A Nosa Terra

I

I find my reflection,

in spite of the devastation of  this accursed progress, in spite of the prepotent vulgarity that is this new American Europe that’s invaded every crevice of this ancient land...I can still stand on this Galician hill by the sea. An emigrant returned home a thousand years later, or ago, to ancestral shores. These shores, once dotted with small, isolated farming villages raided by marauding Vikings, are now over-developed and crowded with power lines. Still being invaded. Still being attacked...

Yet, somehow, a part of the land remains breathing and  free. I feel I know the secret language of these hills, of these rías...the smell of this struggling land. Can’t commodify inherent intimacy through cyberspace. Not yet. These invaders, native and foreign, don’t know this language. They don’t hear it or feel it. It doesnt belong to them...They must silence it.  

Tonight new homemade wine, total resistance and no patience; there is no time for self-deception left in me. Action burns in my heart and in my mind. I compile words of resistance in three languages. “The word is our weapon” say the compañeros in Chiapas. So a word in three languages should become three weapons. It should...

These words…I need to live them, feel them, nurture them, polish them, fire them… or  I don’t exist, I am not breathing, I am dead. 

II

I now look at this storm brewing; How wonderful and how frightening.  I saw it tonight by accident in a mirror of sea and sky. Mere reflection of what is there in my eyes too…In the eyes of millions. That something that says to constantly live, love, think, talk, hope, act, arise, destroy, build or you might silently become one of them; one of those who’ve ceased to be outraged by injustice, unaware of their crime, of their madness. 

I taste of new wine and action. I can almost touch the warm body of the lover waiting for me across the ocean…Revolutionary thoughts are love thoughts; active, vibrant, and sensuous; transcending. Particularly when contemplating change on lonely cliff-sides by the Cantabrian Sea. There is enough death, life, rain, and salt here to ignite love in a hundred  desperate hearts. Standing  on the edge of time with my eyes closed, I lick the salt and rain off my lips and let the wind sway me. One wrong step and I could drown in this now satisfied longing for the sound of these waves crashing all around me. 

To the north, sister Ireland. To the east, sister Euskadi. In the ria behind me, my father, and his father, and his mother, and all of the mothers and fathers of our peasant family were born. I’ve imagined or been told we have all stood upon this same cliff and faced the same ocean for hundreds of years. I don’t doubt it. We humans are not as unique in our actions and emotions as we might wish to believe. The cult of the uniqueness of the individual is another bourgeois myth. We all love, and cry, and laugh , and feel, or not, accordingly. And we all know why anyone would want to come here this late at night; a place for lovers, thinkers, criminals, dreamers, cowards, heroes, suicidals and revolutionaries...

 Time, time, time. Time keeps pressing under my skin through tears of fire for what’s been lost. Beyond the horizon, I retrieve a hundred forgotten memories, and grip that eternal longing for a comrade with a storm upon her shores and a flame in her heart hot enough to warm the frigid waters of this Costa de la Muerte. To lay with me. Ride out this storm. Feel me. Arm me.

By Adrian Boutureira 
Galicia, March 1, 2003

5.30 am

Two powerful Galician women; a poet and a singer.

Listening to them while reading this piece, brings me back to that space...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVozIC8HXX8

Negra Sombra, a poem by Rosalia de Castro
Música de Xoan Mont, performed by Luz Casal and Carlos Nuñez

Poisoned

(A poem about the brutal attack against the people of Norway)

 

Poison

War video games twisted,  fantasy killing sickness turned deadly reality, a body full of steroids, a mind filled with poison.

Ultra-nationalist, neo-fascist, fundamentalist Christian convictions being played down...nothing to do with that. An isolated, disconnected incident, a fluke, not here, not us, just one sick madman. Maybe. Not sure. No. I dont believe it.
 
Extreme, calculated madness, a politically delirious product all too common, all too possible. Not just one and only now, but too many and for too long. I've seen those eyes and know those words....

Not new, this murderous supremacist madness. From fears imagined or fabricated, to all too real mass murder. Never accidental, always politically intentional. Always deeply intellectualized. Painful, and sadly, not surprising...A guided missile destroys a whole Afghan village from a thousand miles away; A Palestinian child is run over by a tank, and then, one day, it's the guy next door that is lining up teenagers to shoot them with a semi-automatic gun.

