MEX/US border crossing at Otay Mesa.

No paper in the car so I write teeny-tiny on the last blank pages of my Jack Kerouac paperback. We all have to pee real bad—it hurts. I suggest the pink keg cup left over from the party: crouch down behind the passenger’s seat, a beach towel wrapped around and take a leak. So slow we see everything—la línea con los Mexicanos. Vendors sell day old churros, clamatos chakas con pulpo, tejuino, diablitos y bolis de rompope. Horns honk from all directions. Stress levels rising in anguish. We’re all stuck to the seat, right shoulders burning. El Super advertises new skivvies and blow pops. Some abandon their trucks to go shopping. I say keep cool, turn up the jams! with the windows down, no air conditioning—we save gas, breathe fumes.  I pee in that pink plastic cup filling it to the brim with strawberry lemonade—it’s hot!—pour it out the car door crack—blood & urine steaming on to Mexican asphalt.

weaving & cackling

ostracized

descendant of Egypt

you traded

wagons for steel
where you picked

violins, earth

& bones

buried in soil

there remains:
memories & song
 
des corbeaux

recorded in stone

you rose roses

shape shifted

stole

fire

take thrones!

Do Something About the Children Slain

Dusty blood flows in the road, red rivers pool in graphics, casting crimson shadows on cement walls: ”Twenty-Four Dead Just South of El Paso”

The super-market execution taped off yellow. Her downcast eyes in remorse, not strong— Just a necessity. Living in cardboard houses behind wooden pallet fences, unsolved murders of their sisters and husbands, waiting for the maquiladora to boom again.

She cannot cross the desert with her babies. The able kids are throwing gang signs in the alleys littered in crime scenes,

Aye Güey,

No honest money, only assimilation to the cartels, leaving her in warfare—
Prostitution. Normalcy. Borders push men back for slaughter, time in mourning: To struggle, to pray, to stay for the factory line up, federal planes flew overheadvduring the last soccer game.

Filed under: poetry Tagged: current events, death, drug enforcement, family, freedom, juarez, life, mexico, military, news, politics, society ]]> http://nisawest.wordpress.com/2011/04/24/familia-anclada/feed/ 0 Nisa Juarez http://nisawest.wordpress.com/2010/06/02/memorial-day/ http://nisawest.wordpress.com/2010/06/02/memorial-day/#comments Tue, 01 Jun 2010 19:03:22 +0000 Nisa West http://nisawest.wordpress.com/?p=421 ]]>

Dragons get lost at sea too-that’s where the fire energy goes, and with it libido, any desire for human flesh. No uniforms or shaved heads, we devote our lives to God seeking evolution or some other distraction,“You could study Linguistics.” That way you’d still have long pretty hair to brush, just in case. I already thought of that. Today is Memorial Day and we are alone. Frightened by the six degrees of separation, knowing that we may meet someone who knows someone we know who’s died. ”And what of the Devil, doesn’t he play a part?” Not in this episode, hopefully not in the next. Contemplating syntax with reason to believe our language shapes the way we think- ours with more blame than others waiting for a dragon to drift ashore this Memorial Day.

Filed under: poetry Tagged: ancestors, culture, death, dragons, evolution, freedom, God, islands, ocean, poems, relationships, sea, society, solitude, writing ]]> http://nisawest.wordpress.com/2010/06/02/memorial-day/feed/ 1 Nisa SeaSerpent2 http://nisawest.wordpress.com/2010/01/17/sending-love-to-haiti/ http://nisawest.wordpress.com/2010/01/17/sending-love-to-haiti/#comments Sat, 16 Jan 2010 23:37:27 +0000 Nisa West http://nisawest.wordpress.com/?p=408 ]]> May all be restored through Love, Life, Loss and Hope.  To the great people of Haiti, I wish you Peace, Health and Light…

From envy a vicarious dream repeats
Each autumn as the sunshine cools
Happiness that once shone bright grows dim;
My mind takes over for her Chance—unleashed.

