"More Than 100 Facts For The 99%"

More Than 100 Facts For the 99%




Ninety nine percent of all life forms
that have ever existed are now extinct.
99% of The Universe is plasma.

Ninety nine percent of all schools
have computers. 99% of all Shakespeare's
plays have been tapped out by virtual monkeys.

Ninety nine percent of all Santas are jolly,
merry and kind-hearted. 99% of all
lawyers give the rest a bad name.

Ninety nine percent of all felonies are settled
by plea bargaining. 99% of all problems
in communication start with misunderstandings.

Ninety nine percent of all marijuana
eradicated in the US is feral. 99% of all new
online businesses will fail.

Ninety nine percent of all tomato products
consumed in the US come from California.
99% of all river blindness is in Africa.

Ninety nine percent of all bandwidth
on the internet is devoted to child and animal
porn. 99% of Believers would take the gold.

Ninety nine percent of all migrant farmworkers
are members of an ethnic minority. 99% of all
turkeys raised in the US are Broadbreasted White.

Ninety nine percent of all family foundations
have assets under $100 million. 99% of all
human DNA is exactly alike.

Ninety nine percent of all law under
Capitalism has to do with property. 99%
of all profit is made by 1% on Wall Street.

Ninety nine percent of all puppies sold come
from puppy mills. 99% of all public schools
serve lunch from the National Lunch Program.

Ninety nine percent of all calcium in the body
is found in the teeth and bones. 99% of all
freshwater pearls are grown in China.

Ninety nine percent of all Oregon state prosecutions
involving non-violent protesters exercising their rights were
against them. 99% of all hazelnuts are grown in Oregon.

Ninety nine percent of all ghost pictures
can be explained away. 99% of all maternal
deaths occur in developing countries.

Ninety nine percent of all cats deliver
their kittens without assistance or complications.
99% of all US households have a television.

Ninety nine percent of all TVs sold in the US
come with remote controls. 99% of all promotions
are created because somebody has stock to sell.

Ninety nine percent of all land animals eaten
in the US are factory farmed. 99% of all gas consumed
in the US comes from the North American Continent.

Ninety nine percent of all snail species
have shells with whorls that coil clockwise.
99% of all successful businesses require teamwork.

Ninety nine percent of all businesses lose
25%-40% of their profits from mistakes. 99%
of all masturbation involves lust and fantasy.

Ninety nine percent of all virtual forces
affecting our life is invisible. 99% of all
beer cans are made out of aluminum.

Ninety nine percent of all book queries
to agents and editors are rejected. 99% of all
first books are not good enough to publish.

Ninety nine percent of all mass in the galaxy
is taken up by the sun. 99% of all the world's
land ice is in Greenland and Antarctica.

Ninety nine percent of all banking organizations
have assets in excess of $10 million. 99% of all
new jobs since 1990 have been in the service sector.

Ninety nine percent of all the billions
of ants on Earth are female. 99% of all
US prisoners on Death Row are male.

Ninety nine percent of all water on Earth
is ocean water. 99% of all life is invertebrate
and 99% of all invertebrates are extinct.

"Ninety nine percent of all failures come from
people who have a habit of making excuses,"
declared the inventor of the peanut. 99% of all diets fail.

Ninety nine percent of all things that most
of us worry about never actually occur. 99%
of all species that have ever existed are extinct.

Ninety nine percent of all living structures
are built from just 6 elements. 99% of all living
things live within a few thousand feet from the surface.

Ninety nine percent of all newspapers take
their own photos. 99% of all reading
takes place in the brain and not the eyes.

Ninety nine percent of all interactions between
bacteria and host are beneficial. 99% of all
"germs" are killed by hand sanitizer.

Ninety nine percent of all electricity generated
in the world is lost to resistance as it flows
from source to use. 99% of all TVs are unsold.

Ninety nine percent of all personal care products
contain 9,350 chemical compounds untested for safety.
99% of all abortions are performed prior to 20 weeks.

Ninety nine percent of all great inventions
weren't perfect the first time. 99% of all
plastic bags in the US are not being reused.

Ninety nine percent of all Americans listen
to the radio. 99% of all bottled water sold
in the US has only been filtered.

