What More Could One Ask For?

Images: Garrincha

By Boris Gonzales Arenas

Soon we'll have
according to our president
five-year terms
with an extension pending.

Raul said so after
meditating before the sewer
“there must be urgent changes
will two hundred years be enough?”

My uncle in Carlos III,
a descendent of slaves,
made a sure gesture,
that it itches and spreads. 

“It’s difficult to predict
when the bosses will get fed up
or when a sleeping people
will become enraged."

Watch, watch... see if you can guess where I have the change you want... Watch...

"They will add hovels
swarming the slums
and thousands of dissidents
judged as criminals"

"From the parading tanks
they will remove the treads
and put modern tires,
the war will be on the pavement.”

A group that philosophizes
doesn’t understand so much fallacy
thus it was named
it was called copropraxia.

While waiting
I drink my coffee
mixed with peas and beans
they will leave me without it

And at the end of all this
-- this poet asks --
through which sacred slot
do we shove them the ballot.


21 June 2011