I DON'T FEEL LIKE DOING ANYTHING

I don't feel like doing anything. Is it the fact that I will be 70 next year that I don't want to do anything other than lie in bed, read and surf the television? I should elect the opposite mentality with my time running short. I should be busy with my many pursuits before I'm sucked into the black hole of death.

I don't want to write. I don't want to exercise. I don't want to hit tennis balls. I don't want to play the guitar. I don't want to do anything but contemplate the sadness and futility that are the essence of our existences.

I observe people going about their business as if they were going to live forever and I want to shout, "You are doomed, fools! You will soon disappear and those who might keep your memory alive will disappear shortly thereafter."

I walk among humanity and I feel like I'm drowning in a sea of anonymity. Not that I desire fortune nor fame. A good fuck usually suffices if I have Viagra in the medicine cabinet. Wining and dining bring a brief relief from the impending grief. My young son and his idealistic delusions and illusions keep me anchored.

There is the life force that keeps one forging forward, but there is something wrong with dreams when reality is ultimately a nightmare.

Must be time for a Xanax. Maybe two weeks in Portugal in the near future will change my perspective. And maybe, just maybe, I will find succor in maybe.

NICANOR PARRA

The mother of a man is gravely ill

He departs in search of a doctor

He cries

In the street he sees his woman accompanied by another man

They are holding hands

He follows them at a short distance

From tree to tree

He cries

Suddenly he encounters a friend from his youth

It has been years since they've seen each other

They pass a bar

They converse and laugh

He leaves to take a piss in the patio

He sees a young woman

It is night

She is washing dishes

He approaches her

He takes her by the waist

They dance a waltz

Together they hit the streets

They laugh

There is an accident

She loses consciousness

He looks for a telephone

He cries

He arrives at a lit house

He asks to use a telephone

Somebody recognizes him

"Stay and have something to eat, hombre!"

No

Where is the telephone

"Eat, hombre! Eat!

You can go later."

He takes a seat and eats

He drinks like a man condemned to death

He laughs

They want him to recite poetry

He recites poetry

He falls asleep beneath a desk

ODE TO THE LIE

Those who live

by the lie

can always turn
to the truth.
But those
who have lived
by the truth,
where do they turn
when they discover
that all their beliefs
were lies?

THE PALM LOUNGE

Whenever I want to return to the essence of Brownsville, I visit the Palm Lounge.

For me, the Palm Lounge is a shrine.

Back in the day Johnny Quiroz ran the joint with his faithful team of Beto, Toque and Servando. We would gathered there for the big fights beamed from Mexico. The burgers were the best and the beer never quit flowing. The bathroom always reminded me of a cantina in Matamoros.

I have gone through periods when I haven't paid my dues. Just like a Catholic who abandons the church for years until one day he finds himself in the Immaculate Conception Cathedral lighting a candle before the statue of St. Jude Thaddeus desperately hoping against hope, I have never abandoned my faith in the Palm Lounge to miraculously restore my faith in my adopted hometown.

The Palm Lounge remains a beautiful woman to me although her bounteous breasts are filled with beer rather than milk.

Drink up!

I GOT SO DRUNK LAST NIGHT

"I got so drunk last night, I nearly lost my mind," sang the poet Langston Hughes. "Drunk some bad liquor that almost made me blind."

A few nights ago I knew the feeling as I stumbled downtown from one bar to another until I deposited myself at El Hueso de Fraile. "Delta" Dave Handelman was playing. His regular appearances have made him downtown's house band. Besides, Dave and I go back to 1977 when he joined me at The Brownsville Herald as my assistant sports editor.

We covered six varsity football teams that fall. We were pitiless in our coverage as it was another disastrous year for the Brownsville public schools. The head football coaches were threatening to kick our asses if we appeared on their campuses, but we remained unrelenting in our criticisms and by the end of the season they were begging for mercy. We relayed to them the Oakland Raiders' owner Al Davis' famous line: "Just win, baby."

When the dust had settled, four head coaches were fired, three in the bloody Thanksgiving Day Massacre. Dave and I laughed all the way to the Palm Lounge where we celebrated yet again that the pen was mightier than the sword.

In 1981 and 1983 Dave coordinated precincts for me in my unsuccessful runs for city commission and then mayor. At my behest, Dave followed me into the BISD where he earned the distinction as Brownsville High's favorite teacher for almost three decades.

I had many thoughts roiling through my besotted brain when I staggered into El Hueso. Sharing abrazos and besos with various patrons, I spied two of my favorite politicians. We covered the usual topics when the subject of the BISD School Board monopolized the conversation.

"I'm only a little bit corrupt," I commenced. "If Zachery Blevins is going to run, then I'm going to run. I've forgotten more about the school district than the comedian will ever know. I remember when 'Mad' Tad Hasse ran against Treasurer David Betancourt and said that he was going to dissolve the office if he won. I'll run on the platform that I'm going to dissolve the board. Our great teachers and students are undermined by a history of greedy board members."