Ninety nine percent of all ingredients in consumer
products are inert or inactive, thus protected
by trade secret. 99% of all wills are uncontested.

Ninety nine percent of all plants still use
3 instead of 4 atoms of carbon for photosynthesis.
99% of all farm animals killed are birds and fish.

Ninety nine percent of all people trying
out for a role in TV, theater or film will not
get the job. 99% of all new businesses fail.

Ninety nine percent of all professional speakers
earn less than $1 million their entire career.
99% of all capital exists only as processor entries.

Ninety nine percent of all tobacco-related
deaths are caused by inhaling tobacco smoke.
99% of all cervical cancer is caused by a virus.

Ninety nine percent of all television sets owned
are in color. 99% of the people who produce,
write and direct for television are white males.

Ninety nine percent of all goods produced in
the world are trashed within six months. 99% of all
US businesses are small and create 75% net new jobs.

Ninety nine percent of all electricity in the world
is produced by running a wire through a magnetic
field. 99% of all baking is applying heat to starch.

Ninety nine percent of all fires on the planet
are lit by humans. 99% of all mothers' milk
contains detectable levels of DDT.

Ninety nine percent of all pesticide poisoning
deaths are caused by developing countries. 99%
of all adverse drug reactions are unreported.

Ninety nine percent of all eligible American
Indians registered to fight in WWII. 99% of all
privately owned hand guns are never used.

Ninety nine percent of all footwear sold in the US
is made by foreigners overseas from foreign goods.
99% of all transactions take less than a minute.

Ninety nine percent of all Medicare dollars
spent are linked to chronic illness. 99% of all
healthcare dollars are spent on illness, not prevention.

Ninety nine percent of all genetics
have been mapped. 99% of all wireless
calls rely upon fixed fiber optic lines.

Ninety nine percent of all US households
purchase milk. 99% of all uranium in the human
body will exit through the evacuation of fecal waste.

Ninety nine percent of all pumpkins
are sold for decoration. 99% of all
people talk to their dog or cat.

Ninety nine percent of all stars will end up
as a white dwarf. 99% of all human
history is a hunter-gathering way of life.

Ninety nine percent of all connections
are now done digitally. 99% of all active
genes in the body are not human.

Ninety nine percent of all problems
can be identified. You are 99% of the
problem If you are not 99% of a solution.

If ninety nine percent of the whole
can be equal to its part, than 99%
of us can be equal to any and all.



Lorna Dee Cervantes
11/29/11

"Between The Rapture And The Rose" (poem draft)

Between the Rapture And The Rose



Who can believe
between the rapture
and the rose? The road
winds through the brambles,
caramel and sudden, thrushed
and carbon, between the tweeting
and the caverns, between the ash
and the healing waves of rain.


Who can believe? Between
the rapture and the rose,
between the window and the summer
sun, between a child's winnowed
smile and the fallen leaves,
who can believe in the simple
science of you, your turning gyre?


Who does believe
threading their way through folly
and the falling? It's as easy
as the way rainbows slide
their magic, the way I am
into you, the startled starlings
settling home, the flush of bloom,
a filling room. Between the rapture
and the rose is a garden
and a blush.


The softening touch, so much
the sibilant rush, a sensuous
lush response. Something
like belief, like the rapt
heavenly way the earth smells:
the loam of loving you, the pebbled
path of pardon, leafing, like music
between the rapture and the rose.




Lorna Dee Cervantes
5-21-11

"Integrity" (7-Minute Poem For NaPoWriMo, 4/7/11)

Integrity (7-Minute Poem For NaPoWriMo, 4/7/11)

for E. S.

Yours is the integrity of flint,
of steel, of iron. Yours
is the integrity of birds flocking,
whales in their loving pods. Yours
is the integrity of sand, what moves
with the will of you; all your sweet
sweat, your simple construction.
I love the sudden fill of you, your
swell and sway. I love how you do
what you say. You slay me
with your truth. I love the way
we fit together as if I were your
seed. I love the far away look
in your multicolored eyes, the land
and sea of you. I love
the way you look at me, that ancient
shore. I love how I am more
with you, your carbon, the filaments
of your fine hair. I love how you hold
me together, how fast and vast
the ocean of this love in its gentle
tide, the integrity of flesh, of salt,
of we.



