Like
an Albatross in Jersey
Like
an albatross in Jersey, I was a lone Latino Catholic
ranger
with brown as my cross before Irish and Italian eyes
at sea,
whose blind devotion to a Hebrew King
with Aryan features, crucified on stainless steel,
was new and improved old world religion
in unlimited Cadillac grandeur, satisfaction guaranteed
or your collection plate money back.
Let me tell ya something, cuz'. This Christ was chrome
American
blue-eyed surfer beach boy strawberry blonde,
double-belted
and radiant, a superman without the cape,
an
energized Kennedy in the making
for
iconic consequences and eternal redemption,
ready to rock and say, "Hey, who do you think you
are?"
"Ask not what your country can do for you..."
And
I just arrived like an old toy with a distant tongue
in 1968,
praying
to this gringo god because it was my mother's habit
in
the Archdiocese of Newark, seeking middle class
with
proletariat hopes, growing with each overtime request,
to
simply keep an honest hold on the real estate of things
while
chanting, "this land is our land," "Budweiser is King
of Beers,"
and
granny apple pie is "good n' plenty...good n' plenty,
choo, choo."
But
the early European squatters feeding on potatoes and
assorted pastas
had
no taste for my native salsa picante dream
on
a bed of rice and beans y el color crossed their path
every day
like
a knife in between their lack of foresight, que rico,
and
I became an urban warrior, breaking Coke-Cola bottles
on
a curve to dramatize my intentions
for
those who would not let me dream.
