RIGO: DETECTIVE PROJECTIONIST

El Tio Rigoberto
Veterano del Vietnam;
su sonar bien chingon
su tecnico muy technical
se convierte en D.O.D. contractor
guey del barrio guey que ha triumfado,
veterano de le Era de las Escopetas
en East Los Angeles me dice
que todas las paredes adonde trabajo
estan enlaced con microfonos
so that I should be careful
sumamente cuidadoso unless
I want to oppose los Sheriffs
que todos son gurol (good-old) boys
con Biblias en sus pistoleras
y gran bigotes de Justicia.

Le tengo miedo a los microfonos
como Gene Hackman en "La Conversacion"
me quiero poner guantes para hablar
pero no me cabe el pulgar en el cogote
de mi basusero, no me digno a respetar
que todo lo que digo tiene consequencia
con tu splendor de boca improvisational.

DETECTIVE PROJECTIONIST

A canister of film washes ashore
in the Sun, off the coast of the peninsula,
of the Sun, irremediably thick with algae.

Let’s agree this film is called Florida,
1983. In this film, your best friend
has white, perpetually-barefoot, hair

whereas, before, your friends had names
like Nick, Nicky, last names like Nunciforo
names rife with racketeering connotations.

Your new best friend will teach you how to fish,
to scale fish, to handle a paddleboat, to string
up a floater, to unhook a bass without impaling

Your beer. Sadly, funding for Florida, 1983,
will run out shortly after development, shortly after
a junket tour of investors gets inhaled by Haitian Ghosts.

During the interim, one of the producers will have a coronary
shortly after convincing the mistress of the Cinematographer
to pick up and plop down more than 1,000 miles away.

While the project is sidelined, the real Florida will encounter
hordes of miscreant immigrants, paramilitary pyramid schemers
and masochistic, coke-head, bank slalomers laundering proceeds.

One of the writers at the studio will spring clean across
a dusty copy of a slim volume of poems by that poet that
shogun of imagination, that intrepid interloper, bastard.

And that writer will play tennis with a short, bald executive
that will one day wield some real green-light power,
and is just beginning to stretch out the knuckles

of his talons, and they will get their green light to induce
the budgetary Dobermans to relent, release, and renegotiate
any and all terms relating to Asian & European Distribution.

The marketing harpies will descend on Florida, 1983 as soon
as Basil Edgar Thomas is cast in the role of the narrator; and,
Shiraz Jones will follow suit as the taciturn, eager father.