from radically moments of the last year, though either of these seem like constants in my life... seeing them next to each other seems complementary:


1.
I just want to make something unquestionably (for some people at least, for some time at least) good.

I don’t feel at home anywhere any more. I used to feel comfortable almost everywhere, or if not comfortable at least fascinated. I’ve become an outsider to my own life.

If everything taken out of context loses its clear meaning, I am pure nonsense.



2.
I got a name whose fame few remember
can’t complain
got a feelin kept me sane since September
can’t complain
got a game I been playin with growin pains
can’t complain
got distracted from shame by accepting me plain
can’t complain
got nothing to say cept the same ol refrain
can’t complain

Each echo produces two.

Volume may diminish, but sound dies no more than any other type of matter.

So take care with what you say.

The vibrations are continuous – both back toward the words that produced the present words, and forwards toward the future’s echoes of these words.

So hum along occasionally.

Solidarity Bridge: Healing and Empowering in Latin America from Mateo Hinojosa on Vimeo.

Check out this promotional video that I just finished editing, for Solidarity Bridge, a foundation that does medical and fair-trade work in Bolivia.

I feel sleepy, unsunny but not dark
like dreamy steamy jungles,
ready to go down where the wild things are.

Mild dreams scar child's wings
with claws of reality not quite asleep,
and the jaws of night swallow all light in the deep.

But visions in obscurity bring sight,
help the fight to leave you, peace to soothe you
and the belly of the night to rumble its tune to you.

para Leilita.


Querida, me das vida
cuando mi flor de energía
está estéril y marchita
de ti mi alma se fía

y tu simple sonrisa
da buenos aires como brisa
mi energía los respira
mi cansancio se retira

echo raíces, doy semillas...
este país, estas orillas
casi me hartaron y botaron
pero tus amares me amarraron

en el ahora me sostuvieron
me nutrieron y acogieron
dieron razón a esta estadía
no solo aquí sino en toda la vida.

Fue un accidente:

Andaba en lo cuotidiano, sentado en el colectivo,
el motor del bus hacía su habitual fragor ensordecedor,
el vientre de siempre seguía con hambre
y la mente, como de costumbre demente,
entre el gentío no pudo más con todo el lío,
no estaba cansado sino abrumado…

me bamboleó la cabeza, me tambaleó la consciencia,
hacia atrás y adelante iba, y de repente
me quedé inconsciente.

Me desperté y toda la gente me miraba
asombrada, asustada, hasta pedían parada,
y me di cuenta que había apoyado la cabeza
no en el asiento detrás sino en la mano
de un hermano desconocido…

ni lo miré, conmovido por el contacto,
pero de todos modos y con todo tacto
alcé la cabeza (para que su mano escapara)
y volví a apoyarla
con ganas de que soñara
con aquella persona
con quien rocé por azar.

Some favorite words, in no particular order:
Defenestrate
Serpentine
Bleed
Akimbo
Nepenthe
Juxtaposition
Hijinks
Ambiguous
Portmaneau
Lithe
Llama
Swoon
Dharma
Savor
Jig
Adore
Seer
Viscous
Transcend
Bouleversant
Amares
Performance
Plunge
Scrump
Hubris
Bittersweet
Don
Crossroads
Pizazz
Catalyst
Carcajada
Synaesthasia
Anon
Bragadoccio
Babel
Babble
Rhapsody
Ephemeral
Avalanchic
Kaleidoscopic
Rickety
Rummage
Holler
Lovely
Mosey
Meander
Peace
Reappropriation
Oroboros
Sheen
Jive
Fulfill
Revel

Un nuevo pre-armado / teaser para la película documental Movimientos espectaculares... que voy a filmar en Bolivia en julio 2010.

English translation soon...

two new paintings in palermo, buenos aires, argentina.
as usual, where no one gives a damn that we painted a wall... except perhaps the occasional passersby, in this case train passengers as they fly by. and a drunk railroad worker who gave us 10 pesos, insisting, thanking us. crazy.

dos nuevas pinturas en palermo, baires, argentina
como de costumbre, en una pared donde a nadie le importa que pintamos... salvo quizá alguien que pasa por ahí, en este caso algún pasajero en el tren. y un trabajador de la empresa ferrocarril que nos dio 10 pesos, insistiendo, agradeciéndonos. que loco.

