Five Poems

Five Poems- Francisco Letelier

Before The Thunder

Before the thunder
There were voices
Before the smoke
Before the tide
There were voices rising

Thunder
Now all through the old lands
Thunder shaking
Night winds howling

Do not rise thinking
It is the first time
There were voices singing in the fire
Before time was measured

From the cradle of our world
Out of history and scripture

Long before the ships
There was dirt and stone
No one hunted in the kings forest but the few
There was dirt and stone
The moon would roundly rise to
circles and hardened hands

Hands which cut the trees
Hand which shaped the ships dark ribs
Which coiled hemp and caught the wind
Caught the wind across the water

Hands for chains and gold
New world waiting for the voices
That will claim it.
Long before the jazz came
hip hopping across the floor, hardened hands beat chains around ankles and wrists
Long before quarters in my pocket
Jingled like 50 occupied States
Long before slot machines
A world of songs and names
Nation thundering
In rivers and distances
Crisscrossed by travelers and trader

Before the flag, the hands of women sewing
Before the melting pot
Before the colony
Before the relocation
Before the west was imagined
Before California was golden
Before the bus went west
Cobblestones and furrowed earth

Within the white palace
It is not the children of Washington,
not the children of Jefferson
Not the children of the singing land
It is not the country
Not the heart
Not the new deal
Not the liberty bell

It belongs to you.
The stars which cover you at night
make a shelter for your dreams
Waving bravely
Can you see,
the rockets glare was never
meant to blind your eyes.

My lucky charms
Reverberate through time
We the people
Can write other declarations

Do not rise thinking
It is the first time
There were voices singing in the fire
Before time was measured

Before the thunder
There were voices
Before the smoke
Before the tide
There were voices rising.


The Woods

Little fairy children laugh in the woods
And Mother Manzanita spreads large arms over them
But here little boys go to sleep in squalor
In a nest they never chose
Old stones burnt by wood fires
Carry the imprint of weavers hands and prayers
But fumes from diesel and nitrate operations
Seep in to sleepers dreams and grow mutated nodes

Laughter is echoing in my dreams and dappled glens
the filtered sunlight seem cruel
For those who are dumb, deaf and blind
Hunger is not a choice
some are blinder than those whose eyes
grow cataracts in toxic fumes
For the money that it takes to buy a clean apple
Others give a family wheat and tea
A belly full is all you need when there is no possibility of tomorrow

Simply living in the miracle of another day
But a halting cutting breath can be a curse
Wishing peace for those who inherit parched earth
Is not enough
These are the little gods
Tattered and living on the street
They never learn the way of OM and never see the trees

Others make a home where fruit grows ripe
and spoils on the ground

Far away is long away
Airline tickets cost a life of back breaking work
There is no return home
I speak your language and share your streets
But have no map out of the maze

Laughter echoes bouncing off the concrete
A loving man lays his pregnant wife to sleep
On a pallet of cardboard
Down the street
Smartly dressed
Others enter into a scented room
And go within


Those I follow

Those I follow do not always dress in white,
they get dirty; hands calloused
menial and arduous,
spinning and carrying.
Those I follow only sometimes, breathe deeply
the shallow breaths which surround the more prolonged ones
are enough,
to rise above the dust on the streets
and make the world

Abandoning one occupying the other, we get lost
The mind and heart are not separate homes
follow both trails, feel at last
allowed to shine
cleverly crafted, after hard thinking
allowed to shine, outlasting, everlasting,
the incessant churn of history and magazine.

Brilliant child of life, earth citizen,
exercise the right,
Shine Singingly
withering the layers, the encasements
wail away the wrappings
shine
Do not sit in this
brief minute of history
without having your case heard,
shine

Freed to wander continents,
Pulsing and alive despite the leaders laws
Incorporate behind a cloud, make it rain
Nothing wrong if the bell rings
brilliant coins dance as
anklestrail small currents in the cracks.

Shine
coming in the years of song,
makes the flowers bloom
apple pie, the flag
Mineral antelopes – geysers, thundering on the plains
working routes across the minds of the nation
sending real words of human intelligence
we are the real and the strong
beautiful for all our songs, we are the rising wave of grain.

Birth

I was born in a crystal spring,
given tar to drink.
Broken and forged anew
Born into a treaty
so we may be like them,
maybe like them

Born out of a now silent assembly line
Born into a life where I would remain
Quite, safely faceless
Born into a history where all the best have disappeared into deep pockets.

