“Monserrat, that’s French, right?”
My dad was born somewhere in Cuba to a huge, loving family.
No, scratch that.
His parents were both dead before he was five
And he was raised by a loving uncle.
No, scratch that.
My father’s parents were dead and he was a slave, forced to work in the fields
With the other unfortunate Cuban boys.
One day, he escaped to a nearby village to the north.
The mayor took pity on him and the community raised him like their own son.
Or so I am told.

“Monserrat – Isn’t that French?”
Thank God my dad wouldn’t let me learn Spanish
So I could understand the secrets passing between my parents
Right in front of me.
Thank God I can’t write a beautiful bilingual love poem
And exponentially increase my chances of getting laid
By some Latina hottie.
No, Spanish would not have been helpful at all.
When I go to Lottaburger, I might actually get the very same burger I ordered.
I might have slept through Spanish 101 instead of getting my ass kicked by French 101.
“Ohhhh, Andre Monserrat, eh?” said my merciless French professor.
“Don’t think you won’t have to work in my class, because monsieur, I’m going to make sure you work.”
So for a semester I Je vaied, I accent agued, I com ci com caed.
But, folks, my parents could have named me Fred Astaire
And I’d still be a skinny white boy who can’t dance.
In short, Je ne parle pas Francais! Comprende?
Naming an Hispanic kid “Andre Monserrat” is just plain cruel and unusual.
It’s like naming someone Hans Olafson and telling him he’s not Norwegian!

Like I said, my father was raised as a community service project in some nameless Cuban village.
The country lavished opportunities on him like the generous uncle he fabricated to hide the truth.
Many years later, he found himself as one of Castro’s bodyguards.
Standing behind the little dictator in his booth at the baseball game,
My father thought, “I worked so hard for this?
I trained for this?
I bear an automatic weapon to protect this man?
I smell treachery on him
I am so close and he trusts me implicitly.
I am so close and his eyes are fixed on the batter.
I could end him here.”
But then there would have been no Andre.
My dad did not assassinate Castro.
Instead we have a missile crisis and Elian.
Instead we have one more poem.

“Monserrat, like the island?”
That was cool for about three months because of that Beach Boys song:
“Martinique, that Montserrat mystique.”
Oh baby, yeah that’s my island all right.
Everyone there speaks French, the language of love.
On my island, we reach up and squeeze the sun to make Mai Tais
Which we drink all day long.
But last I checked there was a big volcano ejaculating all over the jungle
Straight up on the Pompeii tip
While a bunch of Rasta-looking guys ran screaming past the CNN camera crew.
Folks, that is not a piece of real estate I want to have anything to do with.

So my dad bided his time.
Let Castro give him an education.
Let Castro groom him to step into a place of power.
Let Castro send him to East Germany to study with all the other promising young Cuban men.
Now was his chance.
But there was a wall.
Castro was far away; he may as well have been on the moon,
But there was a wall.
He pressed against it to feel the warm promise glowing from the other side,
But there was a wall.
Through shrewd dealings and whispers through cracks, he made friends on the West side.
The appropriate documents were created and placed in my father’s hands.
If this were a Jerry Bruckheimer flick, there would have been searchlights and a suspicious commandant at the gate.
If this were a Jerry Bruckheimer flick, a sniper would have accidentally put a bullet through the head of my dad’s best friend as he happened to step in front of him at the proper dramatic moment.
But this actually happened and my dad silently passed through the Berlin Wall like the last gasp of air fleeing a closing tomb.

We used to live in Mexico, when I was very young.
In Mexico we had a mansion, shiny cars and servants.
What were Mexicans for if not to cut our lawn, cook our food, and wash our clothes?
Walt Disney taught me not to question.
I mean, Goofy is a dog and Pluto is a dog,
But when Goofy throws a stick, Pluto goes running after it
And what is up with that?
But clearly one wears a collar while the other does not.
That is an important difference.
Yes, I was justified in looking down on the poor Mexican beggars on the corner
While I rode around the neighborhood on my Fisher Price big wheel.
They were to be pitied, even though there was more culture on that street corner than I would see in my home my entire life.