Neither of the politicos opposed my candidacy, but neither did they agree with the no contributions/no compromises approach.

"What's the point of running if you're not committed to winning?" asked one of them. "You're not making any sense."

I wasn't making any sense. I was drunker than shit. No man in his right mind would compete for office these days unless he was totally inebriated. But I was totally inebriated and no better than a stumbling mick looking for a fight in a bar for the pure joy of throwing blows. Winning and losing is, after all, for small minds.

I sat through Dave's set and, as on countless other occasions, he drove me home. By then I had succumbed to personal thoughts and the idea of resurrecting my political career had receded into the deep recesses of my subconscious.

I awoke around ten in the morning, rose, drank a glass of water and swallowed two Excedrins and a Xanax. I retired to bed and slept until three in the afternoon. My noggin no longer ached and I felt relaxed. I took a shower, walked to Cobbleheads and listened to the music on the deck. After a shrimp dinner and two cold beers, my head started to clear.

I recalled my bluster from the previous evening. Hadn't I learned my lesson from two defeats more than 30 years ago? I asked myself. Drinking had clouded my thinking. The sun was shining brightly. I noticed on my way to the bathroom I was walking more sprightly because I had suddenly realized that a 6A Brownsville football team would win the state title before I would ever venture into politics again. In celebration of my salvation and liberation, I stopped at the bar and ordered a shot of tequila.

I WISH MY MOUTH WERE AN ASSHOLE

I wish

my mouth

were an asshole,

so I could

shit out

all the crap

in my head.

TRUMP IS A DISGRACE

John "Weed" Reed is a disgrace.

Maybe Julio Graña is Jesus blessing us with his grace.

Reed brings nothing but hate to the human race.

We need Julio to wipe Reed from politics without a trace.

Reed appeals to our instincts that are the most base.

As a person, he is such a waste.

Everybody knows he's a basket case.

Only a blind mother could love that flaccid face.

A gay blade says Reed lines his panties with lace.

His head is so lumpy that one would think it had been smashed by a mace.

Somebody insisted he finished last in his graduating class as Pace.

Maclovio O'Malley said for Mother's Day he filled with dying flowers a cheap HEB vase.

He has been screwed so many times by the special interests that he is hardly chaste.

He swaggers around as if his two of spades were an ace.

We must rid ourselves on this puppet with haste.

I HAVE A NIGHTMARE

I say to you today, putos y putas, even though we face puro pedo today and tomorrow, I have a nightmare. It is a nightmare deeply rooted in the border nightmare.

I have a nightmare that the Third World Capital of the United States will disappear into the river and we will drown in the true meaning of this creed: "We hold these prejudices to be self-evident, that all men are not created equal."

I have a nightmare that one day on the urine-soaked pavement of downtown, sons of former wetbacks and sons of St. Joseph graduates will cut each other's throats. I have a nightmare that Rancho Viejo, sweltering with the hate of privilege, sweltering with the hate of prosperity, will be transmuted into a pit of mire and misery.

I have a nightmare in which my four sons will leave this god-forsaken hinterland forever. I have a nightmare...I have a nightmare that one day in Harlingen, with its vicious racists, with its mayor from whose lecherous lips drip the words, WHITE IS RIGHT, that one day the little white boys and the little white girls of this corrupt city will be able to join hands with the sons of Nazis and the daughters of Klansmen.

I have a nightmare today...I have a nightmare that one day every Rio Grande Valley town will be wiped from the face of the earth, that the river will slither through our barren midst like a poisonous snake, that everything green will turn brown and that every straight politician will be made crooked.

And the glory of Satan will be revealed and all flesh will become leprous. This is my despair. This is the despair with which I return. With this despair we will be able to dig a grave so deep into which we can heap all the bodies of a forsaken people. With this despair we will be able to transform the faint hopes whispered in a symphony into an ugly cacophony of rage and rancor.

With this despair we will be able to writhe together, bleed together, rot together, stand for destruction together and go to hell together, knowing that we are doomed one dreary day to die together. This will be the day that all of Satan's soldiers will be able to murder and maim with renewed madness.

"My community, tis of thee, acrid land of slavery and poverty, of thee I curse. Land where my ancestors were slaughtered, land of the murderous mobs, from every decaying cadaver, let the death knell sound."

And if this region is to be the ravaged stretches of Armageddon, this despair must come true. So let the death knell sound from the prodigious heights of the LNGs. So let the death knell sound from the immigration death camps. So let the death knell sound from Matamoros and Reynosa with decapitated heads rolling down the Mexican streets.