I arch my back, suddenly feral, mouth wide:
an attack of instinct despite the busily civilized street.
I thought a roar, then, a scream
might escape my caged heart to fly for sky,
but no, my deep primordial self seems
tired of so many howls
and out comes: a yawn.
I’m not throwing in the towel
I’m just overwhelmed
and I like this air,
polluted though it may be…
I slacken, straighten my back and look around, sheepish,
laughing, thinking what they must think,
looking (hoping, yearning) all the while for strangers’ amused smiles

My sweater’s roly-poly.
Lips, chapped.
I need to go buy a light bulb.
And toilet paper.
I haven’t written on my blog for 10 days.
Jesus…
(sharp intake of breath)
I’m a few 100 short of making rent, I’d like to have single-payer healthcare and stop the war in Afghanistan.

For now I think I’ll just watch the sunset and try to breathe deeply.

Breathe in – not like before the plunge, for this life’s all plunge – like a wave raising itself up, gaining mass and force by drawing more of the ocean to itself.

Breathe out – not like after holding it in, for there was never anything to hold on to – like letting go after cradling and caressing, releasing after having without owning.

Hostile Subject

He reaches into his pocket
“OUCH! Dammit!”
“what happened you okay?”
“Arrrgh!... Yeah.”
Rueful, he examines a bright bead of blood on his middle finger. He then inserts this in his mouth and pulls out suggestively.
Then, suddenly savage, he flicks me off for my inquiring eyebrow which I have raised in his direction.
“So what? So I have a hole in my pocket.”
“eh???”
“So I have a HOLE in my goddamn POCKET.
So of course since I don’t want
to LOSE anything,
so I put a NEEDLE in there to keep my inconsiderate HANDS
from losing any of my precious things.
So what?”
“ooooooohhhhhh. I see.”
my eyebrow is back in innocuous down position.
“I bet you do motherfucker.
Nice observational skills asshole.”
“uummmm…”
“Think you can figure me out?
You’ll never get me with your pathetic observations.”
“phew.”

I just inhaled and exhaled
and a cloud of blues in confusion
in the shape of smoke-storm din
swirled about and in my frail, worn head.

“It wasn’t unwarranted”
my deep mind angrily, justly said;
head in hole, I swore in it,
“That sweet kind of obscure clarity

that can blow pure in shared air
passed around with cackling, crackling glee
can cure unbending, cracking,
false clear-eye-claiming mentality.”

Then, slowly, the response came
like a punch thrown from periphery
“Then use those troubling blues
when passions run old, when cold pains veins

sluggish with an untold complacency that you must unsettle.”

I gotta free my manic mind up
so I don’t panic, seize up, wind up
swimming in circles, wildly, hollowly
without originality splashing shallowly
leaving the art of grounded progression for those all around me
so I gotta keep rollin in until I’ve found me
movin in from slipperily barren insubstantial sands
to dry hand-tilled, life-filled daring lands
then I gotta keep on strollin
can’t let this fat head of mine get too swollen
with stale air givin me a stale stare
so I’ll just hit the steaming, people-teeming street
sweep you off your feet
just gimme some rhythm, gimme some beat
and I’ll lift you to an ecstasy
fulfill every fantasy
of the beauty in rhapsody.
So just follow me
on this story
it goes way back
to the cracks
in our history
where we hid collective memory
on the dusk we had decided to play together
onstage that night so we’d stray no further
from the mystic time where our thoughts rhyme in verse…
but somehow we slipped with a curse
were tripped and fell into a crypt
looking up with a lack
of a philosophy
open to difference
willing to listen to
strange wisdom since
we only had small view
of the venue
and this our stage
and we couldn’t trust for all our rage
outsiders’ and criticizers’ less selective perspectives
and who urged us to submerge this lonely invective and emerge as a collective.

Man, this was our night
(was it that from where we sat is seemed we’d rise alone?)
we could have put on such a show
that’d dazzle like proud snow, like substantially dynamic liquid,
the collected clouds’ shivery slivers of creativity,
but without us in concert, hidden in fright,
(could it be that sharing performance would scare away our sense
of sacred security, of comfort in watery ambiguity, of anonymity?)
the curtains were drawn
the audience a pawn
the props were all on loan
only a half inch shown

how could any one know
what would have come with the dawn?

