Reality

The browning of America they say
but it's not evident
until you see who's cooking
your zen garden bowl of noodles
when we see brown brothers
working in snazzy yuppie catering
establishments on congress and sixth.
The browning of this meat
can't be seen in the strawberries,
grapes, oranges, onions, radishes-that
we consume with no
second though on the thumbs that blacken
and burn.

the browning in el paso sand
where voiceless bones are bleached,
the sun tenderly loving the already dead.

tell me when
when this fucking new dawn
age of revolution will come
tell me when this fucking take over
is scheduled to appear
cuz we've been waiting
for 500 fucking years
with no release in sight.
i've seen too many too many
raza, the brown folks,
killed, scalped, beheaded, handcuffed, raped, gutted.
Too many of us sent, trained to kill
kill ourselves with lies
of a better tomorrow
a steady paycheck
and we have fucking killed ourselves,
killed each other, misled
signed up for a rich man's war.
We have this history in our blood
of assimilation, acculturation, murder and revelations
cultural genocide, ethnocide, hegemony,
riding on three white horses
yet we repeat the process
ingest, repeat
ingest, repeat

when will this browning of amerikka
be here
because I am so tired
so fucking tired of
having to reteach to my seven year old
who Christopher Columbus really was
and what happened to the "indians"
and how being brown is not wrong.
and there being one black history month
and one "hispanic" month
but i'm trying to teach him
to be proud chicano
12 months out of the fucking year.

Calma, Mimi, Calma.
cuz i'm trying to teach him
to be nonviolent, nonsexist, unmacho
in this fucked up society
where our voice is constantly
being silenced,
repressed,
oppressed.
when the color lines became apparent
to him at two, the class lines at four.
Reality