Lorna Dee Cervantes
4/9/11

"Radiation" (7-Minute Poem For NaPoWriMo)

Radiation



Words can stop a meltdown.
Splinters of where we live can heal
a fissure. The expansion
of a sudden mystery, the heart
stunned into being. Words of another
nation, under bark, transformed.

The tree holds, ever after.



Lorna Dee Cervantes
4/6/11

"Strength" (7-Minute Poem For NaPoWriMo, 4/5)

Strength (7-Minute Poem For NaPoWriMo, 4/5/11)



All I've ever had was strength.
I show it in the cracks. I smooth
out stone on stone, I sheen with use.

All I've ever known was shame
and philosophy: Plato's Republic,
The Birth of Tragedy, Young Werther's Sorrows...

I have an affinity with the sea,
my sailor's blood, my stance:
my wild stallion, the waves

I do not enter lightly. I moan
and creak, the leather of a slave.
I can take the heat; hell, a sudden parting.

I do not know. I hold
fast, the spirit text: the great
death inside us; strong, inside us.



Lorna Dee Cervantes
4/5/11

"Success" (7-Minute Poem For NaPoWriMo)

Success (7-Minute Poem for NaPoWriMo)



There's no success like shadows,
like the sun losing the day to moon,
like certain holes in a sandy shore,
like rivulets of green algae banking
on a sunny beach, like basking marmots
above the treeline, like pregnancy.

We who fall silent at the ebb
of night, we who are not afraid
to be whole, we who strive to fill
an afternoon with teardrops, with joy,
with slender needles of medicinal sap,
with cure and sow, with litanies,

We make success in the way we move,
the way we feel about rain, about mud
before it turns to brick. We know sadness
in the fertile soil, in the cull and curry.
We are successful ever after. We are
sucking the cesspools dry, a curing peace.



Lorna Dee Cervantes
4/4/11

"Plans" (7-Minute Poem For NaPoWriMo)

Plans (7-Minute Poem For NaPoWriMo)



What plans do the dead make?
They wile away in their silver linings.
They don't speak, even when spoken to.
Who would believe they matter?
They, who are so sorry and sorrowed.

Fortune today, dust tomorrow.
How many furtive longings? How much
their weight in pennies? Their well-made
beds, waiting in the ether. Royalty
or poverty, the results are always the same

ash. Ash in the ice-tray of forgiveness.
Ash in the spiral galaxy of love. Ash in
the core drum. Ash falling down. Ash
becoming a sea after tsunami.
Wet coal in the lump of the heart.

What plans after the wake
and rush, the sudden hush?

Ask.



Lorna Dee Cervantes
4/3/11

"Galaxy" (7-Minute Poem For NaPoWriMo)

Galaxy (7-Minute Poem For NaPoWriMo)



Into your galaxy I fall
heartfirst, fear akimbo,
over and over the tumbling falls
of sensuous rivers inside me.

Take me to your forked places
where the tongue seeks refuge.
Take me into precious highways where
the macadam vanishes into layers of distance.

Lead me to your past, to your dream
sequences, to your black holes
of remembrance. I will mark the trail
with the breadcrumbs of knowledge.

This journey leaves only once. We
are the destination. Here in this sparkling
sea of sky, your shimmering eyes
weave a map of sighs, night whispers.

If I could feel you here: the slow swirl
of your ticking time, the windy whirl of
your breath panting above me, I would
be home, landed. I would plant my flag.



Lorna Dee Cervantes
4/2/11

"Ego" (7-Minute Poem For NaPoWriMo)

Ego (7-Minute Poem For NaPoWriMo)



Don't go. Refresh yourself.
Be a river through the mesquite
forest, a single tree of wind.

Don't stop. Rehearse your
becoming on a stage of dead leaves.
Take the shell. Speak the entire emptiness.

Don't fall. Sleep in time's shadow.
Be a whale, bask above the tidal
wave. Be frothy and wild. Fly up.

Don't let go. Hold fast
to anger for an instant, love
for as many miles as she takes you.

Don't live alone. Embrace
the wee lives between the boards,
the many mice in the mind's larder.