Shadow, fog, and vision’s blur
attract and repulse
subtract and replace
hide and make me seek
treasure in the deep

so
I breathe before I leap,
retract to reassess,
and re-attack
my fear of lack
by smearing back
the borders that begin
to hedge me in

sharp edges soften
like oft-worn smiles
and I let go of knowing

Ultimamente, estos elementos me sobresalen más y más...

voy
haciendo la rumba rumbo a la tumba cruzando el mundo vagabundo trago profundo vuelo del suelo inmundo al cielo inmenso extenso te siento intenso te suelto lo tenso invuelto en el tiempo del freeflow del momento intento no arrepiento no cuestiono el aliento que me lleve el viento que me atreve lo más atrevido temido y lejos del nido no te pido que me lleves sino las llaves

if you just substitute the Bay and the Pacific for the Rio de la Plata and the Atlantic, and ignore the references to earthquakes, this could almost have been written by Buenos Aires instead of San Francisco...


I wish you would follow my streets as they run themselves like hands over my hills, which swell like pregnant bellies, like ripened pomegranates. Devour me. Only… please… consume, digest, and transform to muscle and sinew both the rotten and the ripe: my defiant and desperate trash miners, my rowdy and impatient fist-clenchers, my cafés and their industrious and maternal steam, my sorrowful shrines built about bullet-gnawed trees, my walls bleeding images of struggle, calling out to you, demanding that you perceive and swallow and then spit up some mixture to perhaps patch their crumbling pain, my grim, jaw-clenched-to-breaking warehouses whose doors wince as they are pried wide and force-fed the obese merchandise of decadence, my parks and their pillows of paper and animal mosaic playthings constructed from the shards of dead inanimate toys. Gasps of color must enter your smoke-choked throat and go down smooth.
I’m hungry, too. Feed me.
Dig deep in your past’s backyard and rummage your life’s backalleys with zeal. For I am sunken-eyed, bent-backed, and rash-ridden from clutching too long and too hard to a decrepit nostalgia.
Here: we’ll shake. It’s a deal? No? I’d say kiss and make up… but maybe that’s not your style… too fast for you, huh? Okay, let’s go for a stroll. My dishes never rot, but my sheets go months at a time without washing, so we should get out of this place anyways.
The Bay brings stillness to those shakes I keep getting, which I think come from the stress of too much rubbing shoulders with far-off lands – no, I don’t mean you – yes, I sometimes need that stability that only comes with feeling cradled by loving lands, hands cupping the waters of serenity for me to drink… though I hear it’s polluted.
On second thought, the ocean! Pacific, I hear, but think, hardly; open and careeningly wild distance, easily. The crash and the crush of the liquid chewing rock into sand, the beach bonfires, offerings to poets’ flame-eyed vision and lovers’ molten-glassy-eyed bliss.
Yes. Let’s swim. I’ll race you in.

tres del frigo. las fotos salieron de tal forma que tu modo de lectura tendrá que ser como mi modo de escribir: detalles borrosos y indefinidos al principio, claridad solo al final.

A true story lived in San Francisco:


“You wanna hear a funny one?” he leans his scar- and scrape-lacerated face towards the man sitting across from him in the seats reserved for the elderly at the front of the bus. His voice blurs out of focus at the end of every sentence that I have heard him speak since I got on five blocks ago. I wonder if it’s from booze, mental instability, an affected persona, or all three. The man across from him appears to feign interest, cocking one eyebrow and calmly speaking a few words that are devoured by the din of the engines straining up a hill. I sigh, turning my face towards the buildings bumping by, trying to find some deep thoughts to immerse myself in.

Grinning as if he kept a naughty secret, the man slurs, “So I took my wife to the hospital. She had been purty beat up, she wouldn’t tell me how. The doctor said, ‘If you…’” and again the words are consumed in the gurgle of the engine’s cacophonous combustion. Now he slaps his knee for emphasis, working up to the kicker, “And I told her, ‘Good fer you!” and she turned to me and said, “Not fer you, but fer the three of us!” He grins, but not any more than he had been before or during the telling of the joke. The man across from him doesn’t appear to change expression.

