Undocumented Dreamers Blaze a New Trail

"I'm tired of seeing students criminalized for wanting to obtain an education. I'm tired of seeing students lose hope because they can not realize their dreams of living freely in this country."

- Maria Marroquin

"Every dream that I ever had as a journalist was coming true and I couldn't go to Mexico to a friend's wedding, I still couldn't...the lies just kept getting bigger and watching United We Dream and watching these, actually these four activists from Miami walk from Miami to Washington D.C. to fight for the DREAM Act, the Trail of Dreams, I felt like a coward, I felt accountable..."

Jose Antonio Vargas from Democracy Now! 

_______

Rummaging through childhood lairs, dusty basement keeps where in storage lay our ancestral feet. Our rummaging, nonplussed, we savored with every object greeted, music emanated as a voice from our sated finds. Plastic frames and silly hopes spoke with sheer brevity and noisemaking jolly. A working elder passes through unseen, behind our backs, provoking us to the drear of day in this predawn nostalgic sanctity.

“Keep your hands on the wheel!” the car steals across a merging lane, whiplashed and painstaking amid the gyrating fleet of normalcy. The driver fingers marijuana puffery, blind with musical havoc. I steam and vent with toxic remorse as we pass a humongous van filled with Mexicans, seized by the police. We are the true criminals.

_______

Marijuana

"As a symbol it stands for any activity that is not within the bounds of the law and it can denote the fact of not being able to think clearly if you dream you are smoking it, and this could cause you much trouble and stress. As an herb, it has curative powers, and for the older generation of dreamers who still think of this as an herb, this is a warning to have your health seen by a professional. If you have a dream of using marijuana, it suggests you have feelings of insecurity and regret. You worry that people will discover who you really are."

_______

the pregnant are disallowed entry,
to become second-class citizens
among the walking tits
and ass mockery that defiles our greater human
bond and friendship with abusive division
over the object-desire complex
parading as a public wildfire

- excerpt from "international women" 

Basho Pops My Dream Bubble of Jungle

Picture and Poem by Matsuo Basho

Still I have always been drawn by windblown clouds into dreams of a lifetime of wandering.

—Matsuo Basho, Narrow Road to the Interior, Translation by Sam Hamil

Source

_______

I walk into an ecological sanctuary where exotic plants and fish thrive in a hot greenhouse. The humid air transports one to a transcendence of spatial dimensions, wherein time breathes with the quickening pace of an intensified microcosmic environment. Jungle leaves brush against my face as lotus-bloomed lilies freshly spring from the fish-born soup of breathable life in the density of my deeply woven surroundings. A plant scientist and professor live in a nearby hut within the transplanted immersion of moderate rainforest. Also an active marijuana enthusiast, he keeps to himself, remote behind a fastened wall of swollen wood. I and a few friends meander through the delicate passageways, magically mysterious fruits and vines hang down with a gift of flowering beauty unknown to our Massachusetts scents. Our eyes glisten in the cool dank inner workings of such magnificent spires as they that mount upon the blank calm of a recess and serenity in this isolated outgrowth of our Earth’s most advanced biological developments.

As we glide effortlessly, weaving in and out of the rejuvenating corridors, a glint of an eye sparks in an unseen corner. The walls open to encompass the ever-widening viscera of inbound flora. A blue panther sneaks beyond the encircling brush, masked by the glowing façade of a charged, fearful night. We are unprepared. Dropping everything, we rush headlong into the deepest corridor, seeking refuge. This otherworldly animal, prehistoric and enigmatic, bleeds into the folds of any remaining sensation of physical security. We manage to find refuge beneath an enclosure of tables. Frightened beyond the immediacy of thought, we smash the external glass of the sanctuary and carefully stretch outside into the neighboring cold, modern presence of the un-bubbled Earthly night.  

________

Jungle

"The jungle in dreams represents the wild, passionate side of your personality. How you feel about the jungle in your dream indicates how comfortable you are with this side of yourself." (iDream)

_________

gills 

swung & cushiond by a sacrament of fear

bluish

fine heard at the doorstep 

launch into the outer, outer face

punishd by grub 

bleary & entwined 

drunken 

hatching

encouraged to bleed freely

whitish as the granted 

millions of empires 

hunting forgotten, manmade laws

strapped to so much matter 

wholed or scrappd

left out, dried

mushroom fat, swollen spiritual 

mind 

one  

- excerpt from "stir." 

Dreaming is a Choice between Fear and Love

"ARE YOU THE NEW PERSON DRAWN TOWARD ME?"
By Walt Whitman

Are you the new person drawn toward me?

To begin with, take warning, I am surely far different from what you suppose;

Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?

Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?

Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy’d satisfaction?

Do you think I am trusty and faithful?

Do you see no further than this façade, this smooth and tolerant manner of me?

Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real heroic man?

Have you no thought, O dreamer, that it may be all maya, illusion? 

_________

I am in a dimly lit college dormitory. Occupying a strange room with my new wife, I await an old acquaintance. I’m being enticed to be a part of an international marijuana trade. The benefits will by high and the peer pressure mounts however I turn my back on the offers and listen to the silent wishes of my new wife, whose dear presence reminds me that trafficking only leads to indirect violence, and all the filth that follows in the wake of easy money. We stand in the smoked out room, where dusty, creaking lights sway as above a reptile’s glass cage. The old life of chronic marijuana use wafts in my subconscious as a strong, deep inhalation, and I clear the smoke of self-conscious perception through a mind and body purified by love. 

_______

Love without Music

Is there love without music? 

And why does music spark love?

