Truth of My Youth

ROSEANNE, MERCED, CA

The vitiligo stains on her arms and hands
and the bandages on her legs were like the flowers and the litter
on the bushes along the freeway were she was sparing for change.
She is a mother but i can't remember the name of her son
and she hasn't seen him in 20 years...

Before i asked for her name i wanted to call her Mary
because she had an immaculate blue dress and the red plastic umbrella
between her pale hair and the burning California sun
was shining a red glow on her freckled face,
and after she told me her name was Roseanne,
            she told me her nickname was Mary.

She had ridden the Greyhound bus to Florida to see her family
and when she got there and no one was there
            she had a heart failure.
The ambulance took her to the hospital
but instead of taking care of her
_______broke as she was
they strapped her to a hospital bed
at the UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL OF MIAMI
they tested drugs and products on her legs,
the doctors and students around the hospital bed.
She said they had strapped 200 people on the beds
and tested shit on them.
She said she could still hear the screams in the night.
One thing's for sure she could still feel the burns on her very body.

America and the rest of the fucked up human race
has not enough of the monkeys and dogs in the labs
now they're so used to inflicting pain on abused lives
that they take their Lower Class Saints
and hold them in captivity
like the American Nazis at the Hospital in Miami.

I told her to go rest at a YMCA or something
but there is no YMCA in Merced
there is a lotta SUVs and Taco Bells,
Carl's Juniors and Am-Pms
Mc Donald's and Shell stations
but no YMCAs.

I gave her a bottle of water and a green bill
and as i left she told me "God bless you".
Well, maybe he has blessed me
…after he has blessed the surgeons,
the medecine students,
the troops and cops,
the white majority at the drive in,
and after that if he has the time
he will bless the people on the street corners and freeway exits
that go to jail for holding a sign
and have to walk all the way back to their corner
like modern days Sisyphuses under the burning sun
like Victor, Roseana's friend;
those who get their tents dismantled by pigs
and their legs bitten by bugs, their necks by spiders.
Maybe at that same time Obama is at his desk working on the Health Care Reform
but i don't trust Obama
and i don't trust God either

i don't trust the Silent Majority
and the minorities forever waiting
in their quiet Americansumerist cocoon
for the revolution to start on TV.