Born in a hard place of mountains and stone
Never meant to be alive
Number, cypherstitous phantom
Born into a seething rage, could not stand in silence
Could not breathe deep enough
Could not hear the jingles
Over sounds of crushing bones.

Despite the turning tide of chanting
Despite the hundred monkeys
Rising up in me, the only divinity
I can buy or touch or eat,

No one planned I might be useful
Nobody thought I could sing
Born in a war which swallows tongues and days

Born in the middle of the freeway
Helicopters racing alongside
Pulled over as I caught my first breath
raging and tattered on the street
Born following a missile across the sky
Born right along the fire,
which eats the children's bread.

Born behind the close door
Shaped into the murmur of waves
Trapped under laws and concrete
Tremoring out between the tides,
floating endless ocean
feeding on microscopic flotsam.

Born a tumbled jewel
Swirling sand and grit
Born the pearl
Encased and appointed
in stubborn beauty.


Inside Where Our Songs Hide

Inside the inside where our songs hide
Everyone inherits a world they did not choose
History weighs on rough elbows
water carriers, rock breakers
In the whistling Doppler
children huddle
telling stories in the dark
Sitting underneath the heavy furniture
You might remember listening for the footsteps
That make you hold your breath
Sshhhhhhhhhhh
They’re coming for grandfather
Even though his ghost abandoned the rubble many years ago
Everyone inherits a world they did not choose,

Inside, all of us carry the children
Little faces and hands singing
History is a mother
leaving many at the doorsteps of strangers
who do not answer.
High barriers and broken lines
Where our songs hide
It’s a small world after all.
Late summer sidewalks echo games
names written
in colored chalk on the streets
cousins dancing in the brilliant light of day
we are there, raining down, far away,
I win, you win, its a draw
You lose I lose we all lose
Changelings all
Dropped into uncomfortable beds
The night light burnt out long ago

In the dark you can hear bulldozers and machines
Building a careful future of safety and barriers
The children meet undercover
exchanging curls and bread, olives and grapes
nothing stops the inside
inside where our songs hide
We are carrying the children
in a vessel of embers

Inside the songs born in children
We are gathered in a circle
knit tightly now around the earth.
Voices and communication devices
instantly replaying vowels and notes

Looking for us
So that we might let them know
It’s all right now
Go ahead
The dead have been laid to rest
Memories guarded and honored
Wall torn down
No one will come in the dark
Go ahead bring it up from the inside
Of the inside
Go ahead and sing.



On the edge

My love
the winds are stronger now
Twisting desert sands howl in the dark
there are clouds of smoke and dust.
On the edge of the parched lands
my love,
the fields are on fire.
There are people out there
searching for
a way away.
The winds are stronger now,
in this place of roaring winds
I am so small I can barely be seen.
How can this great love be inside me?
I am one grain of sand
a secret twisting universe,
the smaller you become, the larger the world.
Distance fills things and I wander through a galaxy
Of fires and unmade beds

In the movement of trucks
In the swirling of soldiers, I am a stray dog living on the edge.
My heart is small and it fills with great wonder,
inside the ruins I hear children calling out,
I hear laughter.


Turning

Along the way
When we turn towards the hard place,
where there is no road and things get hard,
small lights appear,
begin a crossing of synapses and rivers
Sparks flash, embers glow

Looking down at our hands along wrists and forearms
Capillaries and veins pulse with pilgrimage
Things set into movement
Magnetized, nano impulses, micro fibers twitch twitch
Listening to the grace, responding from the sleep of hibernation

Along the way
walking towards the places we are needed
The wind picks up, small electrical currents form
Ion charged polarities are exchanged
Almost orphaned, long forgotten limbs
Awaken within us

The dust of our footprints is stirred up,
starts making trouble
Spreading spores and pollen
Mud bones and sex
Bees start buzzing
Car alarms going off in Doppler waves as we pass

The painful intelligence we carry
Working, churning, unfolding like a dandelion
spreading spores and pollen
Grasping onto birdsongs, moths, a sudden wind
Hitchhiker riding in on the daily grind

Along the way
Small things coalesce and something changes
The enchantment of walking towards the territory of untamed intelligence
Imagining a better place and getting busy
Crossing borders, a gypsy gene, elusive and interplanetary
It can enter anywhere

It knows what to do,
Along the way it shows us how
Carrying chains and crack and histories pain
With fire and lightning,
With physics and ordering systems
known and unknown

In the simple places, in the castles
Along the way
it comes to us
Stirred up
where there is no road and things get hard,
Sparks flash, embers glow
It can enter anywhere
Along the way it shows us what to do.

Francisco Letelier