a well dressed man

 

a well dressed man from mexico once told me in broken english:

 

 

ja ja ja!!!! translation: ¡¡¡ha ha ha!!!

 

thank you... i dreamed that i had finished the book and there was a movie about the book but me

and someone else were the only two persons that were watching the movie and the movie screen

was a waterfall or a tidal wave then i tried to see who was the other person and when i saw who

was, it was me and, and the person who i thought was me did have eyes and then i turn my head down to see my hands, and they were made of cardboard and all my body; at the end i was just a

piece of cardboard with my face sketched and next to me was my body tied at the floor with four

candles on each corner.

 

---- Original Message ----

this the well dressed man from mexico revealed to me, after dark skin and accent,

why is my english broken? i never did mean to ruin such delicate constructions with my bare hands let alone my tongue

 

i speak to you only as a means to reconstruct the meaning of foreign

and move beyond borders before they become gated in an act of shutting out

or perhaps closing in

 

the well dressed man from mexico was really a boy, just a young boy of no more than 5 years,

he wears a school uniform, socks should be at knees, but young boy unfed-legs cannot

accommodate

 

he takes the plates from your table and

your social security money”

is that why you despise him?

“for each square-inch of his skin there is one less job for an american”

he is a well dressed man-boy and he’s waiting patiently on a street corner with a cigar in his clamped teeth and a mustache overhead and a look of regret, as the cold air falls from between his teeth with the smoke and he envisions the sun of a more red earth pulling him in directions that cannot be seen by the naked gringo

 

no, nor the tastes of stale bread from bleached flours and the prospect of a better, more

integrated existence, where one becomes robotic in nature—becomes,

the object for which he sells his body to replace the sweetness of living and breathing—

 

while he sits on a crate elegantly posed for the next filthy truck

though he—well dressed man-boy

you were able to walk barefoot

you were able to wear life

and not have life wear you

so you relieve yourself of stale bread,

cold air and 15 hours of work

and drink a warm beer

hiss at young girls

 

the reflection of white man makes you sick,

but it is now this sickness that drives you forward,

it becomes you, you lose the roll in your r—the tan in your tan skin

 

the well dressed mexican man-boy talks to me and sometimes

i get lost in the cracks between the words and cannot follow

what he is saying, though when all is said and done i am under

the full influence of comprehension

 

sometimes he looks at me and does not quite understand,

we draw pictures and make elaborate motions with our hands;

we draw inspiration from each other’s—he takes your dirty plates and leaves you with a—

“i don’t know they all look the same”

when you turn to me i will look exactly like you

this is strange, you are gringa

and yet that cardboard person you thought was you

“he’s just a dirty mexican”

who stands well dressed

and

forfeits broken tongue

for english

to become part of the ma-chine

 

we are the machine

working together point

and counterpoint

rolling off of each other like cogs do

fitting neatly together

 

you are the character in a dream

you tell me great things

in a manner of which i could not have understood them

if i myself had said them