Samples of the poet’s work:

 
Aztec Legend
 

I fall in love with a smile,
a look from across the room,
or the way someone says my name.
I give my heart too easily
and it’s always to the wrong person at the wrong time
But still I believe in love
True love
Love at first sight
That weak in the knees, everything’s spinning,
I would die without you kind of love

An Aztec princess fell in love with one of her father’s warriors
The emperor,  determined that she marry someone more worthy of her station
sent the young man into battle fully intending for him to die
and told the princess that he had indeed fallen in battle
She died grief stricken and broken hearted
Upon his return the warrior carried her body up into the mountains
laid her on the ground and himself died kneeling at her side

Everyday I ride the T with Leather Boy a skinhead who never sits down, never talks to anyone
Just leans against the doors sneering at the world
I saw him walking down the street holding hands with his pregnant girlfriend
They were laughing about something

I listened to my neighbors fight all day Sunday
He was leaving and she didn’t care anymore
That evening I listened to their bed as they gently made up

The Gods covered the lover’s bodies with a blanket of snow
transforming them into the mountains outside of Mexico City
White caps always visible despite the desert’s heat
There’s Iztaccihuatl, Sleeping Woman
and Papacatepetl, Smoking Mountain
An active volcano which rains fire into the sky
Revenge for his princess’s death

Open The Guinness Book Of World Records
The shortest person, the tallest person
the Siamese twins,
the bearded lady,
the guy who had to be buried in a piano crate
were married

They all found someone who could accept them for who they were
So there has to be someone out there for me
Someone who’ll write me love poems with a pen craved from the trunk of a weeping willow
on handmade cotton paper in a leather journal decorated with beads and feathers,
a silver clasp in the shape of a smiling crescent moon
Someone who believes in a love like I do

Find me princesse
I will be brown water running down your fingers
Kiss me and my soul will dance on your tongue
We will become Aztec legends
Mountains under the desert sun
Mysteries of snow and fire

 
Cielito Lindo Revisited
 

My father never spoke much Spanish around the house,
never really talked a lot about our heritage
Until the day I traded Bobby Ames
my two favorite Hot Wheels cars
for his red, plastic,
Frito Bandito erasers.
My little brother and I shoved them onto our fingers,
strapped belts around our chests like bandoleras,
danced around our bedroom singing:

“Ay, ay, ay, ay
I am the Frito Bandito
Give me Frito Corn Chips and I be your friend
The Frito Bandito you must not offend...”

Until Dad burst through the door shouting:
“What the hell are you doing!”

He took one look at us trying to be Mexicans,
sat down and explained that funny little Frito Bandito
had been modeled after Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata,
men who had died fighting for their country.
He told us the story of Zapata’s ghost
riding through the hillsides of Morelos shouting,
“Tierra Y Libertad!”
Land and Freedom

The Frito jingle
had been stolen from a love song,
a man singing to a dark eyed girl from the mountains,
a woman who was so beautiful
birds would gladly abandon their nests
so that her beauty could take their place.
He told us that some nights his Father sang that song to his Mother
then he stood up and began to sing Cielito Lindo.
We stared in wide-eyed amazement
as Spanish echoed off our bedroom walls.
As his heart reached back to Mexico.
At the end of that song,
he slipped those erasers off our fingers without a fight,
quietly left the room.
That night, I swore I could
hear the hooves of Zapata’s horse outside my window
and in the darkness my little brother whispered
“I hear them too.”

I won’t let my own children watch Speedy Gonzalez cartoons.
That peòn dressed rat who always saves the
run-down border town from the gringo gato
because, as one mouse lounging under his sombrero,
leaning against an adobe wall tells the other one,
“He likes my seester”

I’d like to grill up the Taco Bell chihuahua fajita-style
sprinkle it with salt and limòn,
top it with whatever the hell their “Spicy Pepper Jack” sauce is
and shove it down the throat of the advertising genius
who came up with that one.

The Mayans came up with the concept of zero,
The basis of all mathematical equations.
The Aztecs mapped the stars,
invented a solar calendar that’s still accurate today.

We are the smell of dried chile peppers and corn tortillas
rolling like mist across the valley,
the pastel colors of desert sunsets blended over Toltec temples,
the prayers on the lips of Santa Anna’s soldiers.
We are the tears that fall from our eyes in the face of injustice.
If you feel the need to commercialize our heritage,
you can make a commercial out of that.

“Yo quiero some respect, pendejo!”

 
The Curandero’s Prediction
 

My Grandmother promised the Curandero that if her sons made it back from the war
She would go on a pilgrimage to, “La Viva De Guadeloupe”,  in Mexico City
and leave a milagro there
When all her boys came home from Korea she piled them into a car and headed south
My Grandmother traveled some 2,000 miles, crawled up the massive stone steps on her hands and knees,
laid her head against the sliver communion rail,
and then left a tiny brass charm hidden somewhere in that church because she believed in the Curandero’s magic

Surrounded by candles my grandmother slowly worked her rosary
while the Curandero threw a handful of stones and some bones from a small bird into the center of the table
and told her I had been born for greatness
I know this because when something scared me, when I’d seek refuge in the nest of her arms
she’d stroke my hair, kiss my forehead and whisper
“Hush poblasito, a todo es bueno”, the Curandero told me you are going to be somebody someday”
But she always ignored the part where he had also said my life would be full of pain

If they’d have told me that I’d leave my wife and kids
Just like my Father had done to me and his Father had done to him
I’d have said, “No way, because I promised them I’d never do that!”
but I did do that

If they’d have told me the sudden death of my best friend would rock my world so hard
that for over a year I’d forget about living, just go through the motions day after day
get up and go to work, get drunk, cry
I would have never gotten close to anyone

If they’d have told me that I would earn my right
to perform on some of the best poetry stages in Cambridge Massachusetts
I would have pulled my nose out of that mountain of cocaine,
the gun away from my head, the needle from my arm
just long enough to laugh

But here I am standing before audiences night after night slamming down poems
Because these days I let inspiration find me
run through me like a white water river, crash over me like Niagara Falls without a barrel
I don’t hide from my muse, I dance naked with her under the stars
Grandmother had her headless chickens and tarot cards
But I’ve found my magic in words
And I remember the Curandero’s prediction
I was born to be somebody

Also by Tommy Mendez:  Dinner at Eight and Pablo.

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