In Honor

In Honor

Poems by Lupe Mendez

LUPE MENDEZ is a writer/educator/performer (www.thepoetmendez.org), originally from Galveston Island, Texas. Lupe has lived in Houston, Texas for the last decade, where he works with both Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say and the Brazilian Arts Foundation to estab- lish free poetry and creative writing workshops open to the public. Additionally, when he is not playing Capoeira or teach- ing, Lupe serves the Houston area arts community as a poet, organizer and host for such events as the former Latino Book and Family Festival and the "Word Around Town" Poetry Tour, a week long summer festival that showcases talented poets and spotlights local venues. Currently, Lupe was just published in be a Norton's newest anthology -”Sudden Fiction Latino: Short-Short Stories From The United States and Latin Amer- ica”- and continues to share his poetry with performances at local high schools and colleges.

In Honor

Poems by Lupe Mendez

Table of Contents

In Honor of an Afflicted Heart

A Timeline in Women

All Hail Don Julio

I Don’t Know

In Honor of Soaring Times

In Honor of Palm Terrace

Honest

Growing Up

Hermao

In Honor of Humbling Nature

I’m Sorry

Cedeño

Four Nights Ago

A Timeline in Women

Don’t you treat me so dog gone mean,

Don’t you treat me so dog gone mean,

Don’t you treat me so dog gone mean, (cause)

You the meanest girl I ever done seen. She was little, like me, tender to hold by hand, easy to push on a swing, So I decided to make her mine. Tender like the tissue paper I handed that girl a drawing of a flower. And as I said “te quiero” with a kiss on her cheek, I received a pink handed slap. I hated little girls at five with their sweet smell, their long hair, bright toothy smiles and airy giggles. I hated them. I placed bugs in their ears, threw mud at their shoes, pulled at pig tails and so by 10, saw up girls dresses with a mirror on my shoe and became mañoso.

I was lonely by thirteen when the dances came, when love notes passed me by, when no girl wanted to kiss behind the music room with me.

Oh mama, love me good,



Show me lovin, like I knew you could. Soon enough, I tripped through a basic understanding of the female body on the inside and the out. I was amazed at how tender she was, how scared she meandered at the sight of us naked. I might have been too young, but her hips and stupidity took us for a trip. We rummaged around on beaches, struggled for room, we sneaked around bon fires

and cop lights, balconies

and cold nights to understand the twinges of lonely maturity and the discovery

that ice cream with late night clumsy sex meant love. But it was never enough. I entered into tortured defeat being rejected, then committed to a cheating heart that spoke of lives and lies and layers of loyalty that had nothing to do with me. I learned an undeniable pain - she’s sleeping

and happy with somebody else

right now. So by twenty-three, the slate was clean, the road was clear and let the Flirt begin.

If you promise me, then I’ll be your man,



I will love you the best I can. It was supposed to have lasted. It began so well, with a candle light and ice cube back rubs talking about the past, ridiculing broke –ass pink bill slips

that cut into the lights. We started off as old friends, remembering heart’s thunder. So we vanquished insecurity, learning that to be together, we can be individuals. We can walk past jealousy. Then, the train stopped. My breathe, I could see, in a cold fright. She left me, tender, fingering at old worn cards that I thought I could play at twenty-seven. Bold grew to whimpering, Brave stared at lonely and Flirt broke down into Confused. So, Confused danced the night, the day, the dusk away at every damn jam until there was nothing left of me but a tender mess. I tried one last time

after all I learned about fears her love, her loss, her selfish debates, her ego and her id and me, just didn’t fit well. I was lost and tired and got back up.

Be your husband, if you’ll be my wife,



Love and honor you, the rest of your life. I had no lover to keep on, to come over and speak up, to tend to me and dream of, but I had an idea that I really was in my shell, eyeing the delights of candy in colors and supple perfumes as I made the rounds. Always a hot red soul, for now, I was cavalier, I ended up mysteriously aloof, incredibility unhinged, unattached, incognito with my schedules

– a gentleman with a tender touch; always smiling. Until I met her.

