Ramon has five different baby mamas scattered across five continents
& not one fails to wish him dead
Walking tense with murder in his step
he now relaxes to the sound of slashing tires
Vince has been banned from every kitchen for always messing with the stew
why, when cornered by his boss he threatened to throw him into the pot
These days you'll find him by the highway off ramps, scavenging for body parts
Jacinta never made a secret of being a witch & still the white folks wouldn't leave her be
“I am a bruja, not some party magician. I rewire circuits. It can get ugly”
“Never mind, the kids will love it” & sure enough the school collapsed
Now she makes her home in Florida
shacked up with Ramon
he's out hunting crocodiles all day which she then turns into piñatas
The key is not to mess with it, for when they finally crack its skin the kids expecting candy showers get a gulletful of guts
Poor Roy has seen his art game hounded from day one
The first arrest came for a piece he called
The Drunken Barber's Midnight Homage to His Sacred Boss of Iron
Was it the mix of booze & razors they objected to?
The second arrest followed a bonfire of birth certificates
he called it:
For We Are Born of Gods & Not Just Mothers
The third came when he hung a bunch of monkeys from the trees, stuffed ass to mouth with cash & kept the title simple:
Progress
From their shared cell in the bad part of jail
he & Vince trade dreams of revolution
& it's when Ramon & Jacinta join them that the visions really do begin to fly:
The Unkillable Triumph of Native Memory
was one, with a rainbow-colored serpent feasting on a mound of cowboy hats & buicks
or else:
This Head's the Only Home You'll Ever Need For Its Insides Were Shaped in Beauty
for which you need bunched flowers in a skull vase, three cowhide drums & twenty willing dancers
none of which the jail was ready to supply
For now they scrapped their grand designs & pretty projects
laid aside their colorful imaginings
& hushed this business of becoming gods
They meet the crowd in camouflage & say
“We're just bums with issues, bums with attitude”