Victor Hernández Cruz

Through the Victorians spinning a wool of music the gang in the breeze Boys and girls headed toward the park No longer in my view Wondering now what they doing How they divide Hold hands Lay on benches Breathe Dolores park green waving mounds where downtown looks like you could stretch and scratch it You can see the water smaller the other side connected with the bay bridge from this angle Appears as a cowboy rope Lasso Back to the park the across the street is windows Suggest Eyes which could have been looking at savannahs / stretches had it not been for transportation The city settling Up from planks and kerosense lamps Rugged Small vocabularies full of passion Found a gold sliver on the way to my fruits Raise the air fair Let the news out Rush like Hawaiian beer The big radio of the teenagers comes again looking through the curtain Look them wasted Clothes wrinkled Eyes fresh like just arrived mushrooms they move to the interior of the Mission where they hang out / generations on the streets

To me myself them and others always then and now that day we was flying through above Atlantic Ocean clouds the plane and the plan O also plain language plano feet or face was in perfect harmonious bolero wavy plena to someplace a few miles away from heaven this gathered from the way the adults poke their eyes out from their natural sockets   More here in the United States the actual splendour of big cities disfigures your face even more than imagining its sweetness so much that you can’t   taste yourself the way you taste yourself when the sun shines on through your stomach   All you knew was that the birds fly with you in them too   All you knew was miles of green road eating you   One year that comes and another one that splits that’s the way the jingle puts it one December made a print in your mind   And the next December the passion and excitement the coconut rice and Eisenhower who was President of the United States used to come to our parties and sit inside the television set and I began to see paths in the wall by way of cracks how would this be interpreted Also the cracks made a perfect bear   this must be the Life of skidsofrenos without any breaks I thought I could take a small bike that I had and go exploring through the next apartment after I took the room or the road   When I told Mom she said Qué confusión so many questions   back in Aguas Buenas the water was clear and here there is no guava   They can keep Puerto Rico just give us the guava of independence   depending on no bodies   tortures dreams of the past or future within the present State no State ever of things She loves that fruit the best    Assemblage yourself for the rum- ble on Avenue D against the Sportsman we gonna kick them off the earth yet see them floating down the East River   the street was noisy and full of jumping bodies moving somewhere   One quiet afternoon the President of one gang fought the President of another gang and the afternoon changed nature with voices of O man git him Roach fought Roach fought   One of the presidents was named Roach and he fought and the other guy fought from the middle of the block to the corner and another person who was not part of the tussle kept saying Roach fight Roach fought Roach fight Roach is in it Roach is the one the one is Roach It is Roach do it Roach   Roach it is   Roach jumped up he threw him down   heat sweating glands Roach   is out he came out and is into a tumbao with Look Roach   Tropical serenity atop hammock and eating Bacalao ala Española and if news of Ponce de Leon reaches here   That he is looking for the Fountain of Youth   say just be tranquil take a bath you smell like Manhattan sewers if you get drunk don’t bite your eyes   You cannot find a plane to go back to that plane   The fight kept moving up the avenue and they fought and fought till they went over the horizon We have learned the greatest lesson in geography as we moved along through space at 29 thousand feet   eating air going to the next age over   or under or beyond   What it could have been like Sticking it into her like a root the idea that she can go back and once again feel happy that she can go to big cabaret dancing in Santurce Appreciate   the aroma of strangers   That is what it says in the Bible the one translated by the maniacs from the land where the Papaya grows to its full size like a basketball In the new landscape you can see the word escape into your roots when they are riding well and it feels hot like you into   the center   fabricating thru air motions of mountains of motional emotion scribbling   it takes a lot of concentration to move your nerves like that   Slow up within the jet   within the slow propellers of the 50’s   Hold up a second there has been a change of space but everything remains the same angles on your life   your destiny   You do your claves on the paper I will read you your secrets   Civilization smells so different within the iron trees   Sivilessensation   spread yourself out of it listen to the beat abnormalize yourself compa.