She wrecked my flow; disturbed my pace, crinkled my forehead, alarmed my age. She hunted me surprised with a scared interest. She’s drawn me in embarrassed my manhood and made me laugh at myself in the rain. I caught a cold when I bought her flowers at twenty-eight, wrapped in tissue paper. She fed me with breasts and Dominican kisses. She sings to me in poems that envelop my body from the toes up. I rock her with equal poems making love as we read to each other’s hearts more bare-assed than bare-assed. Its been that way; to wake up like that, chilled still, slightly like a dream that might tear across my page, but I move on with a soul akin to mine. She is mine. I am at home,

like a home I remember but never had, warm together as we race in the sheets to hold on to one another, laughing to unbutton our thoughts like clothes, to cook like we fight about writing with hot boiling spices that eat up our insides. Hear me – I am in a place, like a home, in a home I never remember having. I laugh and smile to remember I am tender as I decide today that I’ll try again to walk past my addictions to get her, embrace my mistakes to be perfect for her, fuck my nightmares to be alive in her and remember to be honest at 31 tender at 41 and

lover her for the rest of our lives as I say –




Love and honor you, the rest of your life.

All Hail Don Julio Falling on a marble floor, drunk on love, entropy, Murphy ’s Law and four shots of Tequila, I was helpless. You wanted me sober, at home, and recharged. Instead, I lost you in a puddle of wet dry heaves, rippled in lilac and large red chunks of my heart. You grew blurry and pale in my eyes as you walked away black and outlined in bitter fury, You cursed in languages that left me empty. I grabbed at speckled specks; left focused on my drunk blood, scanning for you across marble floors. In an echo, I remembered you left and I died . He’s all I have there in my soul, on my tongue, in that last moment. So all I have to keep my wrists from bleeding are thoughts of you returning. Don Julio undressed in my throat. But I am weaker, overcome with a bottle of tequila that consumes my heart and my liver, forever black and outlined in bitter fury.

I Don’t Know

I don’t know what to do if I want to pull out grenas, or cup my hands around my voice scream until my fingers bleed thirty year old blood beat and beat my heart against walls, against advantage. I face mortality not set by chance gun strokes missed atropellados, but its Fate I wrestle, Fate that hates me. Its worse than knowing all the worn out cracks in my skull, worse than old beatings; worse than feeling genetic addictions alcoholism swimming in my veins the debates I have with myself have one more drink. She might go away I panic we haven’t made enough noise together, enough stories together, enough sunsets together.

Fate shook 22 of 23 chromosomes, placed a black spot on her insides, unstable. It’s a bomb,

a mine, a Molotov,

waiting to implode,

explode, protrude,

intrude, exclude everything she touches. She might go away, not because she’s sick of my over reacting, my lateness, my short comings, She might go because she’s not felling well like a breathless 60 at 22. Watching her fingers turn pale blue and prickly when a cold glass touches her prints. Her bones go brittle when she walks; she can tell where all the pieces are floating in her insides,

dislodged. She wakes up in the morning hoping I don’t hear her cry in pain because her muscles lock up. She cries at the headaches, the nose bleeds. I don’t know what to do if I want to pull out grenas, or cup my hands around my voice scream until my fingers bleed bleed me, strip me of a soul beat me senseless burn all the poetry in my books Let me take her place I do not fear . God I wrestle with this in sleepless nights, wondering if she can find an hour of rest. So force my hand into the blade, I’ll make a tired plea. Let me cry. Let me take her place.