When my father was awarded citizenship, the USA asked him,
“Alfredo, by what name shall we know you?”
In Cuba, everyone had like 15 last names.
In America, if you had a name like
Alfredo Rodriguez Monserrat Ramos Bauta,
It made it difficult to fill out the Columbia House Music Club membership card.
He had been going by Rodriguez, but he picked Monserrat so his future children would not be discriminated against.
“Monserrat, that’s French, right?”
In America, it will only take you a short while to become a citizen,
But it will take the rest of your life before they’ll let you live here.
So my father found out.
My dad thought he could become a Spanish teacher
Until he discovered you had to take 100 tests in English
To prove how well you knew Spanish.
Then he thought he could become a lawyer
And perhaps fight against discrimination.
But you had to take 100 tests in English
To prove you knew what discrimination was.
Later he got involved in computers.
The computer didn’t care what language he spoke.

“Monserrat – That’s like a movie star name!”
My sister is white as Britney Spears on the outside
But black as Moesha on the inside.
She may act black, but her kids are black.
Mostly black.
My niece Dominique may begin to question
Why she is not as light as Mommy
Or as dark as Daddy
And she may ask me
“Uncle Andre, what am I?”
Am I qualified to answer? What am I?
A Gringo Cuban American? A Gringican?
Hispanic boy whitewashed in Ohio?
No one told me what I was.
My family legacy is a scrapbook of stolen newspaper clippings,
Pasted together in a way that is aesthetic and perhaps even historical.
No one passed me a flame to keep lit.
No one handed me a golden flask filled with the echoes of ten generations, or five or even one.
How will I account for these things?
Even if I cannot answer these questions, I can still answer my niece.
I will not say, “You are bi-racial.”
I will not say, “You are an amalgam of Cuban, Finn, and African American.”
I will not say, “Your heritage is lost forever so shut up and finish your Coca-Cola.”
I will not say, “Your identity is bound up in varying quantities of melanin, and you better get it sorted out quickly.”
I will say to her, “You are beautiful. Go be beautiful.”

My reflection got a new girlfriend so it’s not around in the morning to help me shave.
My appetite left me ’cause of my lack of taste.
My shadow is at the cleaner’s and my memory is in the shop.
My heart won’t return my calls
And my soul is on tour with Kurt Cobain.
I remember how he looked out at me from the cover of Rolling Stone:
Staring down a train and he wouldn’t step off the tracks.
I’m feeling empty as MTV.
My ribs are like a storm drain catching the occasional used up dream.
I’m afraid to have any of my own dreams,
Presently being so insubstantial.
Any kind of hope in my chest would carry me into the sky
On lazy warm currents of yesterdays long gone by.
No, I shall remain careful and earthbound,
stitching together a new shadow from old newspapers,
a tattered silhouette of personal ads dragging behind me
as I go a-questing for my recently departed parts.

Well, now isn’t this a sight?
I should have investigated the pool hall straight away,
but I was feeling optimistic.
There’s my reflection, bright with the stolen light of its new girlfriend.
Appetite’s over there turning a plate of barbeque wings into bones to fence the graveyard where tiny ideas go.
At the pool table, my heart is arguing with my memory,
Cue sticks raised like green felt jousters.
Heart says, “Linda Lee was watermelon on the hottest summer’s day.”
“I can’t abide such crazy talk,” says Memory. “She was as worthless as Ray Charles at a peepshow!”
On the bar is a telegram from my soul:
STILL ON TOUR. STOP. KURT SAYS “HI.” STOP.
THIS TRAIN IS THE ONLY WAY TO FLY. STOP.

