MY EARS SPEAK A PROPHECY OF STILLNESS

brothers & sisters to the land

we have doors to open, candles to listen into

we have language & rice & blue ceramic owls

from the feet, the prayer

from the stomach, the voice

from the eyes, the language

from the mouth, the grave

(yes this river created my love

& yes i am standing beside myself

with toes in the water)

evergreen talking revenge 

oak talking revenge

the ozone talking revenge

sand & soil & the endlessness of skies talking revenge

mountains say nothing of

what you are not ready to hear—

the wisdom of hawk swoops to the chainlink fence 

briefly locks eyes

saying, gardens of blood 

do not & cannot lean on anything

but the triggers of tomorrow

yesterday, i was scarecrow in the bread aisle

security followed my silent wish

to hug every mother with cans of soup &

to set fire to every one of the cash registers

 

soldiers measure the distance

between oceans with a general's orders

with 150 years of ammunition crates

in nobody's name

—the mere weight of one of my atoms

is enough to turn warmongers into ducklings

i throw pieces of bread at them & laugh, high & mad

i cram sociology down their throats

& still they do not listen

& cannot reflect, a blank void in the eyes

speaking the lies of dead monuments

© 2023 Daniel Cyran

Warriors Gear, Remembering, Mind Playing Tricks On Me, Outrunning Starb*cks

 

I’ve been meaning to Google the Golden State Warriors championship years, around 2014 – 2020. When I lived in Vallejo, there was a corner store that used to sell hella bay area sports gear on the side. As I remember it, one could get a pack of corn nuts, a cold tea, and a Warriors shirt for 12$ or something outrageously reasonable. This was before the Starb*cks was built on the same corner. A word to the wise: when Starb*cks rolls through town, it is likely time to go. I digress though.

At one point in time, and this is a funny memory; the word around was that the owner had pre-emptively put a Warriors Championship t-shirt on the rack. This may have been the year following a Warriors championship. I don't know & can't quite call it. 

It may have been the season when the Dubs broke the record for wins in a single season, previously held by Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls. I think the Warriors only lost 9 games that season. While Chicago’s record was only 10 losses during regular season play; when they set the record in the 90s, in a season when this Chicago team would go on to win the ‘ship. Ice the cake and throw back the champagne.

Long story longer, this corner store was my go-to for all things snack and drink related for a number of years. So naturally, I also supported their apparel arm of the business. Over the years I accumulated and donated a plethora of Warriors, 49ers and San Francisco Giants gear. And it's a corner store, these aren't exactly Gucci edition Dubs championship shirts. All to the good though, it isn't the shoes you're walking in that matter; it's where you're going in them. When I'm wearing a Warriors shirt there's just a different energy, like a fresh hair cut or your kicks after you lift that last dash of the toothbrush, and they shine.

In any situation, today I was reminded that one (or more of these shirts) may have been from the years where the Warriors fell short. They had such a brilliant run during those years that I forget which years they won the ‘ship and which years they fell short. I mean, when they made it to the finals or conference finals but couldn’t ice the cake. As I recall henceforth anyways round about yonder. This may or may not be accurate, there were a couple years like this.

So my thought this morning was, before I rock any Warriors gear, I need to Google exactly which years were the championship years and which years they fell short. I’d be remised to be walking out and about town with one of these pre-emptive money grabs at the North Vallejo corner store on my back, ha.

I say all that to say, memory is a funny thing. The Geto Boys monumental song Mind Playing Tricks On Me from the 1991 album, We Can’t Be Stopped harkens. Human beings may never fully understand the capabilities & possibilities of the human brain. And then there’s the mind. Which is a whole 'nother mystery & tupper ware full of worms. Which, from my perspective, may or may not be located in the brain. I think of the mind as more universal. Something more celestial, without a central “seat” in the body, rather I view the mind as “something” our species taps into, intuits…yeah, we tap into “it” or perhaps are tapped into “it” via some form or fashion—the brain being an integral part in this exchange, although who knows whether or not the brain is the focal, or even main vantage point.

I like to think the heart has a mind. And what about the cells within the heart? Surely our species does not perceive cells multiplying and allthat—don’t call me Shirley—but all of this is made available via awareness via the mind.

At the end of the day, I probably won’t Google all this. Too many interests, not enough time. Although I haven’t watched a Warriors game in a few years, I probably will continue rocking the t-shirts. Not because I’m a big-time Dubs fan, although I do like this team quite a lot. I wear these t-shirts because it’s a little glimmer of home that I can carry with me. The Golden State. The Warriors. It also has a nice ring to it, something I feel in my bones as guidance for the heart beating in my chest.

Jason Richardson, 2002 Slam Dunk Contest

 I’m reminded of things and people who aided in my evolution. People and things whose evoluton I also aided in. Lumpia at a garage sale. Any garage sale to be certain, if the garage sale didn't have Lumpia for sale on the side, there probably wasn't anything worth purchasing.

The Vallejo Bookstore downtown. Redwood Street with it's hustle and bustle. I’m reminded of streets and sounds and scents that activate something within my psyche that I am familiar with, something like belonging. I’m reminded that I belong. Sure, home is where you are at. Although, how much of home is where you’re at? How much of home is where you’re from? I’m from California, so I enjoy remembering when I lived there. Remembering the people. The vibes. The trials & tests. Yadda. And this unequivocally & unquantifiably aides in my present state of being. Somehow, some way. Through & through a lot of reflection & mystery. What is it about remembering that somehow can act as a lamp post in the present moment?

