Among the answers you might give your loved ones
about the murders, the one you most frequently give is
I keep my head down and stay in at night.

No detailed descriptions are offered about the dead man
beside the green dumpster on the road shoulder near Tijuana
or the joint on Boulevard Benito Juarez where some others
                                                                   were shot. 

Does your uncle or son need to know this killing
ground is on your way to pay another month’s DSL?
Do they need to know how many died, how slowly,
of blood saturating the unholy earth?  How quick
red returns to dust?

What you can tell them should exclude
the dark trucks with four and six men
draped over cab and tailgate holding guns, aiming
guns – at the ready.  And leave out the skateboarder
who pushed clear of their steady path.  And the girl
with dark braids who practiced controlling that soccer ball,
the girl who waved as they passed, and they,
in their balaclava ski masks, tipped their guns
                                                to wave back. 

No, don’t tell your loved ones any of that. 
If they hammer you hard What’s going on? tell them
the ocean continues to come forward and recede, erasing
the sand of past deeds.

Yes, and detail for them the shades of bougainvillea
coming over white walls, wind in the palm fronds,
halos at sunset trembling color for hundreds and hundreds
                                                       of miles.

Tell them, I keep my head down.  I stay in at night.
Don’t tell them you listen for sirens.  No. 
No need to mention that.

S4 paints a remarkable image.  I like the quiet dignity of the whole poem.  There would be a tendency to wax poetic, but it doesn't use that wax.  It gleams enough as it is.

It is remarkable to see masked good guys, who wear masks because the cartels kill officers they can identiy.  And also remarkable to see weaponed men rolling down a street where the children wave and then get out of the way. 

Thanks, rick. 

We saw the children waving at gunmen also in Iraq, and this weekend, Indian commandos held a press conference masked in black. The heart of your poem--

"the ocean continues to come forward and recede, erasing
the sand of past deeds.

Yes, and detail for them the shades of bougainvillea
coming over white walls, wind in the palm fronds,
halos at sunset trembling color for hundreds and hundreds
                                                       of miles."

has great movement all through, "coming over the walls," the waving and trembling, and does a good job conflating the gunmen with nature and vice versa. Nice. Don't really understand another powerful force at work as we read the poem: that we are also concerned for you, the author's safety. How does this change the read? It both interferes and intensifies. Tom

Lynn, blood saturating earth and child waving at masked gunmen are well-used images, and feel out of place in an otherwise powerful poem. I agree with what Tom identifies as the heart of the poem too.

I knew little about Baja before, and as your friend I am affected by what I now know.

B.

thanks, tom
thanks, B

the gunmen and children are the poem.  if that doesn't come through, this piece needs serious work

thanks, all --

lynn

Lynn, the point I was trying to make wasn't in regards to the gunmen and children, of course that is important and real. It's the waving that feels used, to me.

I don't want my comments to appear like I don't like the poem, because I do. A lot. Really suits my mood.

B.

Agree that the waving is at the very heart of this, and for me it all works wondrously. My confirmation is in a pick.

milner

I see what you're saying Brian.  And I may need to write a different poem that addresses the blood saturated ground and how a day passes and foot traffic and light santa anas have masked the stains to the same dust as before.  And the feeling that the girl who waved and the federali who tipped his gun in return were related somehow -- he could've been her older brother or uncle or father, a working man waving from his telephone installation vehicle rather than a masked man with a gun.  But this wasn't the poem for all that.  Just wanted a sort of real surface danger to set up some tension to go along with my flippant answer to my loved ones -- because they do ask and I do tell them I keep my head down.  You know I like your opinions, B., as they make me consider, reconsider my choices.  Thanks, again.

Thanks, Milner.  This is a new world for me down here.  Last evening I had the pleasure of listening to accoustic guitar accompanying a rap poet, and although I understood hardly a word, I was moved and mesmerized by the young man's intensity and afterwards told that the piece was about the violence here in Baja and how that violence changes the everyday lives of the everyday people.  I must learn this language.  I get the "heart" of what's said just by how it is said [like an aria in a foregin language communicates], but I want so much to understand the words.  Thanks for the pick, for letting me know the connection is in this poem.

best regards,  lynn

Lynn, as a poet, a writer, an artist, you must indeed make it your mission to absorb the language from the air around you.  Do it. 

It is possible that I'm influenced to some degree by the setting of this poem. Nevertheless, I consider it more than earning a front page showing.

