Lancondon...

Lancondon... What keeps you so?
By: Ken La Rive 111397

You draw my heart to you with hooks, oh
Lancondon of selva, the last percent of humanity that
resists the Spanish fly of Chiapas under thatched roof and
a barking dog. Where first there was laid that maggot
parasite of twisted Catholic processes, who still feed
on the wounds of their own creation. You were scourged and
mangled into oppression, but still remained resistant. That island
of pure Mayan blood, the last five hundred, that is
the soul of Chiapus, still sing to the jaguar song.

What keeps you so?

They thought your back was broken. By the heat of
white fever virus, by the heat of countless deaths in
the name of gold, by the heat of your burned books,
codexes, and hopes, all for the exchange of dogmatic truths…
and what of the drug lord? Still you cling to what you find
was never lost inside.

What keeps you so?

Deep in la selva you drag your chains to be heard. Your
diamond patched frocks over eagle motifs still cling to the
great wheel of you ancestors. That long count calendar mark
the days by cycles of concentric spirals, repeating. You were connected
with the past, a long past, and a future they say ends in 2012…
Do you ring in the new age by example?

What keeps you so?

The rain forest echoes of La Ruta: of DDT and Aids,
of PEMEX trucks on mud rut roads, of coffee, banana, sorghum,
cocoa and chicloros, tobacco, and filtered jewels of marijuana, and coke
plantations; of alcoholism and tuberculosis, malnutrition and cattle carrying parasites. Hachakyum, help you! “Tengo mi pistola, me mota, y mis huevos. Entiendes mendez?

What keeps you so?

Trucha! Yo estoy hecha de otro arbol! Your hooks are deep in my
swelling heart… Hide, oh Lancondon. Hide in la silva! Survive
Zapatistas, and the Mexican Army. Hide from absorption, hide from
gennocide!

Thanks to the Chicano poet in the lowlands of America: Juan Felipe Herrera, (who lives it.)