Black Chicken

I was coming back
from a meeting at the Rice
Creek facility

with my coworker,

Mary. All of a sudden,

we saw a chicken

in the road. “Why is

a chicken crossing the road?”
asked Mary. It was

strange. The chicken was

meandering aimlessly

and pecking at things.

Mary told me to
stop the car, and she got out

and started wrangling

the chicken away

from the street. It was a nice-
looking chicken – black, 

with multicolored

highlights on its tail. It came

right along with us.

We needed to find
the chicken’s owner, so we

knocked at the door of

the nearest house. When

no one answered, we opened

the back gate. Maybe

it was the chicken’s 

yard at that because it marched

in as if it owned

the place. If not, some

folks will be surprised. I hope

they don’t own a dog.

Horny Toad (sequence of 12 poems)

1.
Pueblo

Pueblo, my home town.
The Anglos pronounced it “Pee-eblo” —
I guess to keep from sounding like Mexicans.
The Chicanos said “Pueblo,”
but hardly pronounced the p’s,
so that it sounded like “Huelo,”
or “Oelo.”
Some of the Anglos talked like Mid-Westerners,
and the rest talked like Okies or Texans.
Either of these might say “Peeyew-eblo,”
as if to express disgust
at the noxious, sulfurous gas
that spewed from the smoke stacks
of the old steel mill — the
Colorado Fuel and Iron Corporation.


2.
Tumbleweeds

Our first year on Fairmount Lane,
tumbleweeds blew down the street by the hundreds.
Dried skeletons of big prairie weeds,
they’d pile up in the carport by the back door.
They seemed to have no weight at all —
brittle — a child
might break one trying to carry it in her arms.
We’d wrangle hundreds into a house-high pile
at the edge of the prairie,
and set fire to them.
They’d go up in an instant
in a brief but furious sky-high blaze,
leaving nothing behind
but sparse, feathery ash.
The next year there were fewer,
with new streets of houses springing up to the west.
Soon the salsola weed had given way
to vast forests of sunflowers —
brief station on the plateau’s pig-headed journey
back to short grass prairie.


3.
The Motorcycle Hills

Only found pieces. Nothing but
wind-scoured memory in soft, muddled layers.
The ground to the west of town rises
bristly like an old dirty hairbrush —
with snarls of prickly pear and sage
and a scurf of rifle cartridge and shotgun shell —
up to a quick drop-off at a line
of steep, rounded buttes:
the Motorcycle Hills.
Visiting them again recently, I was struck
by what a shambles they are.
Powdery sandstone strata,
rock slabs poking out of whitish clay
or lying in rubble heaps — one scrap
slanting upwards by a yucca plant,
a brown lizard looking over it
with a level eye.
The hills are marked vertically with
motorcycle trails, though I can’t
recall ever seeing the machines that ground them in.
Occasionally we’d get up the nerve
to ride our bikes down one of them.
I remember once wiping out at the bottom
when my front wheel ran into a rut in the clay.
Another time, an older boy took me
down on his handlebars.
I don’t remember who he was, but he
must have been strong —
I fell backwards into his lap on the way down,
and we didn’t crash.


4.
The Skink

One day when my father and I
happened to glance at the side of the house
(above the asparagus and iris),
we noticed a large, scaly creature
clinging to the stucco wall.
A skink, my father declared
with confident zoological
discernment; and judging from the internet
pictures I’ve looked at just now, it might
have been a skink at that —
orange, short-legged,
with a powerful thick tail.
My father must have thought a skink
was an amphibian of some kind, because
he filled an aquarium tank with water
and put the skink in it.
I’m sure he was off base, because the lizard,
after thrashing violently for just a few seconds,
gave up the ghost and drowned.


