I BELIEVE I DON’T MANIFESTO
I am an internationally recognized body-positive activist
an ESL writer who abandoned a size 32-30 size jeans
to twist and shout in fat and brown parades
I worship muscle men of ill repute
as they decompose exploited by the porno
industrial war complex
When I take my meds I recite
backwards passages of the Apocalypse
by St John l’enfant terrible of the evangelists
The scary book that has lamb recipes
false prophets, four horsemen from Hacienda Apocalypses
performing celestial rodeo acts
it scares my friends and acquaintances
when I break out in Pentecostal tongues
they make sure I swallow the med bricks
that pass as medication
The new version of Apocap app has added counting ballots
as the pass time at the end of the world
which didn’t end but was postponed 2024
in this version of Hades, Jon Voight
lead the recount of 2020 election
ask for outrageous donations to maintain the status quo
of the roaring 2016-2020
whew that was a close one
I am a former civil servant, fond of mashed yams and steaks
that’s how I get my gumption to write belligerent poems
moody sonatinas in toy pianos,
revolutions soluble in lemonade
I drink strong coffee and biscotti,
write grammatical cheerful manifestos
of salty declarations, written in the stupor of
of repressed lapsed catholic consecration wine
tortured as to whether to use a comma, a colon,
a semi, a period or nothing at all.
HOMAGE TO ALL BLACK VELVET PAINTERS
I. Open your eyes to night’s pornographic black
The surge arrives as if I’d swallowed a sack of sugar.
buckets of expresso, 1000 tabs of speed
sound and color, sound and color
the sirens in my head shriek Wagnerian rants
kept secret from Philip Glass
kept secret from Mozart when he composed
The Requiem, an overture for insects
a Beethoven quintet of squeaky woodwinds
II. Worship sound, a chorus of cicadas
they roll their thousand eyes
explode from their crustaceous shells
in a painting of the finest velvet canvass
who knew their organs were loud purples
bubble gum greens, throat singing in unison
popcorn beauties enslaved by summer
they fall in love with their own communal sound
disregard their children in exchange
for reverberating voices, I’m glad to hear their divine
unselfish immolation for the sake of art
III. Eat color, lick hues
cross dawn munching Elvis’ favorite ice cream sandwich
nibble psychedelic murals tiny dots
multi colored chocolate
ultimately, I eat therefore I am
grown up and yet a child
to go to bed this late or so early in the morning
a perennial college sophomore
there is no going home from here
there is no turkey or homemade tamales
that tastes as good as retirement
where every day is a Sunday
I savor awake in black
FERNANDO D. CASTRO was born in Ibagué, Colombia. Just two months before turning fifteen he left familiar surroundings to emigrate with his family to the New York City neighborhood of Jackson Heights – the heart of New York City’s Colombian community. He grew up in an immigrant working-class family that wanted to embrace the American dream and yet was painfully aware of its contradictions. A writing vocation called late but loudly after he relocated to Los Angeles in 1984. Fernando branched out from the rigors of architectural practice to poetry, playwriting, journalism, teaching poetry and cultural activism. His publications include Fernando’s Café, from Inevitable Press, 1998; The Nightlife of Saints, 2007; Redeemable Air Mileage, 2011, from TA’YER Books; and contributions to more than a dozen anthologies.For more than a decade, he has been an artist-in-residence in programs sponsored by such agencies as the California Arts Council, the City of Los Angeles’ Department of Cultural Affairs, and the City of Pasadena Cultural Affairs Division. He is the winner of a City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs COLA 2010 fellowship in Literature. He is a co-founder of TA’YER Multicultural Performance Collective, a non-profit organization that works with youth-at-risk, recent immigrants and the LGBT community.