Cheers

milner

Bravo!

I do not know what to say. 

Thank you, Milner.  I wish the poem said more, did more.  But I am deeply honored all the same.

Thanks, el vee!

Good to see this here, Lynn. Tom

Hi Lynn, I am very interested in tone in here. It seems to replicate the tone the narrator might use on the phone when saying the "I keep my head down" thing.  Well, I like the marriage of image and a kind of mundaneness (in a very real way) and audacity of violence. Like  two worlds come together in a tentative acceptance in order to move through hours.  Will read again--very nicely done, Lynn.

I'm going to have to be real original and say what Jill said. The naturalness of voice in the context is chilling and unfortunately becoming a reality for an aweful lot of folk. There have been stories about Tijuana in the media. I realize you are much further south but....

larry

Not much further south.   Not much at all.   I picked a bad time to make this move.  No doubt about it.  But somehow, perversely, although I would never wish or want my children here, this is an experience I am glad for; not glad for the hardships the citizens here, the everyday people and folk must endure, but to be in the everyday life of a place where the people have no control over the crazy violence that goes on all around.  Forgive me.  I am just home from dinner a half block away in the home of a friend who keeps very fine wine; I am home from two and a half glasses of exceptional syrah and real life close encounters with roadblocks and automatic weapons.

Wanted to say thank you, tom, jill, larry.  And here's to a good syrah every now and again.

Lynn, might you please post a google map link to where you are?

Lynn, if you see poor Syrah again, please let her know that they have at last found her parents! "DNA profiling found Syrah to be the offspring of two obscure grapes from southeastern France named Dureza and Mondeuse Blanche." Tom

Quite a proslepsis you got going here, Lynn.

Paralipsis, also known as praeteritio, preterition, cataphasis, antiphrasis, or parasiopesis, is a rhetorical figure of speech wherein the speaker or writer invokes a subject by denying that it should be invoked. As such, it can be seen as a rhetorical relative of irony.----Proslepsis is an extreme kind of paralipsis that gives the full details of the acts one is claiming to pass over; for example, "I will not stoop to mentioning the occasion last winter when our esteemed opponent was found asleep in an alleyway with an empty bottle of vodka still pressed to his lips."----Paralipsis was often used by Cicero in his orations, such as "I will not even mention the fact that you betrayed us in the Roman people by aiding Catiline."

It is also ironic that your "I keep my head down" is as alarming as some of the other details that must be avoided.

-Tom


--Tom

Just read your DNA update on dear Syrah, followed by "praeteritio, preterition, cataphasis, antiphrasis, or parasiopesis" -- as rhetorical tools -- and a wee update on Cicero (of whom Maggie has recently been bending my ear!) and I am in danger of overladening this gray matter, in which event I will keep my head down from the sheer weight of it all even while indoors!

Ugo, the Rosarito mayor, gave a speech regarding the current situation (what's being done, and what should be expected in the months ahead) to standing room only crowds at the Rosarito Beach Hotel on Saturday; he was met with a standing ovation.  They are doing their best.

Lynn,

Yes, hope you're all right. I am taking an extra break at work now to read about what's been going on...

By the way, an excellent poem-- the last few stanzas were especially provocative. (I think you could sort of clean up the questions that crop up early on in the poem... those for me were the weakest points. Maybe they were a bit too blunt? Elusiveness would be eerier...) Well done, at any rate.


Take care,

-O

Lynn;
i haven't been around for a bit and only had the chance to see this today.  this poem is so wonderfully constructed...there's not one single word i would question.  i think the choice of the long flowing lines fits great with the subject matter and enhance the presentation.  this is good good work.
john

Oleska!  So great to hear from you.  Of course I'll consider your comments, probably more so after some time has elapsed -- but the thing I wanted to have happen in this is that (astounding to me) feel of the nv (in this instance, me) being "at home" in this dreadful situation.  I am daily surprised by both the roadblocks manned with military and automatic weapons AND my movements through them with a car full of groceries, or cinder blocks to build another bookcase -- know what I mean?

And John!  Another surprise to hear from you.  Thanks, so much, for the read and kind comments.  I always hope the piece will work, but am seldom certain it does (except for, sometimes, pleasing me).

Thanks, everyone.  And, Milner ---- Thank You, again, for honoring this poem with front page.

lynn