5.
Macías

The Macías family lived on the
next street to the west, their yard separated
from ours by only a thin wire fence
bent halfway to the ground by
constant scrambling over.
They were a family of 6 —
Kenny and Mike (both older than I was),
Nicky, baby Andrea,
and the parents, Delores and Raymond.
Kenny and Mike were good baseball players.
One of my first memories of them
is of playing 3 Flies Up on their street.
They lent me a glove — one of those
pancake-shaped mitts from before the war,
all scuffed up, the leather inside
eaten away from sweat.
The kids frequently had to “work” —
some yard chore usually.
I remember one day they couldn’t play
because they had to help Delores put up
peppers for the winter — the whole house
reeking with the sour, acrid smell
of roasted New Mexico chilies.
I got bored and went home.
I remember Raymond once criticizing me
for not “working” enough, and I
understood this as a criticism not just of me
but of the way my family brought me up.
I suppose that Raymond was a typical Hispanic
Father of the Family.
When he wanted to watch something
on TV, no one else’s preferences mattered. —
The Three Stooges would have to give way
to his bowling or golf show.
Kenny especially was pretty vocal
about the unfairness of this, but, of course,
he always submitted.
In those days, there were a lot of shows
with WWII themes —
GIs in netted helmets
swimming along the ground with dirt
exploding around them, or firing
machine guns from behind
demolished city walls.
Raymond was a WWII veteran (my own father
had been exempt because
of a heart murmur).
The kids bragged that Raymond had killed 3 Japs.
“How did you kill ‘em, Dad?” — Raymond made
strangling motions with his hands.


6.
Karen

Next door to the Macíases, Karen and Russell lived.
Russell was my age,
a sandy-haired boy whom I liked fine.
His sister Karen was a year older —
between the ages of 10 and 13 when I knew her —
tough, tall, and fleet as a deer.
Of all my promiscuous childhood loves
she was the holiest.
She ran meetings in the Macias’s garage
to plan our games and hikes.
Once, when we were trying to raise money
to buy fireworks or go to the state fair,
Karen made me go up to an elderly couple’s door
and pretend to be a poor immigrant boy.
They politely invited me in
and asked me where my family went to church.
I answered, with a fake “Italian” accent,
that we hadn’t been in America for long enough yet
to find a church.
I left without them giving me anything
or buying one of my plastic key chains.
Karen was disappointed in me.
It must have been shortly after she
moved into the neighborhood
that I became ill with “romantic fever”
(as my mother laughed at me for calling it).
One day, after leaving the hospital,
I saw through my bedroom window
Karen walking into the yard and approaching
my mother at the clothes line to ask
how I was and
when I’d be able to play outside again.


7.
The Fox Hole

In the year of sunflowers
we carried hatchets
and used them to chop mazes
in the stalk forests.
At the center of the deepest maze,
we used army shovels
to dig foxhole trenches —
and in one of the trenches
a secret chamber
about eight feet deep,
scooped out under a
4-foot clay ceiling,
big enough for two of us
to lie in wedged together.
We weren’t sure it wouldn’t
collapse, so we reinforced it
with a bit of lumber —
I think some cardboard boxes.
We said that no one else
would ever succeed
in mastering the maze,
so if the hole did cave in
and bury us,
no one would ever find us.


8.
Grasshoppers

The sunflower forests afforded
food and spawning grounds
for millions of grasshoppers —
not the thin, brown kind
that swoop along the ground
with a sound like shuffled cards,
but the fat, green,
gooshy kind —
in multiple sizes
(depending on age, I guess)
from tiny to thumb-size —
all with the same ravaging
masticating-locust profile —
a million instances of grasshopper,
all struck from the same
grasshopper master somewhere.
Often we’d see them on top
of one another, copulating.
We carried chains of thick
rubber bands tied together
to shoot the grasshoppers with.
They’d splatter against
the sunflower leaves, leaving
their sticky, brown ichor —
“tobacco juice” —
on our fingers.


9.
Pack Rat

It seems strange that in all those years
of wandering in the prairie, we never
saw a rattlesnake.
There must have been rattlesnakes around —
I remember hearing about a neighbor up the street
finding one in his back yard.
We saw plenty of lizards, though —
brown or gray — “western fence lizards,”
I think they’re called.
Also horny toads.
We’d hunt them by walking together in a line
until we scared one up.
When it scurried into a bush, we’d get at it
by tearing the bush apart.
Once, one of those bushes contained
a nest of pack rats.
When I pulled my hand out, an evil brown shape
was attached to my right index
finger by its fangs.
I flung it off, and we took revenge on it
by throwing it into an excavation hole.
In my terror, I must have kneeled on it, because
there were rat guts on the right knee of my jeans.
The kids warned me about rabies —
and my mother saw the puncture wounds
when I took a bath that evening.
A rabies treatment would have meant painful shots
in the stomach, but I wasn’t treated for rabies.
I think I got a tetanus shot.