Thirty three years have passed yet she remains
A part of me, and full of looks like me,
Blue, new skies of Fall, the air is clear
And sharp; I watch my breath as clouds break through

Great peaks—this mountain journey continues,
Linger heavy thoughts of her life; she’s free!
Like birds, my daughter soars inside my heart,
Her sight and strength in spirit, I do weep,

Another mother-daughter fate it brings,
By nature we will be dear friends again.
I love this season of her temperate birth—
My greatest pain, she fills a crucial role

To be my joy and light this time around.
As I walk perilous steps until my Death,
My lifelong prayer that mine will come before
And she will be the last to know what’s best.

Posted in poetry Tagged: ancestors, death, family, freedom, friendship, home, Nature, poems, psychology, relationships, Truth, writing ]]> http://nisawest.wordpress.com/2009/12/06/autumn-child/feed/ 2 Nisa autumn http://nisawest.wordpress.com/2009/11/29/391/ http://nisawest.wordpress.com/2009/11/29/391/#comments Sat, 28 Nov 2009 12:52:30 +0000 Nisa West http://nisawest.wordpress.com/2009/11/29/391/ ]]> The Hermit: Understanding the Major Arcana of the Tarot
This article discusses the many meanings of the tarot card the hermit.
Read More

We drink water

from the tap—

as if we’re not at war,

swim around

The Gulf Coast

Soldiers negotiate realms

begging for somewhere

to escape

America

Tea Partiers

tongues Burgundy

hollering at uniforms

and guns.

Our unarmed

silence outraged

at what’s been done,

One in ten employed

and John Boehner’s lungs

burn as he remains

stuck

unharmed,

Wall Street soared

with indexes

reaching high

Scattering

Illuminati.

Posted in poetry Tagged: change, christ-consciousness, evolution, family, freedom, islands, poems, poetry, Practice, relationships, Truth, writing, yoga ]]> http://nisawest.wordpress.com/2009/10/30/return/feed/ 5 Nisa Water http://nisawest.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/passing-trains-of-thought/ http://nisawest.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/passing-trains-of-thought/#comments Thu, 10 Sep 2009 22:51:24 +0000 Nisa West http://nisawest.wordpress.com/?p=286 ]]>

I. Startling Things:  Passing trains.  But only when the wind is moving in a certain direction. When it’s blowing from the west, the crashing waves startle me. And when there is no wind, the silence.

People’s minds. The unawareness of those living all around me and the actions I see played out.  Endless chattering voices.  Sleepwalkers in the daytime who get revved up by waiting in a long lines anxious to order their vanilla lattes that may or may not be chugged down and possibly followed by a jot to the beach with their beach cruiser baby strollers.

When those same people yell at their children.

The woman who flips my friend and I off as we pull into my driveway at night.  She is the one who thought she recognized my neighbor as she proclaimed, “Hey you! Oh, sorry.  You look like my friend Martha from the methadone clinic.”

Saturday people riding their bicycles in colorful outfits on the 101.  People who are always getting work done on their tattoos—some angels, some demons.

Rich people experimenting with fancy hallucinogens they somehow obtained from the Amazonian jungle.  When they are no longer experimenting, but believe they are not addicted to anything.

Fit people in their yoga classes, practicing pranayama and complicated asanas as one of their daily “workouts”.  At night, seeing the same ones through the glass, loudly socializing, smoking cigarettes and drinking martinis as one of their weekly rituals.

This startles me, but I don’t bat an eye. I only get twitchy when they say to me, “Where have you been?”

II.  One of the Pleasant Things:  One of the pleasant things is I have the ability to forgive and forget easily. I give all my unpleasant reminders to the passing freight trains, and all I have to do is breathe. Those startling rail screeches and obnoxious horns take away the regrettable past, dark memories and lies.

III.  Something Easy to Do: As the trains conjure up dust bunnies around my trailer home, I sweep away everything I don’t want to keep.