I see them
Puerto Ricans/Spanish niggers
Bronzed farmers look silly being doormen
Their fingers are more honest than their eyes.
Earth hands turned metallic gray
The plow rots, the mule dies, the hands rust
And the elders sit with ashes on their crowns making fools of themselves in bars.
Those fingertips will never touch then soil again.
Those fingertips will never feel the fuzz of small stones smoothed for centuries by the river.
Fingertips
Drunkenly wrapped around a beer can
Hatefully curled through a belt
Desperately clutching a needle
Lost their land/Losing their minds
The conga was smashed by a machine
It could always vibrate, but it couldn’t move an inch.
Well, we never threatened the music teacher anyway.
Fingers frozen
No fire in the loins
Brown people look funny in the snow.
Frostbite of the soul
Condemned to a metal existence
Rapidly becoming plastic
A little more warmth, a lot more deceptive.
The sighted blind ask where are the chains
And I run lest they hang me for showing them the cross
Porto Ricans/Indo Afros
Grasping for the good and finding rusty machetes
Dangling from the thighs of their mothers
Waiting
Come se dice, domino cho-cho
How do you say that chico?
Pelea, pelea, pelea
Talk that mira-mira shit now, Chico
Say it loud, I’m Rican and proud
‘Cause your years are numbered and daylight last
but so long.
Lose your color if you want to.
Me? I’m a war counselor for the Sun
From a powder puff to jitterbugging with a star
Beware the power of chisels made of powder puffs
They’re like jealous lovers
Who slash silently regardless of who started the affair.
C’mon spic.
Learn to tell time.
Your daddy was a peasant
And you’re nothing but a Spanish colored kid
unless you
get real nigger
and stop making gestures…
Copyright 1972, reprinted by permission of the Sterling Lord Agency, Inc.
