At some point it all has to end. I’m very comfortable in my bed. Children in the world starve while we grow cows on trees. It’s going to crush us, the weight of it. I haven’t touched money in months. My wealth, for I am rich somewhere, hovers about my head, a green aura of credentials. I need more than I need, and that’s ok. And we’ll all be surprised, shocked, then terrified, and then, still wonder: why? We don’t worry too much these days. What good would that do? It won’t just happen to us. There are comfortable people in every country. Even the pueblos with their tiny courts, are being denied sanitation so somewhere someone can buy a new silk pillow.
To one, he says: you go there. And to another: stay where you are. He gives them knives and tells them to kill. One man dies and the other only survives. ‘Only,’ because one cannot win when one loses a hand.
You there. And you there. You, move to that position and say what I’ve told you to say. State it clearly. They’ll never believe you’ve been stabbed if you smile while you speak. Remember who you are. Always be that person when the lights are on. The curtain will fall, that we all know, but that you are not who they think you are, that is key. My pockets grow with the day and continue on through the night. They never slow. When you sing in the first number, try to bleed.
He wants the child to be an intellectual and so he works everyday at exposing his son to the word “book.” He says “book-book-book, yes, book” as he shakes his head before the baby, tickling his chin. “Book?” he asks. “Yess, book,” he replies. Soon he finds it difficult to say book when there are so many other things he must tell the child: eat, sleep, etc. Soon he has to describe dangers and love. Soon he can no longer only say book.
Six hundred houses piled up. All the doors and all the windows shut. Belongings scattered about the floors and walls. Six hundred and one? —one asks—I bet it falls.
We're all deserving of tragedy. All men are created equal, it’s true.
-felipe martinez
December 2007
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