This is the world and I cannot hold it
Like a mother holds a child
Like a lover holds time
I better try grabbing onto the rings of Saturn
Before I try to hold a world
Spinning fast enough to hold us to the ground
Giving our hopes stunted wings
Pulling the sand through the hourglass
With a world spinning so fast you’d think there’d be a roaring wind
And there is, but we’ve got the volume down so low
That mother’s crying cannot be heard over the rustle of father’s newspaper
But I hear the wind
It sounds like I’m jet skiing the slipstream of a 767 en route to the cover of Time Magazine
It sounds like I’m showering in Niagra Falls, but I never get clean.
Like eyes that can’t bear to meet.
Like my small hands trying to catch you before you fall.
It sounds like the breath I take before saying “I think I see God.”
In college, the cafeteria ladies thought I was Jesus
And made sure I got the hot rolls
But they didn’t see me that night when I was so drunk
And the door was locked
And she was just right there
And I made such a mistake
I woke up with the room spinning, the world spinning.
My friends and I swaggered through our college lives
Immortal. We would never say good-bye.
But then a wind started to pick up the leaves, our plans, and our time
Into a swirling dance
Our feet were heavy
And our hands were so small
The world spun faster
Through the endless cornfields of Greencastle, Indiana
Through the deceptive peace of Albany, New York
Broken by a ringing phone.
When I answered
I heard a voice, once so calm,
Breaking like old violin strings
as it told me a horrible lie.
Neal, who was beautiful;
Neal, who had composed music from some dream country I could not even look upon,
Had not made it out of the woods
Somewhere he lay pale and still
Bathed in silent white light.
The secret was out:
One of us was mortal
One of us would only live in photographs and “remember when”
And I realized that none of us were out of the woods yet.
I’m knocking on Heaven’s door
I’m out here with a list of questions that all start with “Why…”
Why doesn’t everyone see You?
Why can’t my hands be bigger?
Why did love and lonliness both have her face?
Why did the phone have to ring that day?
The world spun through Albuquerque, New Mexico
To a house big enough for our silence.
Again, a ringing phone.
I got the call that explained, at the end, my grandmother said she could see Jesus
Or maybe it was her favorite grandchild whose voice she’d never hear again
My wife came home and stood at the opposite end of the room
a thousand miles away
Torn between the bitter chill of our dying marriage
And my warm sobbing for my grandmother who was dead
She compromised with a hand on my shoulder
And the world spun faster
It spins through the girl ahead of me in the checkout line who is the love of my life, but neither of us will ever know it.
It spins through the man who sleeps in the alley so I can waste money on a hamburger I didn’t really want.
It spins through that call I should have made weeks ago to a phone that will never ring again.
It spins through my arrogance and my self-righteousness and my small, small hands.
I’m sorry I could not catch you.
My friends and I used to say “Good-bye”
Now it’s just “Don’t die.”

One morning I woke to find myself pressed against what at first appeared to be a giant pink walrus.
Strangely enough, it had tattoos, just like my girlfriend, except they were smeared and stretched like Sunday comics on silly putty.
Blue eyes suddenly blinked out at me from deep inside the wrinkled vastness and an enormous belch erupted from the creature.
Great Googly Moogly! It WAS my girlfriend!
I staggered into the kitchen to find that the second coming of Colonel Sanders had indeed occurred sometime in the middle of the night and every scrap of food had been raptured away.
Even the dog food was gone.
Come to think of it, I never did see little Sparky again.
But all thoughts fled my mind as I turned to face the lumbering colossus that was my girlfriend, now wedged inside the kitchen door.
She says to me,
“I know my belly’s got more steps than an Aztec ziggurat, so I’ll understand if you don’t want me anymore.”
Time stood still as I had an emergency group huddle in my brain to prepare for what was sure to be the most loquacious, magnanimous lie ever to fly from my lips.
She was huge any way you looked at it, especially from behind.
She looked as though Madam Tussaud and R. K. Sloane had collaborated on a wax sculpture of Dom Deluise, Luciano Pavorati, and Orson Welles all diving for the last bit of pimento loaf during a Star Trek transporter accident.
She was gargantuan, she was Brobdignagian, she was…she was…beautiful.
Quietly, inexplicably, it happened.
I had considered the well-endowed woman before, but not one so… uniformly endowed.
A newly-wakened hunger scorched through my loins as I said,
“Oh, no, baby, I like it like that!”
And not only that but,
“I want to play Jaque Coustaeu to your Marianas Trench!
I want to burn all the maps and be the new cartographer of your Grand Canyon!”
And from that moment on, our relationship began to expand in new dimensions.
Did you know that just about anything you could possibly need to make love to a tub of human flesh is readily available on the Internet?
A coal miner’s helmet and a wetsuit, for example.
Use your imagination.
Now we do all our clothes shopping at Wilderness Outfitters.
She holds up a slate blue Coleman 2-person tent and I say,
“It goes with your eyes, sexy.”
She buys two plus a tight red 1-man pup tent for those special occasions.
On the way home we pass AJ’s Construction Supply and she gazes longingly at the Caterpillar D400E Series II dump truck.
“Some day, princess, but you’re not quite there yet. Until then, my Ford Superduty will have to do.”
Oh, I adore my little mountain of love and I’ll do anything to make her happy. And she responds in kind.
Since I’m a Star Wars fan, we’ve worked this extra kink into our relationship.
Late at night, when I’m nestled in her labyrinthine folds,
I whisper, “Say it, baby. Say it!”
And she replies, “Bo shu da, ah yis cabba Wookiee.”
Oh, yeah!
One night we’re watching the Discovery Channel,
a special on the mating habits of blue whales.
It’s not even half way through when she slides her flipper up my thigh.
Time to break out the Crisco!
Oh, I agree, it’s not for everyone.
Like the call of Mt. Everest: many hear it, but few respond.
Only a chosen handful have a hankering to sit down to this all-you-can-eat love buffet.
Few men ever experience the pleasures to be had, elbow deep in his lover’s capacious embrace.
Few men will have their courage tested by the threat of a back brace or even a full body cast when one night she wants to have things her way.
But I am such a man.

