Where do I come from/my footsteps

Covered by snow white dumbo

And tinkerbell a 39 cent hamburger

Is one of my parents' fondest

Memories

		Haunt me.

The sky is falling

Only the wind fills her sails/are filled 

With broken English

Sentences/you know what that is?/ Lots of

Blank spaces and notches on a wall

And how did I get this name

What madness flees your rope

This name this river Eder flows 

From a foreign continent to drip

Some wear in the mountains of Ilocos Norte

(And tinkerbell swoops form the mata horn) 

How many how many how many

Times did she curse this name

sewn into the seam

of a bellowing tapestry

in the wind

in the wind

when things that are finished

die

and where will I live

armored asylum with veins

outside of some ware called

home

roads

and hope in every

direction

without knowing the hear

that feasts on belonging/still

the sky is falling.



La Puente

we lived east of east L.A. / La Puente

we were latch key kids / our suburban commandments:

lock the door

don't open to strangers

make sure you turn off the stove

it's hot in L.A. / cook rice

my mother worked / making components

she built the screws that bring you the news

you'll never see her on T.V. / though 

she speaks 4 languages:

Hawaii-pidgen

Haole

wife-speak     mother-speak

she's medicated a lot / my mom / always translating

her favorite drugs are love and jewels

we all shine

			in her eyes

my father delivers the mail / he's a good man

but now he walks through classy neighborhoods / no one talks

to him / he fears loose dogs and people there

he's been attacked / but he's a good man

my brother chuck / is the darkest / living in

the shadow between right and wrong / but together

we threw pinecones at passing cars

our father / kicked more shit outta him than me /

told me I should know better / what does that mean

now the system that puts him on reserve / puts me

on hold / we are equal now

I have another brother / he's an acquaintance

in junior high they called me la rascal

we wrote a lot / our names on walls /

we belonged / outside of walls

my best friend David - his mother still calls

him - I can hear her now -was

into glue at 11 / in juvey by 13 / in jail…he was a man then

I used to give him drugs from college /

I hope he's still alive

David and I and La Bridgett Fletcher

hung out   growing up / for a long time

till race, class, and gender (the design of waste)

bulldozed through our street corner playground

common ground

till shame concealed our black and blues

growing up / for a long time / lost childhood

we began writing in secret

when confession, communion, confirmation

confession

taught us to lie / swallowed up our pure loyalty

growing up / for a long time / lost childhood

friends till

my parents came between their D's and my A's

Ma - the right crowd does not exist /

I look for David and La Bridgett in everyone I know.

#2 ballad off the boom box by theo gonzalvez
elsa's answering machine by fate.
Rec. 10/5/97 @ HYPERLINK mailto:lionden@sfsu.edu...1536 lionden@sfsu.edu…1536.