Then the joker puts a ragged hand to his forehead, and at first I think he says, “I’m fucked up,” but a moment later I think he says, “That’s fucked up.”
Either way, I surmise... then I feel fucked up myself for thinking so, knowing I don’t really know the story.

We pull over at a bus stop and the front doors fold open. An unseen woman says, “Is there a bike rack on this bus?”

The invisible driver responds, “Nope. But I tell you what, you drive and I’ll ride along behind.” The bus doors close and we drive off. The joker guffaws gleefully.

Hermano hormiga sígame un rato,
un rato sensato, un rato duradero,
Hermano corbatero, corriendo a tientas
en corrientes hundidas en mentes sumergidas,
Hermano subterráneo, con afán
yo te contacto:
No entiendo tus actos, yendo apurado,
mucho menos tu plan, man,
oh cráneo subterráneo,
aunque tengas planes, yo paseo,
pues no me pises con tu prisa,
los matices de tu misa motorizadamentematerialista
sacrifican vida por velocidad balística en la pista.
No ofrezco atajo simplista:
pero acá abajo nos podemos sentar,
cultivar quietud y crecer para arriba.

Su cara era chueca, joven, sucio, ningún ojo me miraba,
ni miraban los dos para el mismo lado.
Hablaba sin sentido ni sentimiento,
siento el temor relámpago que todavía
me late el corazón con pulsos sacudidos.
De golpe sus dos manos se cruzaron, sacaron
dos cuchillos como si estuvieran hundidos
en sus muñecas – brillan, sonrisas sadistas.
Izquierda, derecha bailamos
me doy cuenta que son cubiertos de mesa –
Amateur, pensé.
Ahora pienso:
No tenía ninguna carne para cortar
sino la mía.
Corrí, me choqué con un hombre - ¿estoy
atrapado, están todos con él? pensé
Ahora pienso:
así que ni grito ni lucho, corro.
Corrí, me choqué con el poste de una parada de colectivo.
Corrí, eché un vistazo por atrás – se fue
en la otra dirección, pensé
Ahora pienso:
Se fue en la dirección de Migraciones, y
yo hacia Retiro.
-¿Te hizo daño?
-No, estoy bien. No me tocó.
Investigo mi torso para asegurar que es verdad.
-¿Qué te dijo?
-Nada. No entendí nada.
-Te pidió monedas. Tenía un cuchillo.
-Sí, pero eran cuchillos de mesa, cubiertos.
-Igual, con eso, si te apuñala…
-Claro, me hace trizas… ¿Viste su cara? Tenía la cara chueca.
-Cara de otro mundo.
Ahora pienso:
Cara demasiado sumergida en este mundo.

a boy with a drum
told me ba-boom-boom-bum
this life’s all rhythm!
it’s in and out
hit it and rest
do your best
to make the dance fun

so I listened and hummed
and knew yes, yes, rhythm it is
rhythm is this, what bliss, what bliss


a girl with a knife
told me aaaaargh! this life’s
carving your way through tangled-up strife
it’s jab and slice
till your space is nice
and free of that sticky
icky mess all about the out-
and insides

so I tried to feel alive
and knew yes, that’s right,
so far it’s all fight


a man with a cup
told me drink up, drink up
what luck that life’s
got teats to suck, but
grab yer gulp now
cuz ‘fore you can say ‘wow,’ hup!
that’s it, yer all dried up

so I savored and sighed
felt yes, oh my, the flavor’s so fine, and
knew its time would very soon fly


a woman in the nude
told me heeey, dude,
this life’s me and you,
you and me being truly true
really real with deep-down feel,
we making we squeal with glee…
just leave all those other spiels
for another ride ‘round life’s wheel
and come with me

so I came, with thee,
(hee hee hee hee!)
and knew no more

Que lo vean en alta calidad!

hmmmmmm... what am I doing at this bus stop?