When we allow the death knell to sound, when we let it sound from Port Isabel to Roma, from every barrio to every brick of our crumbling buildings, we will be able to speed up the day when Satan's bastards, from white trash to dirty brown, from Jesus freaks to devil worshippers, from uncircumcised penises to festering vaginas, to unsheathe their machetes and in the words of La Llorona, weeping for her lost babies, wail, "Dead at last, Dead at last, Great Satan Almighty, we is dead at last."   

HE IS NOT MY PRESIDENT

He is not my president.

He is not our president.

He may be your president--second person singular.

He may be your president--second person plural.

He may be his or her president.

He may be their president.

But he is not my president.

He is not our president.

Never was. Never will be.

He is a hoax.

He is an imposter.

He is racist.

He is a misogynist.

He is a bad person.

He is evil personified.

He believes he can rape women.

He believes he can murder men.

He believes he can commit crimes with impunity.

He skipped the military with a golf injury,

but claimed that John McNair was not a hero.

He is the hero of the KKK.

He is the hero of the Neo-Nazis.

He has vilified African-Americans.

He says Mexicans are rapists.

He says Muslims are terrorists.

He is the devil the Religious Right worship.

He is one of only three impeached presidents.

He sits on a toilet behind his desk.

One day he will not desecrate the office.

He is not my president.

He is not our president.

Never was. Never will be.

History will judge him a disgraceful human being.

May he burn in hell for his many sins. 

KING TUT

King Tut
had to pay
Queen Slut
for a lay.

DOVE PROCLAIMS LOVE

From above

proclaimed a dove:

"Long live love!"

COMPADRES SHOOT SHIT

Estanislao Contreras, the controversial poet of Chicano Fuck Songs, and Maclovio O'Malley, la Voz de los Vatos, stopped at Cobbleheads late Sunday afternoon to listen to Emilio Crixell, Albert Besteiro and the rest of the gang. They weren't disappointed.

Estanislao: Where's that Irish Prick Joe Kenney?

Maclovio: He's probably hanging out with those rednecks who comprise the Bearded Posse. I'm astonished Joe doesn't have a mesquite tree on the property so these descendants of the Texas Rangers would have a convenient limb to lynch a Mexican or two. Those racist bastards ruin Charro Days with their drunken antics. I wish the Brownsville Police would arrest a few of those cocksuckers for public intoxication and throw them in the brig so they could get a taste of their own medicine. I hope they don't feed Joe so much booze that they convince him to celebrate National KKK Day. With Trump inspiring them to new lows, they would probably take a page from La Llorona's sad story and throw a baby into the Rio Grande if the infant were an illegal alien. I'm surprised that Juan Montoya, in true Cheno Cortina fashion, hasn't nailed these Republican reactionaries with some of his choice rhetoric.

Estanislao: I remember when Joe had Checkers Café downtown and The Connectors would accompany Doc Scully and his classic border rendition of Three-Legged Rooster. Those were the days. Matamoros was heaven on earth. It was a haven for fun. I hear there are a few adventurous souls who seek the degenerate joys in the belly of the beast, but I stop at Garcia's for my Viagra and Xanax and that is as daring as I care to be.

Maclovio: It's a shame. Those were the days when boys could be boys. Everything was cheap and good. In our attempt to recapture our former reputation as the New Orleans of the Rio Grande and create our own French Quarter, maybe we should baptize downtown Little Matamoros. I'll eat dinner and drink a bottle of wine on the northside, but if I desire the excitement of old and want to walk the streets, I go downtown. We have a living museum and we should make the revitalization of downtown our number one economic priority. The city commission should force GBIC to invest its millions in downtown instead of wasting the millions of tax dollars pouring our precious bucks down one black hole after another.

Estanislao: GBIC wants to turn Brownsville into a miniature Matamoros with maquiladoras spewing their pollution on our ecological paradise. Is Matamoros a better city as a result of industrialization? No! Hundreds of thousands have come to the border seeking employment, which the industrialists desire in order to keep wages low, but there isn't any work. As a result, there is more poverty and crime in Matamoros than prior to the arrival of the maquilas. GBIC and BCIC should invest in Brownsville's infrastructure and beautify our community. Industry is a loser. Companies come and companies go after they have deposited the incentives that are nothing more than bribes that the executives of these mercenary enterprises pocket.

Maclovio: We have honorable citizens, but we have horrible leadership. The Port under John "Weed" Reed is an incestuous orgy. The BISD, allegedly in charge of educating our children, is the epitome of stupidity. The County will never progress as long as pinche Eddie "Panocha" Trevino is looking for a quick buck for himself and his henchmen. PUB has robbed us of millions. Only Adela Garza at TSC and Trey Garza give us any hope. And then we're betrayed by The Brownsville Herald that refuses to publish the truth in order to keep our crooked individuals and our corrupt institutions accountable and transparent. Puros putos que maman pura verga!

It was time for a tequila. Emilio and Albert were at their best because playing the blues comes easy when Brownsville is known throughout the world as the Third World Capital of the United States.