The words of the madman, frightening historic echo we can't afford to ridicule…" Aryan utopia lost to refugees and immigrant mongrel races and their multiculturalist Marxist state enablers at the service of Islamic imperialism. We must defend the father land, its heritage, its traditions, its culture… How much more can we and other Europeans afford to lose and surrender before all is lost?  The spirit of the crusades must rise again…A real blow must be dealt to all the enemies of Christian White Europe, foreign and native alike. We shall show no mercy…”

Almost ridiculously dismissible, if it wasn’t so frightening real, if it wasn’t so much more than just the twisted thoughts of one singular deranged man.  If it was a book of fiction instead of a true manifestation of the violent hate and ignorance of thousands; a frightening true reflection of something that for too long has been there brewing, festering across a whole continent…not even all that well disguised, it lives next door, sometimes in our own homes, yet denied and all too dangerously ignored by millions…

Fascism.

Adrian Boutureira, July 23, 2011

Love, justice and equality will eventually triumph over hate

Esperando o Esquecemento

Mañás confusas, horas perdidas nun vacio, 
nun espazo estraño e á súa vez familiar.

Raro espertar de entresueños retortos, 
soños aventureiros, liberadores; 

viaxes, mulleres, revolución e asasinato.   
Imaxines pasaxeiras.

A realidade reaparece sen aínda abrir ou pechar os ollos.

Aí está ao acaparar todo, tomando posesión ao baixar o meu garda.

Si, xa o se que terminou. Estaba visto. 

Ela noutro mundo, el suo, 
novo, impetuoso, facilmente impresionable, suicida. 

Case, case inocente, mais non. 

Cheo de curvas e perigos. 

O meu fose igual, pero hoxe xa marcado polo tempo. 

Cheo de malas costumes, 

curtido de maldade, calculante, sospeitoso, atrincheirado polas dúbidas.

Non é a primeira vez, nin será a última, 
pero igual agora, neste momento terminal e constante esta só ela. 

Mais xa sen voz, sen corpo, sen calor. 

Só unha obstinada impresión esperando pacientemente o golpe de graza do tempo.

Adrián Boutureira

Galicia-1993

Romancing a color

In depths of gray, I aimlessly search.

Looking for memories of a home which may not exist.

Escaping from one clouded reality to the next.

Dead-end paths crisscrossing emotions and thoughts in a bitter twist.

It rains and it rains

and the sun never shines

Foreign raindrops in a foreign land.

Increased affinity for lover gray.

Within her, I am captured.

There, in learned isolation
I dissolve, cease to exist, are reborn.

In this imposing darkness,
always seeking the elusive,

I’m forever to be an immigrant.

Adrian Boutureira, Oslo, 1987

Toolbox Contemplation

A hammer misses its target,

a chisel slips, a ladder falls, a saw cuts...

A certain motion, a movement;

A given critical moment.

Mistakes can be made.

Measuring tape and angle ruler   

serve to prevent errors,

control accidents,

minimize and avoid damage.  

Predetermined spaces, safely organized.

Dangerous tools put away, locked-up,
sitting inanimate.

Mere objects now, made to be used

by the skilled hands of their handlers.

Austin, 1995

Mi cuarto sin ti

Inanimate menagerie of shapes and colors 

Once awakened alive by our bodies

by laughter and tears, by touch and taste... 
By our scent 

Aftermath Seas

You lay upon me
Your heart beating hard

through me, inside me

I feel you

Still inside of you.

Breathing together

The scent of spent passion

impregnating us

Ocean waves and magnolia flowers

sweet sweat, mango and wine.