Don't laugh alone. Tell!
Tell apart the loaves of bread
from the fishes. Be vicious to your sadness.

Don't remind yourself of others,
of lazy ashes in your days, of the way
we live: pomegranates, a single rubied seed.





Lorna Dee Cervantes
4/1/11

"Angels And Saints" - Link To My Poem For ronnie burk (April 1, 1955-2003)

"Angels and Saints", Poem For ronnie burk

Click the link to read my poem for my friend, Chicano poet & artist, ronne burk, and read about ronnie. (You can also just search my blog for "ronnie burk" to pull up other posts about him. He was a big part of the reason for me starting this blog six years ago: to keep alive the dead. Isn't that the impetus for all poetry? ronnie might add: to keep the planet alive! Gracias, ronnie. You won't be forgotten.

"Know the Names of Things"

Know the Names of Things

for immigrants everywhere anytime

Know the names of things.

How 3+1 equals nada

in a barrio flat. How many 

unknowns there are in a single

bottle of pills. How much

it costs to breath through

the nicotine, the anxiety,

the three times a million lost

nickels in the foreign exchange,

in a bushel of sterile seed.

Know the names of things.

How to live. How to love

the you in all. How to call

out to the impoverished ancestors.

How to feed a future. Call

it what you will. Call power

in a name. Name the world

to own it. Learn hammer

and sickle. Learn the many

names for drought. Name the 

expedient past, the succumbing future.

Name what you will. Will what

you name. The power of the tsunami

in the syllables of truth, the reconstruction

of the hurricane in the uplifting vowels.

Learn the names of all the treaties

never honored by our government.

Name the dead, too.

Know the names of things.

How to count. Count the many ways 

life changes life and death

changes nothing and never gives.

There is a way if you name 

it. If you follow it the road

will come. Be the strings that hold

up this house of time held

by the wisdom of the abuelas

with words holding taut the strands.

In the beginning was an absence.

Name that, too.

Know the names of things.

How to tell the singer

from the song. How to swear 

on a star, become the jury 

of one. How to tell over

the cacophony of a thieving

crow. How to chant the mastery

of who enslaves whom, who orders

the gun, the bomb, the shock

and awesome truth. Name this, too.

Know the names of things:

auricle from ventricle, aorta

from vena cavae, arteries from

aurioles; all matters of the heart.

Save with the words for it.

Then be it, a savior

with your words. We, 

the named, we, knowers

know the power, the power to name,

to see, to know, belongs

to the perceiver, the receiver

of knowledge — all in a name:

our name, your name, the stolen 

names, the original names,

the slaughtered names, the slaughtering

names, names for The People for people

who need no names, who need food, 

who need the crystal water

because 3+1 in a barrio flat

equals nada. Name this, too.

Know the names of things.

and heal. 

6/11/10

Lorna Dee Cervantes

"Angels and Saints" (for ronnie burk, 1955-03)

ronnie burk at MySpace


ANGELS AND SAINTS

for ronnie burk


Ronnie, they never knew you,
knew the volcano that was you
the Maui Zowie of your wizardry.
Ronnie, they never knew you,
knew the glue that was you
pasting it all together into a collage
of our shredded lives. They never knew
the fine art of you, the fire out
of you. You were the first outlaw.
You were the first out.
You were the first to get sick, the first
to heal us all with your words.
You were the first figure of the barrio.
You, the you they never knew,
what was slammed into the frame
of a not-nice picture. They never knew
the Tejano you, the hick wit you,
the sophisticated lit you, the grinning
through the bite of teeth you.
You were the first, ronnie,
to act out, to act up, to take
your heart into the streets.
You were at home here, ronnie, and
at Spirit with the voice of the sea.
You were a fathom too long,
a galaxy too far, a feeling
too close for the noose.
Ronnie, they never knew you,
knew the passion fruit nopal
that was your prickled heart,
never knew how they locked you
out on the balcony in your underwear
in the icy 'Bur'que night , and
left you there, a sleepless poet
before his first Floricanto. (Where
was la Unidad then, vatos?) Ronnie,
they never knew the real you. They knew
your loving but they never knew
your love. Ronnie, they never
knew you, the loco you, the brujo
you, the you you let loose in the crystal
madrugada. They never knew you.
But I knew you, ronnie. I know.
How well you did know
us then.