10.
Mike

One late afternoon walking back from the sunflower forest
I somehow hit Mike in the face with my hatchet
and split his upper lip.
I hope I didn’t damage his teeth.
I remember the blood bubbling between
his fingers as he knelt on the ground,
clutching his mouth.
Mike and the others went off home together,
leaving me and my sister Mary Catherine
by ourselves on the prairie.
On our way home, we dug up a small barrel cactus
and carried it back on my shovel.
After dinner, I crossed the fence
to the Macías’s yard.
Mike had stitches on his lip.
They were mad at me, of course.
They agreed that the hatchet blade had gotten too dull.
It wouldn’t have done the damage it did
if it had been sharpened, they said.
I don’t know if this incident
caused my friendship with the Macías boys to cool.
A year or two later
Mike starred in the traditional baseball game
between the 6th graders and the teachers.
The teachers always won,
but not that year.
Mike caught a deep fly ball to left
off the bat of Mr. Roth, and in another inning
he struck Mr. Roth out.
A year later, I did the same thing —
the greatest athletic triumph of my life —
but I was just channeling Mike.
My father put the cactus in a pot.
I think it was still in the house
when I cleaned it out thirty years later
after my mother’s death.


11.
Bones

Just to the south-east of the motorcycle hills
was a large, uneven pit,
about 6 feet deep in places,
with loose sides that could easily cave in
if you walked too near the edge.
We believed that the pit contained
human bones, and always gave
it a wide berth.
A few years later,
a girl from my grade — Betty David —
was recognized in the paper for discovering
a nineteenth-century mass burial site
for smallpox victims.
I was jealous, and also somewhat smug
for having known about the pit all along.


12.
Horny Toad

One evening near twilight
we were still out on the prairie together
standing not far from the bone pit,
looking up over
the motorcycle hills to the north-west.
The darkening sky was streaked purple.
A dry wind blew through the sage and cholla,
igniting an apprehension in me
that the not-so-solid flesh of earth
would shift and crack beneath my feet
as if a gigantic horny toad were rearing up
from broken crusts of prairie floor —
carrying the whole plateau on its back,
the sunflowers and salsola weed,
the smallpox bones and shotgun shells,
the insubstantial motorcycle hills themselves.
Everything whirled around me so
that I wanted to fall down to the ground
and feel earth’s spiky,
puffed-up lizard hide
as it rose up higher —
I and the other children riding, riding
on its monstrous horny back,
or, losing hold, careening
off away into darkness.

Your Voice

To sing intelligibly, 

you have to get
your tongue and teeth into it.

But singing is first of all breath.
Relax your core. Air falls in
to the space you make.

Now sing out. Air rings your bones – 
streaming past tongue, teeth, lips – 
tapping out the words.

Everyone breathes the same air.
While you’re here, the air sings
with your voice.

St. Paul RNC Protest March (short poem)

We milled around on the capitol lawn for an hour or so

before the federal troops that were there finally let the march begin.

Then the odd thousands of us who had showed up

walked along a dictated path between tall wire fences

with troopers in full riot gear (some on horseback) blocking every gap,

wearing scary helmets and wielding black batons.

There was nowhere to go but downstream,

and nothing to do when we reached the delta but disperse,

return to our cars, and drive home.

I was having coffee at the kitchen table afterwards

when I got a text from Jess:

“They’ve got us trapped, Dad.

“There’s a line of them 20 feet away.”

So I called and she picked right up.

The troopers had corralled several groups of unauthorized marchers

into a narrow area on West 7^th above the river.

She was talking brave but she sounded scared.

Then she said, “They’re coming, Dad. I have to go.”

Jess and her friends were not among

the 800 who were arrested that week

(hundreds more than in the Chicago demonstrations in 1968).

The troopers ordered them to leave downtown St. Paul,

and, already having been tear-gassed twice,
they were ready to comply.

Among those arrested, there have been 4 or 5 plea agreements but no convictions.