My mind wanders and sparks

Lost memories awakened
as images surface and disappear

Joyful, colorful, cubist

My hands touch you

as if always meant to

Naturally, ever-present
lightly tracing the curves of your hips

the arch of your back

The whole of you known to me 
For an instant

Calm seas of quenched desire
Golden silk rays cascading around me
caressing me
Warm soft lips resting on my chest
I am found in this peace

I feel you entering me, taking me in
absorbing me completely
Surrender journey
aboard the phantom vessel of new lovers

Free and unmoored
Liberating, real
complete, fleeting
Wished eternal
As life itself

Adrian Boutureira

Any Lost Lover

                 I

I am trapped inside my darkness

Rusty sword stuck in my back

Numb and cold I watch my blood

dripping down a hollow crack

I try to crawl in after it

but get lost inside my mind

So much of once gave me life

is now impossible to find

               II

And I cant avoid the nightmare

‘cause I alone held the dream

The soft voices of her tale

have become a killing scream

Hours in the Garden (Meditations in the Midst of a Collapsing Empire in 3 stages)

" Freedom to build, to seek, to welcome, to embrace.

Experience lived, created.

Life is art

ever-changing

fearlessly defiant.

Stagnation is death.

No final plateaus,

just endless phases of self-discovery.

The search is the end, not the means..."

 

Afraid, confused,

still breathing.

Still thinking in adolescent Hesse-like platitudes

with Empire snapping at my heels... 

 

Global insecurity trader, no-futures speculator,

-Free Marketeers-

Life-patenting, death-fabricating, bio-pirating, sub-prime loan officer.


 Corporate dominance

economic growth indicators look good.

GDP  

Greed, Devastation and Pain.

NCA
Neoliberal Community Assassins.

No one’s watching those figures in the Hague.

Justice Foreclosed. 

 

Cannon fodder youth coming home in designer body-bags.

No pay-raise girls in low-rise, wealth Gap, Haiti sweatshop jeans,

stocking high the last pieces of Earth at Wal-Mart...

without health insurance.

Ritalin-Prozac High School graduates.

TADHD, ODD, chronic depression, social anxiety disorder diplomas.

Pot criminalized, psychotropic-pharmaceuticals legalized,

Pol Pot killing fields in a bottle,

Lilly Inc. selling millions on prime time.

 

20 something-angel faced-god fearing-vegetarian-Facebook user;

Precision-guided bomb maker, child killer,

works for Raythion, works out at your gym,

watching Rangers baseball and Entertainment Tonight while on the treadmill.

Cubicle state-sponsored terrorists smelling of Body Shop lotion are fearless.

They don’t get prosecuted or extraordinarily renditioned.

The perfect fascist product:

celebrates thanksgiving with grandma,

sings Christmas carols in church...

without bodyguards.

 

And the AC and heat are on in the house 24-7. Comfort at any price.

Mountain top removal is the rural poor’s problem.

Ignore.

Not a word spoken at the bus stop

about the black bodies floating in the Louisiana bayous after Katrina.

Escape.

I-pod isolation and over-sized sunglasses keeps us safe from strangers

and hooked on surround-sound Paris Hilton pornographic media spectacles.

 Watching every perversion, but that of a young poor man getting blown...

Blown to pieces by a billionaire's IED

For Halliburton, for Town and Country, for Big Oil back in Texas…

Back in Texas-Back in Texas-Back in Texas.

A mother is given a fucking folded flag and tries to understand

Her living hell.

 

Kill me, Make me a killer, Fuck me, Fire me.

Validate my now, Validate me now.

Sell me something quick before I get distracted.

Occupy me. Steal my land. Make me an occupier.

Criminalize my resistance.

Lie and manipulate information.

Starve the global South to feed the global North, and call it Free Trade.

Overpopulate to sell more shit.

Sexualize without liberating and then punish babies having babies

with Christian guilt and institutionalized racism.

Commit cultural and ethnic genocide.

Incarcerate. Eliminate all threats... 

 

Can I still really exist? 

 

 Not at the table. On the menu. Power eaten.

Lie to me again. I forget yesterday…all of it. I am numb;

Patriot Act, Guantanamo, Abu Graib, Enron, WMD’s,  S&L, Iran Contra, Vietnam,

Pinochet, Selma, Hiroshima, Haymarket, Trail of Tears.

Columbus...the murderous rapist. 

 

Armed Struggle Entertainment Channel, not in my Verizon bundle plan.

$79.99 a month deal for the peace of mind of digitized, sterilized Reality TV

without the unemployed, or Mumia on death row,

Peltier serving life on trumped-up charges,

immigrant bashing, Exxon-Mobil nation building,

Blackwater mercenary murderers,

US-sponsored Zionist terrorism, dead Iraqi children, 

the truth behind the trillion dollar corporate bail-out and the 9 trillion dollar debt

Or the Death of a Planet for a Profit... 