In Honor of Palm Terrace In Honor of Mr. Michelleti, with his lazy eye that could never point to the right price on the back wall of the meat market so he could ring you up for the ham you desperately needed to make a sandwich on a brazen sandy Sunday, In Honor of Doña Maria, with her arthritic knuckles that were cold to the touch and she would actually say she loved the green make- up on the wicked witch of the west – both cabronas scared the hell out of my 7 year old ass, In Honor of El Novio, the self proclaimed ladies man, who would take me by the hand and walk up and down the beach yelling out that “we should play, Frisbee, mijito” in front of the young girls he wanted to talk to, In Honor of Dominic Streater and the bigoted his voice as he constantly yelled from his window for us to turn down the Vicente Fernandez, because he can’t drink his Shlitz in peace, In honor of all the neighborhood public schools that thought I was mentally retarded and didn’t click to the idea that I only spoke a bold Spanish and lost me to an all negrito Southern Baptists school that labeled everything in the building so I could finally learn to say “tank jews” out of gratitude, In honor of my mother who worked too hard and still had time to tell me a story, and yet I could never tell her mine, In Honor of Marcus, with his sling shots and bruising rocks that managed to get us a slick switch to our nalgitas from everyone in the neighborhood, until someone hit him with a bullet in his lung then he and it collapsed, In Honor of Gladys the bus driver who always gave me a free lift to the library, because she could see how much a bloody nose or a knot on my head never took my determination to hide in a book or ten, In Honor of Fr. Frank and his funny accent in Spanish, it just provided him with a new congregation that didn’t care about the rumors of him and little white girls, acabo, no era nada nuevo en este barrio, In honor of Carmona, who used to buy me and Marcus orange, sticky, push- up pops with money from her push-up bra that she wore like a badge as she patrolled the corners from 6pm to mid-night, In honor of Ira, our neighbor in 3B, who taught me how to pack her Winston cigarettes with a 1,2,3, taps on the meaty- flesh of my palm, because I would steal

about three packs in my under ware and only have to pay for 1, and she liked that trick and needed her smokes. A lot, In honor of my Tio Reymundo who showed me how to treat a lady - like the dog that she is, you can beat her, you can rub her face in shit, mijo and she’ll still come back to you – it didn’t get him very far In honor of my Father, and his abundance of Miller Lite, Old Milwaukee, Blue Ribbon, Ramon Ayala, gold chains, futbol, and his lack of memory, direction, determination and the ability to teach me that even adults lie and that independence is getting left outside when he’s had too much to drink, In honor of Streater’s Tavern with its funny fights and clumsy nights that always brought a few holes to my wall and got me interested in collecting revolver shells and new cuss words, In honor of that old barrio always defined by old orange brick; speckled by bickering blanquitos and blacks that finally made me want to come back to the spot I remember Marcus’ last words – get my mom, she’ll know what to do.

Honest Twisted matted hair, over bagged eyes, blue with cracked red veins, Late to homeroom again for a twelfth time. He counts it, I add it to the straws on my back. He quietly takes in a deep breathe, reaching for a sweaty breakfast taco, wrapped in foil paper he quickly inhales a warm bite and recounts to me that the gringo CPS officer said his parents’ drug tests came back, “like me,” he said, “ dirty.”

Growing up I am older, not because I can think that a nap is as golden as sex, nor that I display a Dr. Strange bigote with style, nor that I am thinking of starting my own family, but because I was surprised yesterday to see a former 5th grader, who used to give me hell, who used to fight everyone, who cried, he was so hungry, who I would drive home, who would call me when he was in trouble, who came to me to ask about the birds and the bees, now a seventeen year old with chivito hairs growing from his chin. He brings his sixteen year old girlfriend to my class, quietly, pointing to things in my room like it was a museum. Then, the chivito honors me by introducing this lovely young lady with the words “ Carmen, this is my dad . . . “ And for an instant, I am.

Hermao An idea of love, of joining, that should have proceeded me. Biological argument , a physical slip up and you were ignorantly sent away, miscarried, incomplete, silently lost in a swirling commode. Its an older brother , never imagining a sister having to defend us in a childhood I already know. So it fell to me to be the surprise. I was supposed to be menopause. It is interest. I am fascinated by this, this, idea, of sisters and brothers. I am always humbled. Intricate dilemma: envy then praise, you, no, you, to fight then befriend, to bicker and side with. Show me this. For all I can even hope to gain hermano, brother, hermao is a fine friend.

