The Myth of Our Demise

You wrote articles that

said we don’t exist anymore

That we died out 2 generations

After Columbus 1st set foot

On the beaches we taught our kids to swim in and welcome strange white creatures

With steel plates where their hearts should have been

This is a lie

Are you trying to convince me I am not standing here

Should I take the DNA tests

You performed on the rest of my family

Because the only proof you accept

Comes in black inked spread sheets

Are you claiming my father is 1/3 ghost

Or that every window and bedroom wall

Sporting a one starred red white and blue flag

Belongs to a haunted house

Is that supposed to make me

Walking proof of the afterlife

Cause I thought spirits don’t cast shadows

Are you telling me San Juan, Caguas, San Turce

Gurabo, Ponce, Bayamon, Jayuya, Barraquitas, Toa Baja, Areciebo, Cayey and all the other towns

You like to collect post cards of

Are nothing more than colorful cemeteries

With tombs stones for mail boxes

Allow me to burst your condescendingly offensive bubble

We are very much alive

Our lungs haven’t withered into the second breath

Of rain forest tree frogs

Our hands are still building things

Our eyes are still watching

We are still here

Standing defiantly where you left us

To spread the myth of our demise

How dare you reduce us to a distorted history lesson

Or sad bonfire tale

We are not hiding under your bed at night

Waiting to grab your feet

When they slip out from under your vacation covers

You aren’t denying to acknowledge us

Because you respect the integrity of 16th century explorers and conquistadors

Or because you are afraid of the boogey man

It’s because you’re afraid you’ll have to give back what you stole

Its because if we exist, you're building your tourist hotels, military bases, and pharmaceutical plants on our front lawns

And in our backyards

And fattening your pockets with long over due rent

That should’ve been putting our kids through college

Because if we exist we matter, right?

Of course you would find us more convenient as apparitions

Just to be clear

We aren’t sitting around a camp fire council in the sky

Trying to figure out which dance will conjure rain

In the jungles we still haunt

That is where my ancestors are

The rest of my people are breathing the air

You like to act like you own

We are in play grounds teaching new generations of phantoms

To run with purpose

We are weighing out your lively-hood in the HR dept.

We are styling your wife’s hair as I speak

And tucking your children into bed

We are dancing in nightclubs and block parties

And in our kitchens while cooking food you would gladly pay for

We are loving, fighting, dying, and being reborn

We are breathing

We’ve been breathing right next to you

People like Nanika Reyes Ocasio, Flaco Navaja, Tato torres,

like my grandfathers Genaro Morales Lopez and Carlos Santa Santana

like countless others who are the living litmus test

you cannot hide away with scientific jargon

people who’ve passed on this legacy to our children

So they do not forget that the true reason for tradition is resurrection

Tradition keeps us flesh and bone

It makes sure we stay tangible

Because we cannot afford to make honest men

Out of those who would say otherwise

We are still with you

At your Sunday barbeques

In the canoes used in rivers and streams

We gave you these things

We welcomed you into our world

And when the great storm arose

And the sky turned black

And the sea came ashore to weep violently

And shake the trees in his anger

We sheltered you and taught you his name

Was Huracan

You cant take ours away

We are Taino

We had names before you tattooed the one used on modern maps

Yo soy Boriqua

Pa que tu lo sepas