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Documentation’s a luxury                          
while the rest of the everyman          
marks out their time in repetition and silent poverty  
somewhere far outside the written word                  
forgotten to history in the process of living.                          
Thinking of Li Po                          
once I rolled a page                          
from Blake, the Illuminated                          
Songs of Innocence                          
to wrap a blunt in Belize                          
smoking "Little Boy Lost."                          
I can buy more Blake                          
but an evening burns sweeter  
each one a little moreso.                          
On the bus from Campeche Jesus also had a paperback  
Spirit of My People  
It was more of a list  
a rambling run-on of names of the dead  
but if he needed he could wipe his ass              
or start a fire in the rain              
with any of the pages he'd already read.                          
                         
To try to understand what it was                          
that needed understanding,                          
to try to prove I was more                    
than a prelude to a ghost,                          
I'd lost myself, nameless in this ancient place                          
to try to feel again                          
to pay the debts of our fathers                          
to feel their redbrown skin cured by the sun                          
in the slow furnace of life east of Oaxaca.                          
Where a billion nameless shed their sweat      
and burst and bled like fleshy fruit for their gods,        
forced stones from the ground toward the sun with bare hands        
bent and browned and fell like old trees         
and left their desire soaking into the soil                          
flowing with sweat and blood and semen                          
that for thousands of years greased the paths that moved the earth,              
where fresh fluids of fresh bodies                          
flooded canals to irrigate the land                          
that the sun might rise                          
that the blood of the gods might thunder                          
and fall in return.                          
But I found no spirits, no fathers                          
no answers or names                          
only time, only stones                          
only tourists wandering the terraces                          
raised by those who lived in the shadow of the sun                          
who knew that the greatest sacrifices                      
were the words and the dreams                            
the vital reveries that die in the body                          
unspoken, unnamed.