Restlessness grips and I slip
since stability sweats and slicks
my sense of satisfaction’s traction

Oh please, for tonight
find your words as you go
don’t reach for what you already know
never give me canned, stale, stale-mated statements
reach for revelations and be sustained in the moments’ birthing
speak not in stickies or any other such staccato convenience
rip rot from thought with devastating thoroughness
bother not to second-guess
until tomorrow

To the tune of Cab Calloway’s “Minnie the Moocher”*

Well folks here’s the story of Mr. Mister (wua wua!)
He was a lowdown loan hound grifter (wua wua wua wuaaaaa!)
He made the roughest, toughest sales (wua wuaa wua!)
But Mister really shoulda been locked up in jail
A-hi-dee-hi-dee-hi-dee-hiiiii!!!
A-hi-dee-hi-dee-hi-dee-hiiiii!!!
He’ll sell ya hiigh, he’ll sell ya hiiiiiigh
(wua wua wua wuaa, wua wua wua wuaaaaa!)
A-ho-dee-ho-dee-ho-dee-hoooo!!!
A-ho-dee-ho-dee-ho-dee-hoooo!!!
He’ll buy ya looow, he’ll buy ya loooooooow
(wua wua wua wuaa, wua wua wua wuaaaaa!)


*(if you don’t know the song, or if you haven’t heard it in a few days, you need, and I mean NEED to see this Betty Boop video by Max Fleischer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaZOXF83zBg and probably check out other videos where these two geniuses collaborate)

My new card, for the new economy.

Made for the crew at Ragged Wing Theater co, after acting in Splinters... and other F-Words a couple of years back.

I've been listening to our new president read his autobiography, and hearing his moving speeches, and again I am reminded of the power of the spoken word. Even more so, at a spoken word event the other night here in DC, I was once again reminded of the tongues-on-fire passion that can kindle individuals and masses of people to aspire for progress. And finally, as the hard-won festivities die down and the immensity of the work looms, and as the powers that (continue to) be keep on with the same business as usual (at which they make a killing), I see the need to bring some pressure on the new administration and give the new man in charge the political capital needed to invest in real change.

So here's an old spoken word piece from back in my days of anger and surety - whose all-over-the-place attack works a bit better for the ear than for the scrutinizing eye, but that's okay, since passion and immediacy is really the point:


they don’t lock you up till you utter the word.
ideas get deferred until you get heard
write, publish, cite and study it:
immediately forget it, even if you might stutter it
you gotta shout to get it out,
if you flout their restrictions on vocal dignified diction.
people will remember, recite, revive your thoughts,
just put it to a beat and the streets will leap alive and hot
but watch out for the mediocre power-mad sots’ shot
in the back so think slick jack or you’ll be quick knocked flat,
watch for CIA foul play if y’ask me
or he or she that knows bout the troubles you meet
if you rhyme in time to a beat,
(specially talk to those inspired by blows
to dark forgotten bodies that even in death
have begotten bumpin like procreative humpin
like global e-motion wired to tired peeps
mired in the sleep and sweat o’ their ghettos)

that creepin sooth seepin in music
will make truthless fists ruthless and lose it
cuz they know that fine minds find time to grind
to sly rhyme and bring shoddy bodies to the boogie ring
to sing for the gents and the ladies
but not that safe, sorry, sissy bling-bling,
just that pissed fist power of words whacked with zeal for tomorrow
and reeling with sorrow, careering for movement
on the real-world pavement yet searing into memory
the scent of the earth’s worth and the sound
of her howling anger’s hound getting loud
bout being treated like a cheap whore’s bleeding sore.

So I ain’t got time for that half-ass ringside romance, lady.
You got the full-force crash-course freefall flash-dance?
Or are you just gonna make me crazy with your asspants?
We got no time for lazy people or intellectual preachers steeples
¬or that hazy, fuzzy-thought heap of
hedonistic solipsistic whoreshit
Unless we jus get down in the congregation
get down to the ignant part of this hell-bent nation
get down and dirty, loud and wordy,
raising smog-sent yellin tarnation
get down to the (amphi)theaters, to amplify demystify the crime
that millions do time underneath our amusement
(you know it was a PR ruse when Ali’s smooth moves
made Mobutu’s palace-plighted jail-packed
Congolese screams sound like cheers).

