. And the sprouts of hair that scared him once. What white, Arab, brown, Spanish, Mestizo blood did those come from? Each hair a different peoples, growing thick until he could be proud of them all, strut them like feathers, curling dark brown proud. He thought he was supposed to shave them all off. Especially the ones that started growing everywhere but his face. The fear of becoming a man, a dog like cayotes. Something wild in his hands at night fumbling through sheets and sex and selves.

He hasn’t changed. He could be 19 or 35 today and he hasn’t changed. His body will always scare him like a thousand centipedes crawling on his neck. The never ending growing pricks of legs and antennae reaching out from under his chin, feeling the air around his neck, tasting the noise of his breath. A million pencil marks, quotes and comma’s he’s drawn on his face to make him a man, to secure his masculinity like his deep voice and uni-brow makes him Frida. If he could only be as potently Macha as she is painted, free of sex sometimes. He sees himself. Eyes can be without gender, can pull you into them and love you without questions, without uncertainty. Eyes like lips are what float around him everyday floats around him and speaks soft I love you’s. Lingering romances regardless of sense, sex or similitude. He dreams of moist breaths lust and longing, pull and push but never quite touch in his fantasy, in his reality too. He only likes the about to, the maybe, the holy shit is this happening. Not the afters. Not the happening. Just everything before. Like writing. But there’s no difference when you are what he does.

He writes. Like making love to himself has been the only way he could keep warm some nights and the rest of his life. He needs sex or bodies like blankets to write on. Even if just to kick them off in the middle of the night, jab his elbow in your side cus he doesn’t know how to be warm, only knows how to shiver like scribbling on the walls. When subconscious awakens and tells him he can finally be warm, tucked away deep in himself, his thoughts and dreams are the same, like persons he has come to know friends and lovers locked beneath his eyes. They are cold little people who complain to upstairs about the heat, but they love him. And keep the words coming. And keep him erect through every night, waking up to the longing of unfinished business. He is always cold and stiff.

He lives his life underground. Always watching seeds sprouting. The roots digging deeper. He swears he’d love to watch the flowers from above, watch them fertilize and fornicate. He is a gardener with no hands. But tactile and touches with eyelash and lips. He knows everything about reproduction, how to love, and the heart like giant acorns, hands like leaves, crunching withering mulch around him. He knows about dying. He knows the way the world looks through his mole eyes. The dark blinding way he writes at night, keys like feelers to touch the world, to see above and outside of himself. Hope like crushing insects with his bare fingers, the smear of souls, red and gold insides. A salamander on his shoulder, tells him with green eyes to someday venture out into the world. Out of himself. Out of his words. And to stop talking to worms.

The worms tell him he should dig to Mexico, spend the rest of life digging through all the pasts, back to where he came from. But he is too many sharp edges and bones. He is not the slender slimmy end of a penis. He cannot start himself over. He cannot un-orgasm back into his father. To see father’s flesh from inside. To finally remember father’s like name and feeling. What it means to be male. To follow eons of evolution and instinct. To be a real man. To be his father. To fertilize. To take himself back like words. To apologize for everything wrong in his blood like the first steps Cortez took into him. The fist penetrations of culture. The loss of pigment like tongues and temples. The first maggots that bit into conquistador eyes. The dead buried under churches. The splitting skulls of sacrilege and sanctity. Salvation and the sour breathe of the ancients. Before. Before. He is always digging deeper than the beginning.

There’s no end. There’s no beginning from the top to infinity. Only dirt. Only dark cold dirt. And he is warm in his basements. In the sense of dying. This warm release. Like the last word and period at the end of his book’s beginning and end without a middle. A worm that grows into two separate selves is his story, is his sentence with legs and heads and ends but no middles, no happenings, just before and maybe he’ll allow just one after. His ends. He hopes like crushing cucarachas will be happily dying so. Beyond the cold. Beyond the words. And so. This is how you write and this is how to breath and this is how he shivers in his sleep. How you will never read his work. His own words will never know his name.