Hummingbird: No. 4

Hummingbirds: No. 4

By Armando Ortiz

Feathers of a million dead hummingbirds,

Cover the body of the young soldier,

Who dies for honor and glory.

Refugee

Refugee

By Armando Ortiz

I'm a refuge-

Here without permission.

Paperless wanderer

On a journey to peace-

A Mormon pilgrim

Searching for that land of plenty.

This peregrine existence

Pushes me to take drastic measures.

So I paraphrase freedom as arduous wage labor,

Becoming a modern slave without shackles,

Building those vacation castles

And cozy winter palaces.

Laws make us retreat into the underground pageant,

Where tweaked freaks walk the streets and blood feuds exist.

Into a panopticon of violence and filthy pleasure seekers.

We even patrol the perimeters of your holy grounds,

And are pushed away when we play in front of your gates.

We are weather beaten and dark like the earth,

And welcomed with chants of, “go home, wetback.”

You buy off politicians that turn our healthcare system into a place for penitence,

And our forms of government are brought to its knees by your weapons,

Your military aid and your democracy.

They root us out of coastal villages and mountain towns,

Pushing us away with Mack trucks that replace the swings of our youth

With vacation villas and wilderness retreats,

And sit back on their leather recliner

Sipping gourmet coffee from our highlands,

Watching their banana republic exports fly to the sky.

And we are forced to carve out our space in the bottoms. 

Growing up in Los Angeles (Part Eighteen): Dropped

Part 18: Dropped

By Armando Ortiz

It was a new truck. White or yellow, I can’t remember, but it was dropped. No more than a foot above the ground. No music was bumping when it pulled up. But they pulled out some things that pumped hard and fast and made things hot. They were unknowns, but most likely were thugs fighting for turf or simply rivals taking revenge.

We were playing with an inflatable beach ball. It was multi-colored; red, white, and yellow. We were in the front lawn of that duplex. But when that Japanese truck pulled up and stopped- everything paused. It might have been the screeches of the black tire rubbing against the asphalt, grinding to a halt that made us turn and watch the momentary drama unfold. The culprits inside pulled out a long black metal thing whose bullets would be piercing the terracotta wall of the Laundromat opposite to our place. The man, who held the machine, had long puffy black hair and fed the bullets on the left side with his left hand. He looked like a crazy head banger going nuts to the sound of Slayer. In fact the dude looked like he was a black haired version of Hanneman holding that piece that rattled on his hands like a guitar. Bullets were literally raining on the guys hanging out in the parking lot- talk about clouds over one’s shoulder.

The place and everything around us seemed to be on pause or at least to be moving in slow motion. The perpetrator aimed his weapon at two guys that were chatting away outside of their 70s Celica. Once they heard the cracking of the metal and the origins of the fire they dropped to the ground. Their bodies touch the dark ground. One of them reached inside the car pulling out a revolver, but did not shoot, from where he was he saw the color of the truck. Whose driver, by that time had stepped on the gas and disappeared north on Berendo and merging with the lights on Olympic that took them somewhere far, maybe to the beach. The apparent targets got into their car and attempted to trail behind. 

I heard my mom call my name. But we were intrigued, but did not dare cross the street to the other side and look around at the damage that had been caused. A line of bullet holes were left behind as raw evidence to what had happened. One of our neighbors, the oldest of the bunch, found a shell casing. It looked like it might have been a short fat lead pencil from a long time ago, but no, it had held a bullet and now we could use the casings as a more sophisticated form of whistle.

Illusions of Life: Gabriel Garcia Marquez

-I have learned that a man only has the right to look down on another man when it is to help him to stand up. -Gabriel Garcia Marquez 

Illusions of Life: Gabriel Garcia Marquez

by Armando Ortiz

I discovered illusions through your words, and the characters conceived in your mind became archetypes- mythical American figures.

I felt the scent of death and marveled at the mystery of love- as people floated to the heavens and spirits were sequestered to the earth.

Making me relive my visits to Guatemala, and looking back with wonder, while traveling down the river of your youth with mountainous steam clouds floating in the sky, and a Latin American blue, crystal clear- god’s oil painting.

Love was at the heart of your fables, and compassion at arm’s reach. You wrote, and I saw with my eyes, how the general on horseback liberated countries. I felt the cool breeze on the Andes Mountain along the streets of Los Angeles.

Those books taught me history and to love, and showed what life could be as a child through adult eyes. I became a Spanish gypsy, wandering the western hemisphere, and connected to my own heritage through food and song by looking through your mind.

Growing up in Los Angeles (Part Seventeen): Stained Glass on the Ground

Part 17: Stained Glass on the Ground

by Armando Ortiz

One day Pedro was on the second floor of the church sweeping and picking up debris. After a few hours of gathering pieces of drywall and splintered wood, he decided to take a break in one of the rooms. He went inside and slightly opened one of the windows that faced the alley and noticed that the kids were all in a circle. There were two kids in the middle of the human circle punching each other. The memory now is quite vague but it certainly was a fight, because at the end one of the contestants was bloodied and crying. It makes one wonder how the actions of others have a more profound effect on the viewer. Those kids probably were not aware that they were being watched, nor were they aware of their reality. To them it might have been a fight, just a fight, where there was a winner and a bloodied loser. 

Maybe it is one of those things that one will never really know. A lesson that is being acted out in real life. How many life lessons had he participated in unconsciously that taught someone else or left a lasting impact on some random person without him knowing? He couldn’t remember who had won or if the two had been too bloody to be able to point out who was the victor. One thing is for sure, at that moment the tears that flowed down the cheeks of the two kids, blended with the blood, creating a gorier scene that looked like condensed raspberry syrup, resembling the very pieces of glass that he’d come across outside the church grounds, Pedro never forgot the scene. 

The Flow of Life

The Flow of Life

by Armando Ortiz

Art is the medium through which culture is diffused and exchanged. Culture may be suppressed, but the real story is being played out now.

I’ve paid to see beauty, I have touched great booty. I can say that I’ve traveled far, and had foreign conversations, alienated a few and sought by many.

Cultural, not civilized, the cabarets and street vendors, that let us relive our hungers of desert dreams. Waking up not knowing what’s ahead. The bridges to unexplored lands, oasis of thought, are still over there standing like granite pillars of memory.

Culture is language, a ying yang of theories, that reach our ear, painting a watercolor with sounds of thunder, and washes that streak on the canvas, a musical center of sounds.

How do you maintain sanity when beauty is everywhere?!

Time passes by, numerous crossroads, endless flow of people float, moving forward, toward unknowns, going down that eternal way, where the ashes are taken away, and like paper-mâché boats that aimlessly navigate; the widening current becomes our stay.

Roberto Bolano's Third Reich: Book Review

Roberto Bolano's Third Reich

by Armando Ortiz

Bolano is meant to be read at the edge of the city, where the ocean meets land, and honey baked skinned birds flutter about, with locks of gold.

Where you see cinnamon women with floating feet, smelling of sweet navel oranges, and yellow lemon flavored, sweet and sour to the tongue.

On the coast of the city, where the sun dangles above the desert mirage, with waves of dizzying spells, and waters that sway like an old rocking chair, an endless roller coaster ride, a continuous ocean signal of distress, filtered with the conscious mind of bliss.

I'm happy with my L.A., lost in its wilderness of surprise, where short men with moon goddesses walk about, and her morning voice haunts these memories, with body reliving the times I bit down her areola.

Bolano lacks citrus in his writing, because he was happy with black bread, wine and cheese, but it’s as good as it gets.

The edge of Los Angeles, is where the West ends, and citrus auras envelop all where book and sun come alive.