“This is how it starts,” I think now as I thought then –

but I haven’t done jack shit about it.

St. Paul RNC Protest (From Jess's Blog Account)

Federal Military Occupation of Downtown St. Paul, Minnesota

September, 2008
This is Jess Wenstrom's writing from http://jessinbulgaria.blogspot.com/

I Saw No Violence

No dispersal order.
No communication.
Just tear gas.

I was fairly far back
but still got trapped in clouds.
Tear gas hurts.
The police arrested protesters they said
had "hurt a lot of people,”
but all the kids in the front
were with us the whole time.
I saw no violence.

Freedom Handed Out in Permits

The police, the federal government and the national guard have made it clear
that our constitutional right to political dissent is to be handed out in permits,
restricted by cages, and confined to "free speech zones."

Lets take a look:

Amendment I: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

I think keeping EVERYONE from being able to go into downtown St. Paul for 5 days
should be considered an abridgment of freedom of speech.

The “Free Speech Rally”

The "Free Speech Rally" that preceded the “illegal” demonstrations
was limited to a very out-of-the-way, short path nowhere near the proposed rally route
(which the RNC protest planners sued and lost to the state over).
There were riot police lining nearly the whole route
in the freedom cage we had to march through
(including standing on the other side of the fence) –
though I have to admit that screaming chants like
               Tell me what a police state looks like
               This is what a police state looks like
was fairly invigorating.

Amy Goodman Arrested

The highly respected independent news reporter, Amy Goodman,

was arrested yesterday – with a press pass.
Of course, the state had nothing on her and she was let out last night,
but only because of her prestige.
Other legitimate reporters and camera men and women
are still downtown behind bars.
The police have no legitimate charges on them,
and probably have as little on the other 263 people locked up –
not to mention the 300-400 “anarchists”
who haven't been booked due to their policy of not carrying IDs.

Probably About 200 Kids

After the “Free Speech Rally,” my four friends and I
joined up with an anti-capitalist group from the “Free Speech Rally,”
and tried to figure out how to get involved from where we were.
We had heard that there were some confrontations at Wabasha and Cedar,
and we wanted to go there to show solidarity –
and hopefully stand upwind of the tear gas.

We were probably about 200 kids,
all wearing black, red, and army green,
with wet bandannas over our faces –
not exactly the least conspicuous group, but we had every intention of being peaceful.
We weren't out to knock over dumpsters, blockade roads, or pour concrete onto delegate buses.

(I probably would have condemned such actions,
but I guess the police violence I saw as a peaceful demonstrator
has proved to me that peaceful demonstration just doesn't work.)
Anyway, the easiest way to get to the action was to walk down Wabasha,
but as soon as we got to the bridge crossing the river, about 30 riot police
congregated at the entrance and refused to let us pass.
When we saw them fiddling with gas masks, we calmly retreated.

Some Grenade Sounds in Front of Us

It looked like the only other way was to walk down the bluff to the lovely path
down by the river on Jackson/Shepard road and come back
up behind the Xcel Energy Center.
So about 200 of us, not chanting and not at all acting like a mob or a connected group,
ambled slowly toward downtown.
Keep in mind that it was about 90 degrees, there was no shade, and we'd all been biking and marching
for at least four hours.
Everything seemed fine until we heard some grenade sounds in front of us.
Being the stupid person that I am,
I quickened my pace to see what the action was,
and saw mobs of riot police shooting gas bombs at my peaceful protest group.

Clouds and Clouds of Tear Gas

As we all retreated, warning each other to "Walk, don't run!” and “Stay calm!”
the police were able to run ahead of us.
I was behind the front of the police charge, walking through clouds and clouds of tear gas
(thank god for bandannas soaked in apple cider vinegar).
The crowd was screaming "Please, we've turned around, we are retreating! NO MORE TEAR GAS!"
as the cops shot at least five to ten more tear gas bombs in our direction.
I saw one kid get hit directly with one, and he didn’t even have a bandana.

As we retreated, feeling totally dejected and powerless,
we decided we needed to find another route into downtown.
Some 15-year-old girls caught in the area were crying and freaking out –

they weren't at all part of the demonstrations and had no idea what they were getting themselves into.
There were also local families taking their kids for walks in strollers
and handfuls of people simply caught at the wrong place at the wrong time.