9.6.05 or I’m Sorry

There is a hole in the world,

in a land, in some jazz

that just kept on bleeding ‘til it ran dry

filled up with everything more than disparity,

less than poverty before my welfare checks came in.

I’m sorry I say I’m sorry

that I have no more time to give. I wish to drink the liquid

in my heart, like a red elixir to give me enough strength

to give you enough time.

I’m sorry Katrina forgot what her name means:

catrina well kept, finesse, refined. She shook complacency.

She tore down the old quarter, every canal, but not every heart. She partied so hard that it made

the walls fall, the lights fail, the running water to go rancid. She made everyone feel inept,

some so deservedly.

I’m sorry I can’t play with you

all night or that I can’t find your family

sorry that the colored shirts I gave you, fit small. It’s the best I can get

off my wet back. I know about not being hone.

I’m sorry they want to keep you camped up, I’m sorry you are lost, and

that your house is a football stadium. Cedeño (10.02.02)

No se si escuchaste los sosurros del coro, o las lagrimas de madre. Tu hermano crecio tanto, por un instante, pense que te vi. Dijo el sacerdote algo de trajeria y solitud – que van par en par. Uno nunca sabe cuando la mano de Dios te salve de esta vida. Yo se que te fuieste en maromas y amor. Vi a tu hijo. Se parece mas a tu esposa. Se comporta igual que tu – hablando con el viento, comodo entre la gente, riendose de todo. Alguien le tendra que decir del hombresote,

el honesto, el humilde

que era su padre. No se si tengo la fuerza-

el derecho. Hablando de padre, el tuyo, hablo una obra de ti. Acabó con un hecho en los ojos. Su voz gatillo con decir : los dias antes del despido de Jose eran a la parrilla, quemando hasta el sol. Pero ese dia, del entierro,

de despido, habia una brisa nubes candidos; es evidencia

dijo la voz de tu padre, de que mijo siempre iba cambiar el mundo.

Four Nights Ago Ike was sick with fever. We fed him prayers, and he swelled; fed him fears and he grew surges, that climbed the sky, and left us with no light, no verse, no sound, but thirst. He pounded on the walls in a fit. He made us all stop and then quit. Nature filled our minds with potable water and shelter, ice and candlelight, ruined shorelines and debris. We ended up, watching him, running to each other, for dry rags and solace. The fever broke. Us. The fever broke us. He filled walls with mold and lit the city void. He sweat it out with us, leaving behind obstacles as big as boats on bridges. Then the nature boy went away. He destroyed my left west end and shattered my right. He left me unable to imagine, so now, I will travel into mosquito swarms and floating coffins, sandy streets and fiery houses.

Let me go, then, and clean the sick bed sheets he laid on. I will throw them into the dark, into the cool calm air he left us. He left us to rest. He left to rest. Us. Left to rest.

Acknowledgements :

Portion of A Timeline in Women uses verses from Jeff Buckley’s Be Your Husband, just out of order Honest was published previously in the Summer 07 Edition of the Panhandler Quarterly. A big thank you and shout out to all the local artists and fellow poets (including my wife, Jasminne Mendez), who helped in- spire, ignite and drive the ideas from soul, to brain to paper. Finalmente, un gran abrazo a mi amo (Jasminne) y mis padres por todo el apoyo y cariño. No es possible ser la persona que soy sin ustedes.

Please send questions, comments or

complaints about this chapbook to

Lupe Mendez -

[email protected],

or

visit his website at

www.thepoetmendez.org

Gracias por su apoyo—Thank you for your

support.

In Honor is Lupe Mendez’s latest collection that spans roughly 8 years of poetry (not in any particular order), from 2002 to the present. The poems all pay respects to the human condition, its emotions, pit falls, and connec- tions to home, love, people and family. Some monies from this poetry chapbook will be donated to the Scleroderma Foundation’s Texas Chapter—to help bring awareness to this life altering Auto –Immune Disease and to KIPP Sharpstown College Prep, as they are working to build their school library on the Southwest side of Hous- ton.

$5.00 © 2010 Guadalupe Mendez

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In Honor