So who here hears me?
Steer clear of booty-call crass classless rap crap
Rap at me so I can get down like in those oldschool bop bars
that wildly revolutioned Harlem while most white-washed writin
couldn’t hear em maybe cuz they feared em or couldn’t steer em
through insulated cellophane window-panes
all high and mighty but too penthouse-flighty
unable to feel the bent cuz they pay high rent
to remove themselves from the rant of the radicals,
the slant of the offbeat poet.
But you know it ain’t too late to recant
And hit the streets like a Panther in heat
ready to procreate or devastate,
depending on the current state
Howling in rage at the cage brothers and sisters live in
Scowling at those who squeak our livin’ anger reeks
of an immature phase… Man, we’ve been raised
in sleepy fright and awake scared sight
on the blaze of gun-craze night and day

So here’s Hampton’s worth-dying-for question:
how many kids’ graves till we organize
our gang lives into ways that pay
down our debt to the driver for his lashing “aid,”
pay off our guilt at squandering our heritage of ancestors’ blisters
as their brothers and sisters came through slaughter,
not wandering lost like most of us, but chained into gangs –
why do we forget that cost and spend what change they left us
on crack and talk smack instead of back?

So what’s the deal? Why do so many feel
the need to repeal the oaths to common, constant action
when the satisfaction of success lies so close?
Are we too verbose for those used to soundbites to stand and fight
for mere words and clear morals here?
Or do the deaths of our prophets, revolutionaries
make us wary, make us wanna drop it,
stop this evolution maybe cuz we’re afraid
those with power intimidate, pay to segregate,
to fill with hate those that they manipulate,
to push them to shove us to final fate before our time?

Our time is now, to climb to the bow,
seize control and roll with the punches of waves,
be they pay-offs, nightstick lay-offs,
or simply play-off passive aggression junkfood-induced soft scoffs.
Cuz media-prized hypnotized ignorant eyes
fear progression from comfort and don’t realize
they participate of their own volition
in the safe pass-the-crushing-buck exploitation
that looks the other way and runs this nation
and darkly crushes opposition or the slightest expression
of the brightest digression.
Some say They’ve left us dead, deaf and dumb,
our sensibil-ity numbed, bereft us of the best of us,
generations forced to feed on corporate-run
city crumbs as bums or convicts
Some say that those that remain
walk sick or in pain and stick to the talk
we been taught in white-washed schools where fool’s rules slosh
cruel hot memory into cooled-calmed consumable slop
I say they close their memory’s shop
to all hot bop that don’t sit still and swig that swill
without a shout of get-real steel
feelin that’s so substantive you can make of it a meal
and learn to stand and live on what’s at stake in what shakes
in such brawlin batter and if you can just swallow
bitter medicine, you’ll follow what’s the matter
for god’s sake and we’ll make the earth quake
That ain’t to claim we ain’t been maimed
but we gotta rename the greats,
reseat their feats in the justice hall of fame
and recognize their blooming flower flame
that never did wait inactive, we got millions that live
that the powers-that-be-always-the-same can’t ever placate
till we create equality and
a just social reality.

I’ve been tryin’ to fix my shit with other shit that needs fixin’,
I’m thinkin’ it oughta all be nixed,
this is more than a jinx,
all my shit stinks,
think I’m gonna wash it down the sink…
wait, that’s a bad idea.

Tryin’ to get healthy, get offa Teflon an’ on the latest diet,
One of them lean green queen of diets things
that don’t support those bloated kings
of gmo-hormone earth-plundering nature riots…
But can’t keep my stomach quiet
and the brandy-new hullaballoo for the new brand’s new ham
is fuckin up my fuck-the-man plan…
see, was gonna go all-raw na-tu-ral
but I saw how you got god-awful skinny
and in a shimmy before you could say jiminy
I was back on the easy track.

Here we go again… I mean, here we remain
runnin’ ‘round to wait in line
“You’ll be fine,” they say with a thin grin,
“just fine, just sign on this line”

I scratch my name into their dead tree pulp
I don’t even gulp, much less yelp that yulp
that’s been ticklin’ at the back of my throat
ack, I think, won’t let ‘em get my goat

(first they’ll have to attack this thought-moat
that I built with my own bleedin’ palms
‘round my nigh-impenetrable castle o’ calm,
then, they’ll have to offer alms all around

till they’ve found the right rejected pauper
who knows the proper way to the forgotten back gate
to the pen that fuckin’ buckin’ hissin’ pissin’ chewin’ n spewin’ goat is in
then they’ll have to catch the slippery bastard)

in the meantime, I think I’ll wait, getting number,
till they call my number…
but when they do, man have I got a plan:
I’ll surprise ‘em, yell “BINGO!” and go get my prize.