Yes, officer, I am now aware that I was 10 miles over the posted speed limit.
It’s just plain cruel to hang such a staggering sunset on yon horizon
And not expect a man’s heart to race toward it, vehicle in tow.
Now I suppose you’re fixing to run my license and have a peek at my record.
Allow me a disclaimer, a few soft words of explanation
That will get our relationship off to a pleasant start.
The parking tickets – well, I can’t deny those.
Though, I know you’ll raise an eyebrow at the library fine.
Yes, it is true: I did check out the entire collection of Sumerian mythology,
Some 57 odd books, from Taylor Memorial, and yes, I never returned them.
Three weeks is hardly adequate time to contemplate the Nam-Shub of Enkidu,
Wouldn’t you agree?
And I’m sure the death mark placed on me by the Turkish Government is on file.
You can’t take a piss in that country without committing some blasphemy or another.
Tucamcari?
Let me ask you something:
Were you even aware of such a smudge on the map before consulting my record?
No, I didn’t think so.
I’m sure no one misses it – I sure don’t.
Let them build an outlet mall or something there.
Plenty of space for it now.
“Who is Charlene Friday?”
Well, once upon a time, I would have said she was my wife.
Nowadays, that’s just a word in the dictionary between “Friendship” and “Friction.”
I can see where you’re going with this, officer.
You could stand there playing priest to my confessor until the shadows tuck in the mountains and kiss them goodnight,
But let me save you the trouble:
I am a guilty man.
But not for anything on your little computer screen.
If you have a moment, I can let you peruse the Right and True account of my life,
Careful and leather-bound,
Right here in the glove compartment.
Fear not!
I am unarmed,
Save for my wicked, wicked tongue.
Here:
I rescued a princess from a faraway tower, but put her in another tower closer to me.
I had a basket of apples, but picked another from my neighbor’s tree.
I discovered a clear mountain stream and kept it a secret.
I let an entire summer slide past my window without so much as a glance at it.
I had a dream about a net of stars and did not write a poem about it.
Holy music swelled in my chest, yet I did not sing.
I pushed a child.
I laughed at a friend.
But these are all essentially victimless crimes,
Pedestrian cruelties available to common souls,
Loose change in the coat pockets of a more hideous transgression.
All victimless crimes.
I am a villain, true, but officer, please show me the innocent.

I stole the man’s tongue, but I didn’t know he was crazy.
I’ve got to get it back to him before I start believing what it’s telling me.
The tongue, I mean –
It sits there on the back of the toilet next to the Kleenex box
and judges me.
It tells me that if I don’t floss every single day,
the love of my life will NOT reach for the same book as I do
and we won’t meet at the library, or anywhere else.
When I wake up in the morning,
there is a wet spot on my pillow,
a slug-like saliva trail.
Yet the tongue is still perched on the toilet.
It comments on my choice of clothing,
flopping around, spattering spit.
It says I must not think much of myself
to dress the way I do.
When I get back from work,
I find the keyboard and mouse covered in a pasty white film.
My in-box is full of outraged responses.
I’ve got to give it back,
but I know the man it going to slit my throat if he finds out
where his tongue has been!
No, I better just keep it.
I better…no, no it’s too awful.
But I must.
I better eat it.

You may argue that the hardest part of leaving
Is simply that:
Leaving.
But it’s the taking that’s got me.
What stays and what comes with?
The smokes, certainly, and the football.
But what about this picture of the frozen summer
Before I knew which way the wind would blow.
Do I want that?
It is small, but heavy as stolen candy.
Extracting the picture, I find the frame
Much lighter.
The road will bring other pictures.
Taking and Leaving -
Sleepers beneath the same covers
Slipping away
As the sun defines the wrinkled landscape of
A new day.

Propped against a post in the keen autumn air,
I watch ten trains slide by
Too quickly,
And one week-long train of hard-boiled Mondays.
As I light each cigarette
I give it a name.
Lungs clutch the smoke
Then let it go
Let it go
Let it go

The day comes in a nondescript package.
I put my money down, spin the compass
And escape on gasoline wings.
My engine passes into dusk
With the sound of a door
Closing slowly on the laughter of friends.
I am heading for the sun’s embrace
Where new hands will raise a glass of amber,
Even as the circle of the moon
Breaks on the mountains
Behind me.

