Andrés Montoya fue un poeta Chicano de Fresno, California. Escribió un solo libro llamado The Iceman sings, en el cual se encuentra Locura, este increíble poema que trata de la vida de pobreza y crimen en todos sitios en la California de los años 70 y del deseo que los latinos luchemos como héroes por un futuro mejor.
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locura
and where, raza, are our heroes?
the heroes of Aztlán?
what became of that great nation we were going to build?
where did all the warriors go with their sharpened knives
and loaded rifles?
everyday I walk through the cracking street
smelling despair like a rose,
I ride on buses freshly laced with the stench of some
borrachos vomit
and there are bones and more bones stacking up
around me,
murdered by cops and pipes, knives and guns, or just
the evil glare
of some rich gavo, and not the viejitos sipping tea, or
the lovers loving
behind the bushes in the park can make me smile or
laugh or see
some glimmer of hope in this chingadera called life
cause I can’t get out, the streets keep returning
to me the same, always the same
like a bad dream, and I have come to the conclusion
that this is how it was meant to be: death in my
pocket and insanity
the limp that keeps dragging me down, a tattoo
teardrop falling from my eyes.
I can’t sing anymore.
no whistle pushes forth
from between my lips.
I’m getting ready to bust out loco, and no one hears
when I’m yelling
“I gotta go, gotta get our of here!”
so I smile now, with a cuete tucked in the back
of my baggies
and a 40 in my right hand, imagining myself some
kind of chulo,
cholo, or some other form of vato loco or just another
cyclón
waiting to put some punk ass stepping up puto down
and then when I’m doing the Tecate shuffle, or the
borracho bump
dying coughing in that cockroach motel they found
Louie in
I’ll cry and I’ll cry and I’ll cry later
like the tattoo says,
and no one will be the wiser, not my mom working
the graveyard
or my girl who looks like her mother, that little girl
with my abuelita’s
name who will probably die younger than me
and it all comes down to the fact
I’ve lived the life of a coward,
a slave, I never had the guts
to explode, really explode, like Cuahutemoc or
Zapata,
suicide style so my gente can live like gente with
honor.