Lorna Dee Cervantes
6/26/08
San Francisco


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm remembering ronnie this fifth year anniversary of the blog. Ronnie was the impetus for beginning it, for writing for and to and of The Dead, beginning with ronnie. I'm remembering ronnie, too, or rather, he comes to me when I need him, holding my hand as I once clasped his in my own, trying, somehow to pass my strength on to him, to keep him on the planet just a little while longer, just so I could keep hearing those marvelous things coming out of that beautiful head. He was as close to a "Soul Mate" I've ever experienced, my in lak ech, my other I. I saw my beauty in him. Please join me in remembering him this 7th year of his passing. Remember all the Billie Holliday songs you can think of, and sing them loud with us: heartfelt; that's the only way ronnie knew to do things, con ganas. Gracias, ronnie, for our interesection. It was an honor to publish your 1st book. 

You can read what I wrote then "The Dead Reux; Or, Remembering ronnie burk" You can also just search this blog for his name.

I'm staring out at the Pacific ocean he so loved, remembering him speaking of the ocean speaking to him once on a ship across Hawaii, how it called out to him for help, for salvation. He spoke of a lifeless swirling widening hole of dead sea that the ocean was showing him. "I'm dying," it said. That was decades before the scientists found a dead hole the size of Texas off the coast near Hawaii.

His advice to young poets: "Learn the mysteries of your ancestors. Go to the root, and you will be blown away at what you find."

"To feed the planet we'll probably all have to quit eating meat." ~ ronnie burk

For Chile, From Her Native Master, Pablo Neruda: "And the City Now Has Gone"

AND THE CITY NOW HAS GONE



How the clock moves on, relentlessly,
with such assurance that it eats the years.
The days are small and transitory grapes,
the months grow faded, taken out of time.

It fades, it falls away, the moment, fired
by that implacable artillery-
and suddenly, only a year is left to us,
a month, a day, and death turns up in the diary.

No one could ever stop the water's flowing;
nor thought nor love has ever held it back.
It has run on through suns and other beings,
its passing rhythm signifying our death.

Until, in the end, we fall in time, exhausted,
and it takes us, and that's it. Then we are dead,
dragged off with no being left, no life, no darkness,

no dust, no words. That is what it comes to;
and in the city where we'll live no more,
all is left empty, our clothing and our pride.



-Pablo Neruda, trans. Alastair Reid

http://news.yahoo.com/video/world-15749633/18373464

"On Happiness"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1251711/Every-dolphins-gone-surfin-Stunning-pictures-hundreds-glide-monster-waves.html


On Happiness



Dolphins taught the apes to speak
To take comfort in the wait for waves
To flow together in an arch of forgiveness
To pay attention to the past, past
Envy into the hilarity of a new revelation

Joy is the natural state, a constitution
Written with the rags of war, the pangs
Of indecision and a decisive dividing
On the plate. Bliss is the ride in, the free fall
All together now, singing in the element of birds.


Lorna Dee Cervantes
2/21/10

"Poem For Diane" (Celebrating Diane di Prima's Inauguration as Poet Laureate of San Francisco)

POEM FOR DIANE

"When spoken (poetry) cuts a shape in time"
~ Diane di Prima


La Loba, you taught me well,
how to survive the hell
of an intelligent woman.
Taught me to spell
my way to her-story, taught
me the world was a word
with out El_Otro, Loba,
you taught me to cherish
my whiskers, my attuned ears,
my long smokey looks when
La Loba just wants to play.
You taught me the mouse
is more than she has at hand,
that many mouths can save an other.
How to howl, Loba, you let me
howl, with your tiny hands
and your enormous heart,
with your no-bullshit vocabulary
and your steel-snap mind,
with your pacing, your waiting,
your ever cool, oh so cool way
of loving, La Lobita, you taught
me by being you. You taught
me the world was more than words
and your word, all.


Lorna Dee Cervantes
02/19/10


(on the occasion of Mission Latina/o poets honoring Diane di Prima's inauguration as Poet Laureate of San Francisco)

A Love Poem to El Tecolote

A Love Poem To El Tecolote On The 39th Anniversary
for Eva Martínez/Juán Gonzáles?/you?/auction?/in honor of Her Honor, Sotomayor?


