Machismo

True machismo and love never go together
When bullets get in the way of loving
I wanted to catch all the rain
and never feel the pain
But the chalk outlines already know the difference
Latino had nothing at all to do with it
Since their perception of me was dirty spic
True machismo and love never go together
when you are a romantic
and no one really gives a damn
I flew my colors proudly
and now they wave them at my funeral
I can speak of this enigma, this malady
this machismo gone awry
I have lived on both sides of glory
So this is my story
I am peppered with so many races
yet the faces are quite clear to me
Machismo is loving and being loved
holding down a nine to five
while being told to wash their toilets
and still you're proud of the dollar you have earned
I went home each night from insults and dirty looks
and you want to write poems and essays
of how I feel when you have never been inside
this skin.
She was a strong woman
Beautiful, proud, head held high.
She was the true zoot suitor
and now she sports her suit in heaven.
I am proud she sported me as well
Machismo never comes with instructions
but the ghetto tried to instruct me
on how to be a man, with my first lesson
in how to hold a gun.
I am that product
I am the survivor
I am that macho
that truly learned that machismo
is for suckers.
So I learned to suck her
and suck her and suck her
until I drained her dry
and she only felt the sting
by other men as well.
As they carried my body to the morgue
and I looked inside the coffin
and finally saw myself
and woke up from a nightmare
called Machismo.

June 24th 2005