The Cavalry Charge

As we started up the bluff and back toward the capitol,
platoons of gas-masked bike police and cavalry started charging us from the other side,
shouting “Turn around, you can't go this way.”
Being the clever people we are,
we realized that we were being trapped.
With a bluff on one side, the river on the other,
riot police behind us, and cops in front,
we all stayed put.

A Feeling of Total Defeat

The two police groups had all 200 of us
confined in an area about as big as half a city block.
Our peaceful mob was outnumbered – there were at least 300 of them.
Then the plastic handcuffs came out: "Everyone, sit down
and put your hands on your head. You are now under arrest."
A few people who didn't comply got pepper sprayed at short distance.
My friends and I were near the front, sitting dejectedly on the grass,
overcome with a feeling of total defeat.

The first thing the riot police did was arrest the two medics,
peaceful observers there to help tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed,
tased and rubber-bullet-hit protesters recover from any injury.
These were not the enemy – I guess they were just seen as aiding the enemy (us),
and so were carted away.
After that, the press were allowed to leave.
Then the riot police started pointing at my friends and saying,
"Yeah, lets remove them. But we gotta circle them.
We don't want any of these people escaping."

50 Allowed to Leave

For whatever reason, of the 200 people detained down by the river,
we were either the first or the second group to be let go.
Only 50 of the protesters were allowed to leave,
about a hundred were arrested one-by-one,
and the other 50 were detained until 7pm.
(This was all happening between 4-4:30, I would say.)
They had us stand, and said “We know you guys didn't do anything wrong,
but there are a lot of people behind you who hurt a lot of people.”
I didn't see any violence among these individuals.
The cops had paint-gunned a couple, so they must have done something wrong.

For Your Viewing Pleasure

For your viewing pleasure, here is the photo that was front page
of www.startribune.com this morning
of me and my four friends being released.

Of course, the caption said “young protesters arrested” or something,
but we weren't. We looked sweet and innocent enough to be unsuspicious.
(Its a good thing Shannon took off his "Fucking Revolution" t-shirt that I bought for him in Bulgaria.)
We were told that this was our last chance – if we returned to downtown St. Paul,
we'd be arrested for sure.
Feeling physically and emotionally exhausted,
we walked back to our bikes and got the hell out of there.

Living in a Police State

When you can't demonstrate peacefully on your own streets,
when houses are getting raided,
people being arrested for no reason
and anarchists are being singled out without doing anything wrong,
when political profiling is being used by the police and even medics,
when news reporters and peace observers are being singled out as criminals,
then you know you are living in a Police State.

This is What Happens

A van was raided in St. Paul near where my parents live, far from downtown –
it was searched without a warrant and towed.
The police told the owner, “This is what happens when anarchists come to town.”
I'm not saying the anarchists weren't breaking a few windows and harassing a few cops,
but that was only a minority.
The black garb isn't to look intimidating, it’s to not be singled out.
So instead they single out everyone and throw them all behind bars.

What Are They So Afraid Of?

I am too rattled, dejected, and crushed
to have any intelligent insight at this point.
All I can ask is,
What the fuck are the police and the government so afraid of?

Pie Jesu

I went to a funeral today for a 

16-year-old boy, Alex,
who died in a car accident.
Alex lost his way driving at night, trying
to follow a friend on a
dark rural road. He missed a
curve, his car rolled, and he was tossed. He survived
just long enough to donate
his organs.
                  Apparently,
Alex had experienced doubts about his
faith, but more recently had seemed
to be finding his way
as a Christian. The priest made a lot out of
this in his sermon. He said,
the apostle Alex most
reminded him of was Doubting Thomas.
He said, because Alex
had started to see his way,
we can hope that, like Thomas, he's with Jesus
now, and not in hell.
                                 But I
thought that the picture of
Alex on the program, and what little I
know about his life growing
up, put all that mumbo-
jumbo to shame. Alex has eternal life
because he was himself.
Alex is good. He's complete.

Three Bow Ties

The question of concert dress

came up last night, as it does every term.

