In the muggy Otay morning warm
the bus sits purring

air conditioned within

I am glad for it

I am glad I work down by the sea
not in the testicle hot box of El Cajon California
nor next door La Mesa
nor in between Grossmont

nor even climbing the shadow slopes
of my dreams

mount Helix where I used to go chase 
sunsets with my old friend A. Ames

(whose ancestors messed around
 in ancient San Diego and Tijuana)
                                    Samuel Ames 
                                    Falleció en el Rancho de 
                                    Tijuana, BC, México 
                                    27 - Enero de 1918 
                                    a la edad de 73 años 

and ended up like my parents
in La Mesa Grossmont

where I grew up a little bourgeois
son of a teacher and rocket engineer

always looking up toward the bigger houses
up there on the hill top 
on the hill sides

the ones with a killer view
and really good TV reception

they had those rotary motor-driven antennas
on their rooftops

ones you could spin around
searching for the perfect tune

driving a box from indoors
driving a box on top of their big color TVs

we never had a color TV down in the canyon
below the dam that still hasn't broken

open in my dreams

the reception was just too pitiful
so we never bought a color TV

until Cable came in but I had 
run away to Washington D.C.

two years before that.



The reception was just too pitiful down in the canyon
where we lived @ 9X8X Limon Evanue (HI Alan

Ames etcetera

                           )




On clear days I can see those hills in the distance
twenty miles due north along the 117 meridian
west of Greenwich at the time the tone will
be coordinated universal hour X, Y, Z

standard Earth Terra Telus etcet.





The bus rolls through Otay mesa U.S. side I scribble




None of that memory is as beautiful to me now
(except as words, these very words ourselves)

I  send  you  read


he loves strikeout type see Delany Dhalgren yes


no more of that no, none of that is as beautiful
to me now as the world going by outside the 
window and I can see the great hill of mount Miguel

from the other side, now

the bear has gone over the mountain

none of that is as beautiful to me now
as
         (although it was beautiful, once, and 
still is

              my brother and sister live there
               in a house where I used to hurl the evening newspaper

politically incorrect onion baboon yes  )



none of that is as beautiful  to    me     now 

         as   David telling me he gets distracted when

I  throw   the    words        a l l      over the page



none of that is as beautiful to me now
as sitting and having a beer and trying
to talk him into going over a block to 
the steak house

and arguing liberal conservative AynRand KurtVonnegut


none of that childhood blessing middle class two cars in the garage
big houses of the really rich towering up over our heads

none of that is as beautiful to me now
although I was blessed yes with
a house full of books AND NO COLOR TV


full of books heh heh look at me now whimpering before
the god e.e.cummings


no, not even    him, 

no            ,




not even near, not even close




and we had a piano and now my son is studying music
a generation later at the university of Montezuma SDSU



none of that memory is as beautiful as his music


none of that childhood that died so long ago is

as beautiful as the muggy morning sky
and the air conditioned bus

and my brain that still depends upon
william carlos williams' white chickens


none   of        t  h   a     t                  N O



none of that is as beautiful to me now as
the gritty flat anti-Kansas before
Otay rocky mountains

anti-M  anti-M  I'll  give    you    ANTI em



none of that is as beautiful as a thought of my son
or a thought of my third wife

yes, as especially the one I love now


and none of that


none of




n o







                      O t a y


empty trucks racked up behind chain link fence
next door to huge open stretches of vacant

farmland brushed once, twice, with 
the touch of eucalyptus shadow

and

in the near distance


                             the  mountains










or at night, coming back from San Diego to Otay gate,
barrelling along the 905 highway across the mesa

with the shining bright lights of
Donovan (rock mountain) state
prison burning up the sky

the ULTIMATE border fence
from whose boundary no
traveler returns,

Hamlet,

except for parole


============================================================
=====================================
================
===


They say it will rain in the mountains today.

"Cuyamaca" = "rains-there"



They say it will rain on TV, not in this sentence.




I saw the deportees arriving at the border, night before last.
I crossed through the exit turnstyle as they were gathering
their brownbag belongings from the federal deputies wearing
rubber gloves.  The deputies were wearing the gloves.

Welcome to the 21st century, Virginia.  There is no Sanitary Clause.

I crossed through the exit turnstyle as they were gathering
their belongings and being let through the metal gate
opened especially for them.  They were met by officers 
and politically correct activists with trays of water
and snacks and religiously correct advice.

None of the Mexicans - neither official nor 
activist - were wearing rubber gloves.

The deportees were picking up their brownbag belongings 
and walking up the painted mural wall corredor. 
                                              I fell
in with a group of them, walked with them, Whitman
gringo fool not daring to write, not now, only

l i s t e n

I walked with them, they paid me no never mind
there were three young women walking in front of us

....................

when we passed through the further yellow turnstyles
into the sea of taxis in front of the island of tacos

the taxi drivers were fishing, as usual, trolling the crowd

in spanglish :  Taxi?  Taxi to downtown, caballeros?



What for?  -- one of the deportees asked, -- I walked
for five years in the yard  (en la yarda) !
                                             The men
behind me burst into laughter.  I thought

omaigad I gotta write this down tomorrow but


then       they     were    gone


            where?     h o w ?





				I only stalled a moment to smell the
				sweet burning flesh of roasted tacos

and then


                   poof

they had vanished 	into Mexico 
		like a brief puff of steam

No.  Not even that.  A silent gasp of unheard footsteps
in
the 
night

a brief sizzle of pastor adobada asada
tripita suadero vapor and steam, yes


                                           v a p o r



they had vanished



Of course I knew what happened.  When I was distracted
by the thought of writing this down,

when I paused to smell the fresh roasted meat

they turned right toward downtown
and I turned left toward the bus

and that was that

I got distracted and they disappeared off my radar screen
into
the next

l   e   v   e   l



and that, as Frost wrote in a completely different context

	made all the difference.




Our paths crossed, and then separated.
Welcome home Mexico.  God bless America.
Now get the fuck out of our face we don't want
you  a n y    m o r e  .






Liberty is a very expensive word.           I  am  free .
I will pay the very price for what I say (write) here .


Once upon a time there was a little boy who
stuck his finger in the dike.  She said oh
yes, that's the spot.  
                            Then the water broke.



You decide what it means I won't say any more
today.   Not  here  .   Ya  basta  .




                    Howard Roark  built
                          (tried to build)  his building

and then 
		tore it down .