Guest Blogger Manny Monolin Moreno Shares Memories and Poetry From His Books!

 

Tu'i yokoria

Buenos dias

Good morning.

I wrote about the shack in my first poem, Starting Out From Longview Road, in my 4th book. Longview Road.

It's still standing but now the windows are boarded up, and the water well tapped out.

I have happy memories there and not so happy.

In the 1960's. No cell phones or computers. Just the fields all around us.

Grandpa and grandma lived about a hundred yards from us.

Whenever I go down to visit my relatives, I slowly drive by the "shack" to soak it up in my memory.

~~~

Moments

Sage burns in an abalone shell

Smoke spirals to heaven

My thoughts are on a mission

For things to think about

There are many stories to write

But this hummingbird has me on its wings

What happens now will not happen

Again as it is happening

I will not be remembered sitting here

Caught in this cross-fire of solitude

The smoke spiraling to heaven

Will not ascend this way again

Shadows moving across the ground

Have neither tongues nor eyes

***

I remember waking up at dawn on September 14, 1986, hungover like a big dog and putting on a pot of coffee to snap out of it. I got wasted the night before celebrating my thirty-first birthday out at Frank's Corner and only slept a few hours.

The sun was rising above the rooftops and streaming through an open window where I sat at the kitchen table, as cool breezes splashed in across my face sobering me up. Everybody else was still in bed and the sounds of a train passing through Livingston echoed in the distance.

I was peeking out at the leaves of the big weeping willow tree in the backyard falling down like a shower of the feathers and carpeting down like a shower of tiny feathers and carpeting the ground around it in a circle. Suddenly Grandpa Manuel popped into my mind planting a long twig in the middle of the backyard in 1968, as a gift to us when we first moved here. I never believed it would grow into this big beautiful tree but Grandpa proved me wrong.

In my drunk and drugged stupor I was imaging grandpa's spirit was in the tree trying to reach out to me. That's what I wanted to believe and I whispered almost crying to the tree, "Help me Grandpa, help me." But I got no answer.

When the coffee was ready I got up and went into the bedroom to grab some pens and notebooks and sat back down to start writing out of desperation about my journey on this road of life. I wanted this book to be my gift to the family. But I never realized how hard it was going to be...

This is what I began to write about with the jitters on this morning thirty years ago, how my life evolved into becoming my worst enemy and about the shell of a man I had become...

"It's good to know where you come from so when you get asked to introduce yourself you can say who you are and who your ancestors were."

~~~

They came to the room and Mom said "Sophie brought these elders to pray over you."
The husband said "Hello Manny, my wife and I would like to pray over you, do you mind?"
"Oh...yeah whatever," I was thinking if it weren't for them being elders I would have told them to go f... themselves. The three of us held hands and began to pray.
As they were praying I felt this electricity flow through my body from my feet to my head and then slowly back down to my feet. A great unexplainable peace came over me. I didn't know what to think. I couldn't think. All my senses were flowing with calmness. When they were done praying they left and I fell into a deep sleep...
I patted around my stomach when I woke up in the dim room and didn't feel the bag. There was only a piece of thick gauze where my gut had been sticking out. She said it was a miracle. That the bag was removed and I was patched back up...
~~~

Scared is a Memorable Book I am happy to share a little of  today. I'm fresh from eye surgery on my left eye, so am seeing through the fuzziness... 

May God Bless Manny and all indigenous people who still struggle to make a living here in America... Check out his books. And help an American citizen who has had to fight his way through the, often, ugliness of a past carved out after the white man invaded, killed, and stole from those who lived in North America before others came across the great oceans. Like many, Manny continues to struggle to have sufficient money to make it through each day. I try to help as much as I can. Please consider buying his books and the other artistic items that he has created with his own hand... Beautiful items. Show that you, too, care, for those who have been set aside by those rich and powerful who care nothing about our true Americans... of all colors!

Sage burns in an abalone shell

Smoke spirals to heaven

My thoughts are on a mission

For things to think about

There are many stories to write

But this hummingbird has me on its wings

What happens now will not happen

Again as it is happening

I will not be remembered sitting here

Caught in this cross-fire of solitude

The smoke spiraling to heaven

Will not ascend this way again

Shadows moving across the ground

Have neither tongues nor eyes

***

I remember waking up at dawn on September 14, 1986, hungover like a big dog and putting on a pot of coffee to snap out of it. I got wasted the night before celebrating my thirty-first birthday out at Frank's Corner and only slept a few hours.

The sun was rising above the rooftops and streaming through an open window where I sat at the kitchen table, as cool breezes splashed in across my fact sobering me up. Everybody else was still in bed and the sounds of a train passing through Livingston echoed in the distance.

I was peeking out at the leaves of the big weeping willow tree in the backyard falling down like a shower of the feathers and carpeting down like a shower of tiny feathers and carpeting the ground around it in a circle. Suddenly Grandpa Manuel popped into my mind planting a long twig in the middle of the backyard in 1968, as a gift to us when we first moved here. I never believed it would grow into this big beautiful tree but Grandpa proved me wrong.

In my drunk and drugged stupor I was imaging grandpa's spirit was in the tree trying to reach out to me. That's what I wanted to believe and I whispered almost crying to the tree, "Help me Grandpa, help me." But I got no answer.

When the coffee was ready I got up and went into the bedroom to grab some pens and notebooks and sat back down to start writing out of desperation about my journey on this road of life. I wanted this book to be my gift to the family. But I never realized how hard it was going to be...

This is what I began to write about with the jitters on this morning thirty years ago, how my life evolved into becoming my worst enemy and about the shell of a man I had become...

"It's good to know where you come from so when you get asked to introduce yourself you can say who you are and who your ancestors were."

~~~