El Tecolote means death
to some. It's hoot to take you
away. For the people of this land
it brings life, life lessons
from the dead. Messages from
the ancestors within this ground.

For the others
Minerva's owl sits
on the left shoulder
of Justice, Athena
under its gentled heels.
She flies out
in search of the true
and good, truth and beauty,
the twin towers of the law
(while the Angel of History turns away.)

Here, on earth,
on this earth we are blessed
with the presence of El Tecolote:
vision, accuracy, attentiveness,
and a gentled, gentling Spirit.

Under the reddening gardens
of love, on the earth
and under the sun, under
the spread wings of her peace
and feast, una tecolote is
on a mission in The Mission.

And I remember
another time under the trees,
another season when I was in
my summer. I sat
on the hillside, a head
full of Hegel and Kant;
a tenuous thread that stitched
me to my raza loosening
and pulling, snug
and lax as a purled sweater
made strong by my mother's hand.
I pondered my existence, the irony,
alive in an interesting time
researching and documenting
my demise and slaughter:
so many hundreds of millions of native peoples
and chicanada I couldn't count
(the bodies would reach the moon.)

I found a pearl
without a hole, a fossilized
frog egg or roe: opalescent
(many-colored) with the translucent white
color of a single drop of semen.
It was then that I read
it, el tecolote there
in front of me in the field
where I had just found
my tiny treasure. There
on the spot to remind me
of something or someone
there, alive or dead,
living or in another matter.
No matter. El tecolote,
so important to my people,
auspicious and sealed
in waxy plumage. Giant
owl, law of the land,
justice on the wing.

I could have reached out
and stroked it. I put
my arm around it, tried,
so familiar its face,
our long look of recognition,
the turning away
to take in the beauty
of the land
despite the books
of destruction
between us.

You are like this owl.
For 39 years (40 years
of resistance within 517), bearer
of missives from the
true and good, of truth
and beauty, with accuracy,
attentiveness and una visión,
a gentling gentle espíritu
in the community,
ever vigilant for justice,
fierce and relentless
in the hunt, you have been Connector
Between Worlds; Bringer of News
of the living and dead across
a split hemisphere
and the gulf between the many
for whom life
no se vale nada
and the few who own
the world, I am thankful
for your presence. Sigue.



8/23/09
Lorna Dee Cervantes

Fourth of July In The Mission

Fourth of July In The Mission

for Alfred Arteaga


Fireworks and sirens
A little girl screams, "Daddy!"
Cries. You died last year

Everyone going
A pink velveteen jumpsuit
She's already gone

Because you loved me
All the colors remind me
Of ones you wanted

Where is hummingbird?
You loved like that: a bright
Awakening. You?

Too soon. Your laughter
On this morning an echo, a trace
Derrida's stammer

You would have hated
Dying on the 4th. How sad
You'd say, and then laugh

How lit up I was
That first foto, your return
From the dead. Again

For you I would have
Dyed my hair, magenta or
Chartreuse, would have dyed

Not so morose, your
Memory, last words to me
"I'll tell you some lies"

Why didn't I go?
"We could drive home together"
Would have been our last

Discolándia
Open. Manú o Maná
I'll buy one for you

Today I'll toast to
Revolution at Sunrise
Watch men with your hair

This Fourth of July
I'll think of you, relove you
Fireworks and sirens


7/4/09

Michael Jackson: Defense Rests

This is a poem I wrote in May, 2005, right after Michael Jackson's acquittal and after a collage portrait of Michael Jackson by Rosie O'Donnell which is no longer available. I thought I'd post it here again. RIP. LDC
http://lornadice.blogspot.com/2005/05/michael-jackson-defense-rests-mixed.html