Music provides the innocent

backdrop for the play to unfold,

and become sweet

as the spring in a mid-winter sun

fading against the whisky iris of my lover’s cat

scratching the butchered skin of L.A.

deranged toxicity, madness of memory

from beyond the grips of fatigue

and into the failure to be,

true and awake, light with the speed of thought,

a slight wink on the riverside blue,

and what's new from another lazy, sick waiting?

she sits transfixed

and I ignore the heart

that beats quicker inside

with every finger drop

word flatness

I rinse myself blindly in an alcoholic fight

through perfect humanity,

knowing the loveless embrace of non-feeling,

and her lust

and her lust again,

a secretive tear at the loss of an eyelid

dimming in the thick listening

of night fallen

anew

with shared melancholic delight…

March 01. 217am 2010

Butler mansion. (N.W. Calgary). My love sleeps smiling, I sober up, listening to music of nostalgic kisses

The Decapitated Head of Benito Juarez

Benito Juarez, Teotihuacan and the mystery of a figure in red shawl....

- Foreground to the Dream (actually lived-in-waking scene):

It is my second day in Mexico. I had only seen this country once in Tijuana almost a decade before just for the afternoon. It is now December, 2008. I am staying weeks in Mexico City. I find myself within the confines of a Zapatista demonstration. We de-board a small local bus, I let a young mother with her child climb out before me. She is dressed in perfect fashion to the trend of social and cultural resistance that has taken places since before the states of Mexico were founded. The atmosphere is young, vibrant and inclusive as I file past a scattered group of policemen, barred from entering the demonstration grounds as per an agreement with the Zapatista movement. The area attracts a united front of Mexican youth and longstanding social activists with the international community, mostly young travelers like myself in happenstance with a resonant ground of truth-seeking and decolonization. After perusing various photo exhibits, circus acts, a music stage and a gargantuan round of booths and cultural presentations from social activist groups, indigenous peoples and the Zapatista themselves, I find my way to a high-perched bleacher to gather perspective. The landscape is cluttered with the reality of living conditions in the Federal District; over 35 million inhabitants, almost as much as the entire country I had arrived from: Canada. The houses barely top two stories as they create a vast landscape buttressed on hillsides in the myriad colors so peculiar to and likeable about the Mexican cityscape. Two Mexican guys decide on sitting only a few feet away from my high vantage point. Laughing, they start lighting a pipe. Marijuana smoke lifts into my nervous system like a cool breeze. I smile at them. Offering me the pipe, I smoke and there is an immediate realization at how strikingly different we are. The only similarity between us three is slight laughter and comraderie of place in this fleeting instant. A mixed, flowing cacophony of sound travels into our minds, bespeaking the slogan of the demonstration: Digna Rabia/Dignified Rage. I hear the Mexican language. Completely unknown to me at that pont, I am enthralled by its fascinating brevity and speed of intonation. At this point I am very high. I look out towards the mountains. In the foreground is an immense statue. How could I have not seen this before? It is a human head. I point to it and look at one of my new friends. "Benito Juarez!" He says indiscernibly, with a thick accent only spoken to someone ignorant of Anglophone ears. I am bewildered by the voice from a peer of my equal age. He knows I don't understand, "Benito Juarez!" he says again. This time I understand. An early President of Mexico. His face becomes as strange as the thickness of his accent. I am taken by his features, which seem to resemble Aztecan myth in their distinct expression. They step down, leaving me to contemplate my surroundings high up above even the neckless head of one of the country's sculpted, public icons, high above the Zapatista demonstration, high above my own mind.

In Dream: I see from this vantage point. The head of Benito Juarez is changed to my imagination for the ruins of Teotihuacan. When I visited Mexico for the first time (and all subsequent times) I never took the chance to see the ruins of Teotihuacan. The grandiose pyramids depicted in the film, "Frida" and Sergei Eisenstein's "Que Viva Mexico!" still reside in my imagination. I can see only about half of one rising to its summit. The steps are gorgeously erected with frequent cracks. A massive field stands to its side. I'm sure there must be pyramids greater in size. In the field, walking in an easterly direction towards what seems to be greater pyramids, what I sense to be a female figure, wrapped in a scarlet shawl slowly walks into an unforgiving wind out of sight.


My backyard gives way to a mythical Mexican beach

In my family house backyard in Massachusetts, I sit with my friends. There is great emotion rising unto the visible empyrean gazing back at us as a smidgeon of existence in the universe. I am with old childhood friends, we trek through my backyard, and their presence is exchanged with that of my cousins. We walk until a downslope hill flushed with a sludge and grime unknown to us. I feel it half-resemble a part of the Tar Sands in Alberta somehow. The endless sludge gathers and quickens below our feet. One of my cousins slips clumsily and knocks into an evil-looking man who seems to hold an authoritarian position with the environmentally hazardous work about us. He eyes me vociferously, changing to a stern, violent expression of cruel intention. He speaks that he will ruin me if we cause any hindrance to his work. He says that he will make my position in Canada even more tenuous and that I will risk my marriage and rights to immigration if I, or any one I know slip up again and cause more trouble. I simply slide past down an aching earth, bleeding with tar.

Next I find myself walking along an unpaved beach sidewalk in a seaside neighborhood. Broken shells lay scattered on the road. As a group of local residents approach on their way inside a house, a mythical deer shoots past me. The animal bears an impressive mane, looking like a cross between an alpaca, a mountain goat, a deer and gazelle. The animal joins its herd, trekking about nimbly. As I follow the unusual herd of unidentifiable animals beyond the horizon, the land opens up into a huge Mexican beach resort. There are electronic billboards littering the oceanfront, as international commerce is exuberantly exhibited with dominance. I duck past the hill's outcropping before the steep cliff turns into beach and follow the animals in a small grove. I feel submerged in a temporary refuge.