Culture and the Universe

BYSIMON J. ORTIZ

Two nights ago

in the canyon darkness,

only the half-moon and stars,

only mere men.

Prayer, faith, love,

existence.

We are measured

by vastness beyond ourselves.

Dark is light.

Stone is rising.

I dont know

if humankind understands

culture: the act

of being human

is not easy knowledge.

With painted wooden sticks

and feathers, we journey

into the canyon toward stone,

a massive presence

in midwinter.

We stop.

Lean into me.

The universe

sings in quiet meditation.

We are wordless:

I am in you.

Without knowing why

culture needs our knowledge,

we are one self in the canyon.

And the stone wall

I lean upon spins me

wordless and silent

to the reach of stars

and to the heavens within.

Its not humankind after all

nor is it culture

that limits us.

It is the vastness

we do not enter.

It is the stars

we do not let own us.

Busted Boy

BYSIMON J. ORTIZ

He couldnt have been more than sixteen years old,

likely even fifteen. Skinny black teenager, loose sweater.

When I got on Bus #6 at Prince and 1st Avenue,

he got on too and took a seat across from me.

A kid I didnt notice too much because two older guys,

street pros reeking with wine, started talking to me.

They were going to California, get their welfare checks,

then come back to Arizona in time for food stamps.

When the bus pulled into Ronstadt Transit Center,

the kid was the last to get off the bus right behind me.

I started to cross the street to wait for Bus #8

when two burly men, one in a neat leather jacket

and the other in a sweat shirt, both cool yet stern,

smoothly grabbed the kid and backed him against

a streetlight pole and quickly cuffed him to the pole.

Plastic handcuffs. Practiced manner. Efficiently done.

Along with another Indian, I watch whats happening.

Nobody seems to notice or they dont really want to see.

Everything is quiet and normal, nothings disturbed.

The other Indian and I exchange glances, nod, turn away.

Busted boy. Busted Indians. Busted lives. Busted again.

I look around for the street guys going to California.

But theyre already gone, headed for the railroad tracks.

Im new in Tucson but Im not a stranger to this scene.

Waiting for the bus, I dont look around for plainclothes.

I know theyre there, in this America, waiting. There; here.

Waiting for busted boys, busted Indians, busted lives.

Blind Curse

BYSIMON J. ORTIZ

You could drive blind

for those two seconds

and they would be forever.

I think that as a diesel truck

passes us eight miles east of Mission.

Churning through the storm, heedless

of the hill sliding away.

There isnt much use to curse but I do.

Words fly away, tumbling invisibly

toward the unseen point where

the prairie and sky meet.

The road is like that in those seconds,

nothing but the blind white side

of creation.

Youre there somewhere,

a tiny struggling cell.

You just might be significant

but you might not be anything.

Forever is a space of split time

from which to recover after the mass passes.

My curse flies out there somewhere,

and then I send my prayer into the wake

of the diesel truck headed for Sioux Falls

one hundred and eighty miles through the storm.