It was about two o’clock in the hot afternoon
When Willum McCall stopped working
And stretched his back,
Standing in the middle of his newly-tilled field.
He leaned heavily on his hoe,
His thick fingers familiar with the wooden texture
That had rubbed calluses into his palms.
The worn head of the hoe sunk
Into the fresh ground like a metal tooth,
Touching the soil with a simple intimacy
The machines would never learn.
McCall stood there,
An anachronism from a discarded time.
The sun baked down on him,
A strange wizened tree of tanned bark
And weathered bone
That had sprouted from the ground
Some fifty years before.
He rested his chin of chaff and stubble
Between knuckles that knew work.
He regarded the leisurely probings
Of an earthworm
Tasting the airy blue infinity
Above its moist netherworldly home.
Its soft undulations were a beckoning finger
Promising a day when the earth
Would need to reclaim an old tree.
Far away,
A suit peering out of a television set
Announced the arrival of an information superhighway.
Willum reached inside a pocket in his
Tired blue overalls,
Producing a handkerchief which had long since forgotten
That it was ever red.
He wiped away the moisture
That collected in the ridges of his brow.
As he did this,
His hand passed across his vision.
He peered at it anew –
A peculiar grasping device found among the furrows.
Willum thought it strange that a boy’s hand
Should look so etched and chewed,
But then he recalled that fifty years
Could do such things to a boy’s hand.
Somewhere else
A strand of fiber optic cable
Transmitted the digitally compressed cursing
Of mutual gunfire,
An echo of embattlement from the other side of the world.
Willum took in the heady breath
Of the fields
And it was almost like the very first time
When the scent is palpable and weighty,
Filling the lungs with dark brown matter.

The smell invoked latent wonder.
For a moment, the small ridges of earth
Became the skin of an alien landscape,
Concealing a womb bundling green promise.
The sun, a white globe hung inexplicably in the sky,
Was as though newly lit.
It communed in a secret tongue,
Fiery and soft,
With the invisible congregation of
Form within formlessness.
“You shall be grass,” it said.
“You shall be trees, fields; a vibrant intensity!”
For a moment, Willum McCall stood in the nexus of Creation.
The nervous warble of birds
Interrupted the sun and
Chased away Willum’s thoughts.
Above,
A faint moaning announced the progress of an airliner
Sliding smugly along the sky.
The farmer looked back down at the rows he had made.
He thought of ripe green and sun-touched yellow.
In a local supermarket,
An old woman was screaming
That the shine on apples had been
Synthetically reproduced.
Soon it would be not only the shine,
But the apple as well.
Then God would be out of a job.
Willum blinked away his reverie,
Glancing at his father’s watch
(Now his watch)
On his father’s arm
(Now his arm)
And turned the hoe in his grip.
As he bent into his work,
Willum appeared in the sensory array
Of a military spy satellite,
Passing above in high orbit.
Matching no signatures in the
Computer’s bank of templates,
He was ignored
As though he were part of the field.
Willum McCall’s hands worked
The tool of wood and metal,
Changing the earth.

(for Troy and the Superhighway)

Summoned from sleep
We have arrived
Supernovas in our eyes
Skating down purple lightning
The scroll of the sky unrolls and we read out our names written in fire
The outsiders flee as new stars define the constellation of Boom
Vinyl platters cut the night, bringing back the mother tongue
Shouting the lullaby of candy light
Swimming through the floor to our secret grotto of noise
Shadows break through the light and twist
We are the shadows
We are the light
If you could see with the eyes of the velvet butterfly
Eyes on each wing, always seeking the sky
Forever in motion
You could see us
Our sweat fills the fountain
Drink – it is sweet – it is life
Our bread is bass
Our wine is light
And the bass comes like a comet
We grab its tail and ride
And the bass comes like the trumpet of war
Our dance is a battle to save our childhood
The bass blows out from our bellies
Swelling out the walls
Unlocking doors
We blur through each other
We melt into the sky
And rain down on upturned faces
And the bass comes like a herd of psychedelic llamas
Blowing us to the floor
And the bass comes like a carpet ten feet deep
We drown, laughing
We are an avalanche of purple
Rushing up the walls
Painting a mad mural, a phantom landscape of electronic ghosts
We know the taste of every color
We know the name of every star
We know the shape of every note
But we do not know peace
The bass won’t let the children sleep
No, we do not know peace
Not yet

Cathy and I sell the house and I see her for the last time.

I get my nipple pierced.