There was some momentary confusion because
Patty, our director, seemed to imply
that all of the men were supposed to wear bow ties –

not correct, as some of the men
have always worn long ties.

The confusion was cleared up.
But during break, a woman whom I’d noticed

sitting on the far end of the alto section
came up to me to say
that her husband – who had recently died –
had owned three formal bow ties.

She was wondering if I could use one of them.

It didn’t seem appropriate somehow to say,
”Sorry about your husband’s death.”

At least, I didn’t think to say it.
I thanked her, and said that I always wore a long tie,

but that Patty kept a concert wardrobe, including
some tuxedos, and also some
long black outfits with sleeves, for women.

Maybe Patty would like to add
the three bow ties to her collection.
”That’s a good suggestion.
Thank you, “ the woman said. But I was left

with an anxious sense of loose ends –

too many words spoken, and too few –

connection interrupted.

The Happy Ones

Lying on the couch,

waiting for my Saturday morning

racquetball call.

Noticed a middle-aged

woman in a gold blazer
walking onto my front porch.

“You weren’t expecting me, sir,”

she said. “I just want to ask you:

do you think those who

try to follow God’s laws

could be happier?”

I replied with conviction:

“I’m pretty sure nothing could make

those people any happier.

And thanks for your time.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said,

and retreated

toward the street

Lorna Doone

My friend Victor and 

I heard the Ventures circa

1964

at Memorial

Auditorium in our

home town, Pueblo. There 

weren't many people

in the audience, even
though the Ventures were

pretty popular

those days. At intermission,
Victor talked to the

lead guitar player,

Nokie Edwards (I had to

look up Nokie's name

on the internet

just now). I think it was a

pretty good show. I

imagine that they
played "Walk, Don't Run," and also

"Pipeline" and "Wipeout."

"Pipeline" had that neat

muted descending E-string
opening. "Wipeout"

had the crowd-killing
drum solo by Mel Taylor.

There's just one more thing

I remember – We 

went to a vending machine,

and Victor made fun

of me for getting
Lorna Doone cookies instead

of a candy bar.

Zoles

Looking at the stars 

is something everyone does
at various times
in their lives. I was
doing it one evening in
Denver, standing in
a field. My sister
was there, with her boyfriend, Rob,
and a small brown-haired
girl – one of those sort
of androgynous females
in baggy clothes – with
earnest eyes.
                     She said
she was scanning for “zoles.” “Zoles,”
I think, were either
alien space ships,
or living things unknown to
science – like angels
maybe, or souls. You
could tell zoles from stars by their
slow, blinking movement
and blue color. I
wanted to see them myself.
Even now sometimes,
when I have a “Z”
in Scrabble, I hopefully
look up “zole,” but it’s
never there.
                    I doubt
if that girl saw zoles that night.
But whenever I
look up into the
twinkling sky, as I sometimes
do, I look for them.

After the Gjallarhorn

We were standing at our excellent seats

as Paul Molitor blew the gjallarhorn.
At that precise moment, a couple arrived
at the seats to my right,
the man immediately asking me
if the “soldiers” had been introduced yet,
looking relieved when I said, no.   

Two minutes later, the PA announcer
introduced the “soldier of the day,”
and a young man wearing

U.S. Army universal camouflage
walked onto the field.
“That’s just awesome! What an
awesome honor!” said the man,

pleased with the pictures he was able to take
with his telephoto lens.

                                      “Now

put your hands over your hearts
to honor America,” the announcer said.
The man to my right
put his hand over his heart.
All of the Vikings and Broncos players
put their hands over their hearts.
As a matter of principle, I never
take part in mass patriotic demonstrations,
so I left my heart uncovered
as Ruben Studdard sang the national anthem.
I don’t think the man noticed
that my heart was uncovered.
My sympathy with the man made me
want to salute by covering my heart,
but I didn’t do it.
                            Later,

I asked the man if his son had fought in Afghanistan,
and he said, no, that he had
served in Kuwait and Iraq, and had been home now
for about a year an a half.
“It’s an awesome honor!” he said again,
but frankly admitted that he had no idea
why his son had been chosen.
“He didn’t do anything especially heroic,” he said.
“We were just happy that he made it home
 upright and walking.”