I want to read your poems about Fresno & or Central Valley

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sugdorz
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Jul 29, 2011 9:31 pm
Location: fresno
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I want to read your poems about Fresno & or Central Valley

Post by sugdorz » Fri Jul 29, 2011 9:50 pm

I know there are many good poets in Fresno so let's read each others Fresno inspired poems. Here is mine:

Thoughts on Fresno As I Am

Fresno, you have fallen asleep
Along the mountain sides
Of your north.

Your Blackstone spine
Is pressed against boxes of concrete
Petrified wood and advertising steel.

Fresno, a haze of fumes floats above
And lingers through your tired streets
And we taste it in your holocaustic, gaseous, valley chamber vegetation.

Your Tower Dis - is emboweled with alcohol and emotional wrecks
And not to far away is hypodermic China Town.
They are twins of the same womb from different fathers.

Fresno, your schools are concentrated on their educational poverty.
So kids wage wars against each other on your streets because subconsciously
The wrath that’s pressed inside of them tells them

They must fight for land that they believe is theirs
But won’t dare fight for what is really worth a fuck!
And you won’t teach them, Fresno.

But those thoughts are passed from one generation to the next
Through hand signs and welfare nipples and yet I swear to you Fresno,
That this issue of blood won’t pass from you until you learn to read and understand

What is written in graffiti on your Stone Age walls
And what was scrawled by the finger of your Messiah
On your prehistoric sand.

Who is your redeemer, Fresno?
Fresno, never mind.
You don’t believe.

Your west side stories are a colon; cleft.
And your east side gangrene is left untreated
Both diseased with thugs and slaves of capital.

Fresno, I have another line to write about you,
A little white lie perhaps
But no one cares about your River Park, and Friant Damn or Fashion Fair, Goddamn!

Fresno, Motel Drive is an oily gaping hole of marching pigs
Where no one who goes there will readily confess they ever go
But you put their names in black and white after they have seen the light.

Fresno, what about the fact that you are sick
And have never been in love?
Fresno, what about your apathy over me?

What about your face of meth? That shit sells within your borders
More than the USA Today
That constantly berates you.

Fresno, your city council goes a whoring
After other ripened fruit
Because your basket has long been dry and withered.
.
Fresno, are you dead or do you find it easier
To lie there in a fetal pose and not get up
While your commercialized and politicized children

Won’t dare dream with eyes wide open?
You’ve left them soiled in their wakened slumber by the shit you let them swallow
Since the days before my mother’s water broke

And I arrived just like everyone
But they call me Fresno born.

Gustavo Rodriguez Jr
Author of The Evolution of a Word Made Flesh and Dopamine Heart

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