In the kitchen of a fancy New Orleans restaurant serving mostly wealthy whites, 

a black friend tells me that “a man ain’t no man if he ain’t got no plan”...

Thought I was on it then, or did I pick a non-profit career instead?

Should I have settled down? Procreated?

Stayed focused? Made a commitment to reform?

Was it yesterday or twenty years ago? 

Conceptualized, not quantified,

uncommodified and unexchanged.

Uninsured, unsure, unbred, unarmed...armed,

but it jams sometimes.

Insurgent

Not scared of him. Worried for him.

Scared of you, worried for you. I know you. You live next door,

or maybe simply virtually, capitalistically and parasitically assume to exist there.

 

"Safety breeds mediocrity

Fear sinks and stagnates

Predictability is intellectual death

A bad novel personified

Creativity lost, life at a loss

A dull shadow, a boring product

Strolling numbly along the gold-paved psycho path."

Afraid, confused,

still breathing.

Still thinking in adolescent Hesse-like platitudes
with Empire snapping at my heels...

 

 

By Adrián Boutureira

Boston, 2008

43.22 N Parallel

The oil has reached the beach near my grandmother’s house.

I saw it wash up on shore this morning.

No one thought it would come this far east, but it has.

The spill now reaches the whole Galician shore.

  

I called her last night. It is over.

We never thought it would come to this, but it has.

To say goodbye painlessly, won’t be easy.

I am drained. I need this land now. 
Her strength, her untamed freedom, her fury.

But she’s been wounded by a deadly blow to her very being, 
to so much of her life.

She lies moribund now at her own shores,

unable to heal me as before in her pristine ocean.

 I need her. Her strength, her untamed freedom, her fury.

but she is no longer here.

Distances, differences, confusion, madness, stupidity, silence…

Deadly blows to what was built on the impossible.

Gone too is the healing pool of her blue eyes.

Nothing left but to surrender to the dark storm 

that engulfs and drowns many in this parallel,

cold sea of  isolation,

black tide of sorrows,

How to look at the agony of this wounded land and not wish to die alongside of her?

By Adrian Boutureira
 Fiobre, 2003

Desert Dreams

Miles of footprints left behind across the sand
blending perfectly with the trailing memories of a lover's soft skin.

Mixed shades of brown,

is it a face or a place?

Afternoon lost in scents of sage and her sex.

Desert altar of rock and flesh,

of air and breath,

of lack of water and dripping sweat.

A relentless vision at the edge of a precipice

filled with the pounding pulse and the force of all that is around me.

A dangerous hunger 
for the petals of a delicate desert flower to be pressed against my dry lips.

Sun bleeding tired rays of fire across the landscape

bathing her distant nakedness in which I wish to drown.

Evening breeze across my dreaming face,

half moon rising motions me to also resurface.

Slowly, slowly 
I awake
Again, self aware.

Adrian Boutureira- Arizina, 1993

This poem was put to music:
http://www.tindeck.com/listen/jecy

Twenty-one Captured

Sinking into me silently, I can feel you.

Biting deep.
Under my skin, tasting me,

letting me feed you, intoxicate you.

Laying on me glowing gold.

Flashing emeralds pulling me down,

drowning me in your whirlpool,

lost in the random currents of your youth

On your shores,

at your gates.

Master and slave

A willing sacrifice at the altar

of she that hungers beyond innocence.

Adrián Boutureira

Austin, 1990

Push Push

Angels of Life
Angels of Death

The Power to Create
is the Power to Destroy

When the strings hang too tight,
the force is unveiled.

Victim of a savage truth
 the tortured artist
becomes a potential killer

Adrián Boutureira
1986

This City

All too real false myth

Simple madness for all and none to see

 to sense, to smell, to drink and fuck.

Streets of fear paved in blood.

Common grave pit much too soon.

Broken dreams sinking down into bitter crevices

silent screams from dirty bus stops, empty parks,

trendy bars and coffee shops.

To feel the brush of something less real,

a caress from any kind truth.

Adrián Boutureira

Houston, 1985