As I Walk These Sprawling Streets

As I walk these sprawling streets
I look upon the child molester

and storekeeper with an equal eye;

upon the murderer

and the woman walking her dog

with an equal human respect,

knowing there is not only the outward

but the inward.

And knowing people are composites of good and evil

and not simply good or evil.

As I walk these sprawling streets
I am not offended if I hear the words "nigger,"

or "spic" or "faggot";

for just because these words aren't said on the news or in print,
doesn't mean they aren't said between intimates;
and more than anything else I want to see things raw.
And I too stand among an oppressed and feared people,
and I am not offended at the words "nuts,"

or "loco," or "crazy";

for with censorship art ceases to imitate

the attitudes of life.

And do I offend you, my friend?
And did not Whitman and Ginsberg offend?
And does this make you question whose side

you would have really been on

had you read them in their day?
I certainly question whose side I would have been on.

And when I read of the morality of slavery

once being an unsettled question

I wonder whose side I should be on over abortion,
which side will prevail

and which will be damned by future generations.

And does it matter at all
since future generations may be wrong

just as we may be wrong?

Should I be careful, my friend, never to be remembered,
lest some future biographer

call me a hypocrite for a reason I do not know?

or lest some future poet

read that I was lazy and uncouth?

I am a child of these sprawling streets as much as any;
I, a son of Irishmen and Englishmen and Germans and Swedes;
I, a fan of Stravinsky and la ranchera,
of Joyce and el jaripeo;
a speaker of Spanish almost as much as the Mexican,
and as crazy as the barefooted man who walks by mumbling

with blankets thrown over his shoulders.

I am his brother, and he is mine.

Yes, I am a child of these sprawling streets as much as any;
I, a Christian and a poet,
and neither a good Christian nor a great poet,
but, like all my brothers and sisters,

struggling just to tread water.

Yes, I am indeed a child of these sprawling streets,
for I am a Christian
and I know there is more of the mystical

in the tying of a shoelace than in a perfect prayer.

Oh, as I walk these sprawling streets
I celebrate the double standard.

And the triple standard and the thousandfold standard.

For each man is a species all to his own.
And each woman is a universe all to her own.
And not a rose petal can be defined by another rose petal.
And neither democracy nor liberty nor Christianity nor Islam

can or should be universal prospects.

And I know I am just as little the equal of a black man
as I am the equal of another white man.
And I also know that each, in his own lovely way,

is greater than I.

As I walk these sprawling streets
I celebrate the atheist,
who is an atheist out of courage and not ignorance;

I do not have her courage.

And I damn the agnostic,
indifferent toward the most important question

ever to face any man or woman

because he's late for work today.

And I damn the eater of meat
who would not gladly strike a cow across the face

with a sledge hammer.

I eat meat, and I am no hypocrite.

Yes, as I walk these sprawling streets
I speak with the immigrants;
the durangueños, chihuaguenses, oaxaqueños.
I approach them gently and in their native tongue,
for many of them have secrets and stigmas
and I too know what it is like to have secrets and stigmas

and to be afraid.

I too know what it is like

to be unwelcome and misunderstood.

[1998]