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15 November 2013

Vignettes from Trail Number 192

Rudolfo Carrillo

by Rudolfo Carrillo

i.

Twelve years on, Charlie Jones, Jr. had grown to be fatter than hell. At least he was trying to lose it. Some days he was a hundred percent, fucking-A sure he was gonna have a heart attack. But on he went, huffing and puffing anyway, just to see how far he could get in the pinche universe where he had been randomly embedded.

Jones switched to a diet of falafel and Gatorade, and walked around as much as he could. His repeated circumnavigation of campus and through the labyrinthine parking facilities kinda reminded Charlie of the misty past, of the time when he walked around the world in a pair of combat boots stolen from the king of the heavily guarded watermelon ranch on the edge of town. Here was a simpler task called Embudito Canyon.


ii.

The enchiladas were decent and the sauce was bitter too. It was possible to imagine the tortillas were of extraterrestrial origin. Monroe favored corn tortillas, served in a stack. Abelard and Charlie argued over the remaining flour tortilla, rolled up in a bit of foil like a magic carpet or an extra-special cigarette.

Up there in the shadow of the famous mountain, the three returned a guitar with magical properties to a scientist, wandered through flat-roofed neighborhoods, rolled down the windows to let the dry air of the western lands wash through their eyes, and now sat eating lonche at Garcia's. Pass the honey, said Abelardo. 

iii.

Jones reckoned that one way to tell if a gal was the right one was to take them hiking and to start off with a rough trail too. A hearty New Mexican meal beforehand probably wouldn't hurt either. But Darlene was different. For one thing he could not tell one goddamn way or the other whether she was amused or horrified when red chile squirted out of the burrito he was consuming and onto his shirt, accompanied by a sound that resembled radioactive decay.

Charlie and Darlene trekked up Trail 192, stopped at a small meadow, and continued upward into a part of the Earth where huge trees erupted from huge rocks, waving their limbs greenly toward the heavens beyond the canyon walls. He talked a lot about all the plants and animals and people that he associated with the mountain, how some of them had walked here and they had been together. She looked up at the sun and smoked another cigarette, and crouched to touch a cactus and looked at the sun again with her small white hand over her brow.

iv.

Stop here and I will take your picture, said Abelardo. Monroe walked over to a datura plant and attempted to communicate with it using ceremonial Nahuatl. Charlie Jones, Jr. lumbered his elephantine arse over to the trail marker and remarked on the importance of making certain the sign was clear and visible in photographic reproduction. Who knows when we will ever be here together again, said Charlie, as a lizard zoomed by and into the multitude of sage while the datura plant replied by blossoming and Abelardo touched a button on his phone.

The wind was coming down the canyon. Snakes could appear and there was a certain blueness to the colors the three men saw up there. They climbed up onto the rocks. There was some blood but mostly symbols mixed up with the granite and sandstone. Here was a water hole, there a length of sandy earth crossed with animal tracks. After an hour passed and dusk washed over their skin, Charlie and Monroe and Abelardo naturally wandered back to the rental car. They were fascinated with metal and electricity. The moon hovered.







04 November 2013

Peace and Love

Rudolfo Carrillo


by Larry Goodell

Peace and Love –
evolve backwards into the above.
When everything was perfect.
When was that? 
Do you have a balloon under your hat?
Even the super wealthy live in fear of being
deposed.
In fact I am their fear.
“Those poets, why doesn’t someone shut them up?”
Nobody has it easy and it takes guts to get old.
But if you’ve got to have a goal
Peace is pretty good.
Stick those drones up your ass, Mr. Military Fart-face.
Stop warring against your own people, Everybody.
Go against your petty self-serving nature
Mr. Human and stop putting down women &
       screwing over your neighbor.
You don’t need Viagra, you need
Love by the Acre!
Real love that is blushing with compassion.
The ability to touch and hug yourself
            out of this mess.
You need a benevolent group that can
            calm down your ego.
You got your dharma, your teachings, your Wikipedia,
      your books, your intenet, libraries
     of the world – 
You got your Buddhas, your Jesus, your Moses,
     your Black Elks, your swamis
     your gods galore, your teachers –
But you need your Sangha, like Thich Nhat Hanh says
     you need a community, a community of positive 
                                  interests
     to build up the commons, what’s good for everybody
     everybody gives some for the good of all –
Don’t laugh, it’s possible, it’s inevitable, it’s
filling in the blanks, connecting the dots, seeing the vision
     that exists in love, a talking circle of direction
from the drums of the original land, the indigenous
thoughts and prayers, the cycle of the seasons,
the locality of love, and produce, and
cooperation, a locality of friends not
to gouge each other’s eyes out, or
work each other to death for gain
but to get together to build a platform for song,
for music, for performers, and for the art
of governing ourselves.


10/26/2013 for the 100 Thousand Poets for Change, Albuquerque Reading Performance
larry goodell / placitas, new mexico

photograph by Carl Michener-Rodin. l to r: Joe Bottone, Olivia, Steve Rodefer, Bill Pearlman, Beverly Buffington, Mel Buffington, Laura Linsley at the door, Gene Frumkin, Kell and Betsy Robertson with baby Amy, Charlie Vermont, and me (1968, Albuquerque, North 4th Street across from the present El Patio)

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