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=> I was up all night: Walking the Streets of Santa Monica Blvd. in W.L.A

I was up all night: Walking the Streets of Santa Monica Blvd. in W.L.A
Posted by Marcello (Guest) - Saturday, August 13 2011, 14:29:08 (UTC)
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I couldn't sleep, so I headed to the emtpy street, among the homeless I was strutting like a makeshift king, the cops who sneaking out of dark corners like roaches, waiting to fill their quotas for their ending shifts, seeking misfits, junkies, alcoholics in their territory puddles of piss and shit, while the bankers sleep in silken sheets, next to trophy wives, and dream of ripping off the poor and sinking them in the pits, while they awaken to the glitz of money and power and a shock and awe blitz, I don't pretend to be a poet wrting about 612 B.C.E, or 1915, or '33, I don't reiterate the hate by making propagnada, so that the ignorant and racists can praise me with "Khayit" for the lies I promote, deep in my thoughts I remembered a real poet who died (or was killed in '73), when Kissinger quoted "I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people.”
—Henry Kissinger, June 27, 1970
When the fascist Pinochet came to power, Chile's - not only Chile's, but the world lost one its most profound poets who died - (or, again, was killed and buried in his home in Isla Negra septerber 23, 1973 - 12 days after the US backed coup that toppled the democratically elected, Salvadore Allende, killing him inside of his palace in Santiago by the fascist Pinochet.

As I was walking around in tears, I began reciting one of my favorite poems by Neruda:

"Walking Around"
by Pablo Neruda


It so happens I am sick of being a man.
And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie
houses
dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt
steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes.

The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse
sobs.
The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.
The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens,
no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators.

It so happens that I am sick of my feet and my nails
and my hair and my shadow.
It so happens I am sick of being a man.

Still it would be marvelous
to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily,
or kill a nun with a blow on the ear.
It would be great
to go through the streets with a green knife
letting out yells until I died of the cold.

I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,
insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep,
going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,
taking in and thinking, eating every day.

I don't want so much misery.
I don't want to go on as a root and a tomb,
alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses,
half frozen, dying of grief.

That's why Monday, when it sees me coming
with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline,
and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel,
and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the
night.

And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist
houses,
into hospitals where the bones fly out the window,
into shoeshops that smell like vinegar,
and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin.

There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestines
hanging over the doors of houses that I hate,
and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot,
there are mirrors
that ought to have wept from shame and terror,
there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical
cords.

I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes,
my rage, forgetting everything,
I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic
shops,
and courtyards with washing hanging from the line:
underwear, towels and shirts from which slow
dirty tears are falling.


Translated by Robert Bly



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