How much of memory is lamp post?

We’re surrounded by darkness, and we don’t even know it. The weight of the world.

Review: PROMISES OF GOLD by José Olivarez

 

PROMISES OF GOLD is a testament to the truth that it is always possible to lay claim to a poetry of your own, a poetry that is whole-heartedly filled with goodness, a poetry that creates and cultivates a love for oneself & other people to witness, to feel, and connect with; and ultimately: to move for & take action with. I’m enjoying the questions of and for authority. I’m moved to ask my own questions. My spirit is moved by the poet’s reflections on tenderness, masculinity and toxic masculinity. On what it means to be family. On what it means to be Mexican. On what it means to be American. On what it means to love, as a man, and as a human being trying to make sense of existing and being alive in a seemingly ever-maddening world.

This collection is a clear example that poetry, at its root level, is here for us as human beings to witness ourselves, one another, to fuel one another’s spirits. To nurture our being-ness and bring us together, as inhabitants of this planet, as people occupying similar and different spaces and places on this humungous rock hurling through space. And that to a creative person, to a poet, this is an intrinsic part of being alive, of sharing in this brief and fleeting human experience.

As the poet explains in the introductory author’s note, PROMISES OF GOLD started out with a desire to write love poems. Love poems to the poet’s beloved, love poems to family members, love poems to friends and homies. Then the pandemic began. Then the uprisings of 2020 began. Then the poet became reflective on capitalism’s brutality, on the injustices of the prison industrial complex, on authority’s pervasive illusion, on the violence of borders. Then, then, then, and then.

“But because I am who I am & because we live in the world that we live in, I wrote this book instead” - José Olivarez

It seems as if the poems that are not explicitly “love poems” are incognito love poems. After reading “American Tragedy,” the first thought that came to my mind was: fuck the police. After reading “Poem Where No One Is Deported,” one of my reactions was: fuck la migra. So, I really see these poems too, even though not “explicitly” love poems, as love poems. If only with a grander, more encompassing vision of love than what is considered “typical.” After all, what place does anger have in love and in loving? What is love’s relationship to justice? What is the capacity in my love to hate racism? How true can one’s love really be if it excludes seeing precisely how fucked up the seemingly cyclical nature of control and oppression can be and really is?

And I enjoy this about Olivarez’ work as well: as a reader, I felt invited into a conversation, and really at times, invited to walk in the speaker’s own shoes, to see what he sees, to feel, as close as humanly possible, what he feels.

Along with the brilliant Mexican humor woven throughout this collection (See: “Ode to Tortillas,” “Eating Taco Bell with Mexicans,” et al.), this collection is overflowing with lines and poems that reach straight through the chest, through the breastplate & ribs and finally to the heart, squeezing the heart to life. Not unlike when a handball is squeezed and it creates a brief concave and then, when let go of, the ball intrinsically reverts back to its spherical shape and is once again bounceable. This is what I’ve found in my experience with PROMISES OF GOLD. The heart is touched, the heart is squeezed and given pause, the heart is let go of; and the heart resumes its shape to keep beating. I’m reminded of the Jay-Z lyric: like a roundball you bounce back. PROMISES OF GOLD did this, does this, and as I visit and re-visit these poems, PROMISES OF GOLD continues doing this for my heart: from page to page my heart bounces to life’s rhythm, time and again.

- Daniel Cyran

Pedro Explains Magical Realism

nah, i never heard of magical realism,

but i do know this: when i did acid

in the desert, the ancestors came to me—

i mean they’re always there, but like,

they let me see them. they let me hear them.

& they told me that all the men in our family

sabotage their relationships with alcohol.

it’s like the truth isn’t just an idea, it’s physical.

like you can choose not to believe in gravity,

but it’s still going to hold you down.

that’s what it was like: i had been living

with this truth all my life, but now i could feel it.

To order copies of PROMISES OF GOLD directly from the publisher, click here.

 

* This book is a bilingual, full-length collection of poems. Because I do not understand or know how to read Spanish, this review is focused on the English portion of PROMISES OF GOLD. 

A RELATIVE MADNESS

One true glimpse of this candle

Is more philosophy than thousands of words from Wittgenstein

I spit at the books of each & every dead philosopher

(except for Nietzsche who is alive, bless him)

Too many words, too many thoughts

You bastards did nothing!

But think about thinking!

You sicken me more than red spiders hatching eggs behind my eyes!

You sicken me more than people portraying snakes!

You sicken me more than money! More than myself!

Someone please forgive me

I'm bored with the poets

Constantly on about what is and isn't poetry

This morning reading Jim Harrison again:

"One day my love I'll see your body from the left side of my face"

I'm going to sleep, not at all right in the mind

Wake me up with a philosophy that reckons with the primacy of experience

Wake me up with a philosophy simple & to the point

One true glimpse of this candle

And I touch the ashes these words are destined to become—

A RELATIVE MADNESS © 2023 Daniel Cyran