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Jackson: 'defense rests' (a mixed media on wood, a 3x5 Portrait)

~~~~~(from a portrait by the artist, Rosie O'Donnell)



You, laid out like a crazy
pathwork quilt on a bordered bed, a number
stamped in the left-hand pocket: "to prison,
with love." They got yours
slapped on like brown pigment,
the stain of your famous face
in caricature, a caricature of Am I Blue,
Little Boy? Little bouy, (blue?)
bobbing in the photos, the snap
shot of you, a graffittied plaque against
the Real McCoy. Perpetrator
of a Love Supreme fractured
against the pawl. Against the pale
portraits of a king, recessed
in flame and flourish, hides a checker
board past flaring in the distance
between a father and his dancing
son.... Between the sheets, a child's love
lies. Between the press, the next morning,
of the palate knife, centuries aged,
some duotone of passion and burn, some law
writ in the land and heart, that forgiven
species. And health: the child. What lies
ahead?




c May 27, 2005 by Lorna Dee Cervantes
All rights reserved between consenting adults in the privacy of your own home.

"17 REASONS why?"

17 REASONS why?



Because the wind smells like jasmine
through the pools of dog shit
when people can't afford to feed;

Because you live another day though your dreams
are punctuated with the sounds of rusty shopping
cart wheels and destiny smells like frijoles con ajo;

Because freedom's just the change in your pocket
and the poor are rich but nobody feels this,
but a smile is the passport, buenas, the plane;

Because heaven lives on Harrison and school
children skip through the rituals on Valencia
and my mom is not afraid to walk alone under moonlight;

Because you are living in interesting times
in interesting ways as an interesting force and even
the pigeons acknowledge this, and are interested;

Because Destiny doesn't stop here anymore,
she took off with Mañana who then eloped
into Yesterday and Whatever, La Reina, reins;

Because the corner store will stock anything you want
and the produce is cheaper and better and comes from
a local garden where all the bugs have an understanding;

Because ColorChrome is still stored in someone's garage
and on the door of La Misión una Visión is overheard
while the people paint The Constitution into Acts of Art;

Because art isn't a fantasy on 24th Street
and the boleros and beat box intertwine and harmonize
despite themselves and teknopop parrots dance La Guacamaya;

Because busses chug a grime on the windows
which screens out the decay into a magical hope
for a sweet breath, sweet life, sweet remembrance;

Because charros murmur of horses en la madrugada
and a mother's hands grind into la masa
and many tongues huddle inside the mouth of the Mission;

Because food is the universal language
and everyone knows the cost, curanderos
on the corners sell lilies and cure cuando quiera;

Because even though the blanched walk through
the lives that seem strewn here, they come away
with the seeds in their cuffs, they eat their words;

Because La Palabra is the only currency
and the Super Mercado of the empty aisle or alley
is where a treasury is founded on what others leave behind;

Because you leave behind, like a husk of dung
beetle coming anew, all those webs and pupae
puddlings, and everyone's an extinct butterfly, rediscovered;

Because you uncover the unknown self
you knew all along at your neighborhood dive
where every breath is one and the hips, El Mundo;

Because every head's a mundo, every eye, a
telescope, everyone sees what's coming down:
the change is going to come because it's already here.



Lorna Dee Cervantes
5/4/09

--------------------------
Please join Mission17 Gallery & BARGE at a special reading held in conjunction with the exhibit "17 Reasons Why," an ongoing residency exploring the cultural politics of the Mission district, hosted by David Buuck & BARGE. Come for prose, poetry, & conversation-- hope to see you there!

Michelle Tea (*Valencia*)
Alejandro Murguía (*This War Called Love*)
Lorna Dee Cervantes (*Drive*)

Saturday May 9, 4-6 pm
Mission17 Gallery
2111 Mission Street @ 17th, 4th Floor

mission17.org
buuckbarge.wordpress.com

--------------------------

BARGE - The Bay Area Research Group in Enviro-aesthetics - was started by David Buuck in 2003. BARGE has organized several (de)tours around the Bay Area, investigating regional sites & spaces that are underrepresented & overlooked in more conventional touristic, commercial, & socio-political notions of place & public space. See davidbuuck.com/barge for more information.

"People's Park Reunion"

People's Park Reunion



Welcome home.
Some of us never came back.
We caught a star (a missed mantra),
a one-way ticket
to delirium. This is what
all falls out
when you shake it,
what jingles away
when you empty the rainbow.
Come here, Jingle Jangle
Man. Let the good times roll.
And all the ones who did
their part, they're walking
around with a shopping cart
and it all comes marching home.



Lorna Dee Cervantes
4/17/09