Poet’s Prayer

JIMMY SANTIAGO BACA: Okay, here we go. It's called “Poet's Prayer.” 

World made of words, words put together to make sense of the world. As a child of five I memorized hymns, singing the loudest in the choir to hear my voice, and at school when the classrooms emptied I spun like a globe on the teacher's desk, touching the sun as if it was a large alphabet card above the blackboard. 

Mysteries. I was a wizard and with letter sounds I could conjure spells to chase the devil away, I could make up stories, poems, adventures, tragedies, romances, all at my disposal in my love for sharing wonderful fables the imagination called upon me to convey.

While Grandpa buffed shoes in hotel foyers, I sailed out of the present, imagined a life for each tourist, touched paper roses on tables as one touches a spring petal, scratched my fingernails on wooden staircase railings like a cub sharpening his claws on tree bark, ran my palm along the wall board carvings of Mayans and Aztecas, unwadded napkins on tables to smell lipstick, grabbed crumpled papers in the wastebasket to study handwritten notes, then I dashed out into the market. 

In time, I memorized the card symbols, fingered letters in the yard dirt, and welcomed the ant and the cockroach into my world. I expanded my universe: I traced a letter on the cold window glass and everything about me shifted radically: I was reborn. Words de-created me and gave birth to a new me. I felt myself an alchemist’s chalice filled with warm, electric, inventions in flux. 

Even now as I write these words, images rise in the mist and slowly unveil what was hidden in the fog. I see my hard-working grandma shaking her finger and scolding me: no writing on everything—in the tortilla flour on the cutting board; in the dough; with my spit beading on the hot woodstove top; when I peed outside in the dirt— “Don’t do that!” she cried, “Stop writing letters everywhere!” 

Something doesn't work for me in the classroom, drab barracks, portable buildings, books that have nothing to do with my life, test taking and purposeless repetition that numbs the wits, bullying, kids shooting up, smoking drugs from glass pipes behind the gyms, gangs—test me why a child cries, why a girl is sad, about a father who doesn’t come home, a mother on drugs, about poverty, about fear, give me stories that talk about this, about never having enough to get by, about never being enough of a person to be accepted, racism, betrayals— 

I'm done with the elitist stories, politically correct, tech-driven testing to make thoughtless and sad consumers, highly educated human-manuals herded together to croon and moo over toxin-laced facts. Testing for me is like being kidnapped, gagged, handcuffed, and thrown into a small cell where I can’t move and I can’t show you who I am, what I know. I can’t get close to you. I can’t, in other words, communicate with you. 

When I write, my soul unfolds, my heart opens. I look around the world and am saddened and troubled by the maddening violence, wars, quarrels, greed, insane power grabbers, the numbing of America and gargantuan greed of the rich. My parents were alcoholics, they didn't believe in books, they seldom spoke kindly. I like writing because it awakens a new part of myself, one that is stronger than the nonwriting self. I trust the process that changes me, helps me unclasp my tight-clenched fist and exhale and reach out to other hands that help me climb out of my darkness, as I lean toward the window in my soul and inhale the fresh air again, feeling clean, lighter, clearer of mind and heart. It helps me keep from being destroyed by the prison profiteers running the multinational corrections industrial complex that trades in criminalizing and destroying human beings and ruining our communities. May the spirit of my music open my eyes, shape my speech, and give me an amazing life. Amen.