Stop the War Makers. Hands Around the Lab. Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Never Again!
Aug 10, 1:30pm - 3pm, Robert Payne Park, 5800 Patterson Pass Road (at Vasco), Livermore

March for Immigrant Rights
Sep 20, 11am Assemble at Yerba Buena Gardens (Mission St. between 3rd & 4th), San Francisco; 12pm - March up Market St.; 1:30pm - Program & Festival at Civic Center.

Rally and March to Defeat Proposition 54
Sep 25, 12:00noon - Sproul Plaza, UC Berkeley

Reportback from Palestine
Sep 27, 6:30pm - Redwood Gardens Community Room, 2951 Derby Street, Berkeley

End the Occupation! Bring the Troops Home Now!
Sep 28, Noon - Dolores Park, San Francisco - 12pm. Gather at Dolores Park, march to: 2pm - Rally at Civic Center

Forum: Defend Environmntal Justice, Defeat Prop. 54!
Sep 30, 7:00 PM - Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave., near Dwight Way, Berkeley.

In Celebration of the Free Speech Movement: The Berkeley ACLU Presents Larry Fly
Oct 6, 7:00 PM - Pauley Ballroom West, Berkeley campus

Stop the FTAA and School of the Americas
November 19-23, Miami and Colombus, GA.

Buy Nothing Day
November 28, Everywhere.

poem for my father who asks me why i don't believe in god
Marcos Ramírez

daddy
the first time someone called me a fag
i was five
the altar boys made me genuflect
on the side of the church
holding a baseball bat up to my chin
wanting to knock a homerun out of my skull
just like in Oakland when marta trembling voice
tells her papá she loves susana
and later that night wakes to him
raping her on her bedroom floor
next to the virgin mary night light
whispers in her ear

if god won't make you a woman mija
i will

or en guatemala
when los soldados find out about lucha and sandra
they boot-smash through the front door
spear lucha's brother jesus
force the lesbianas to eat a soup made of his dick and blood
and the one soldier tells them to finally

swallow a man like you swallow communion
bitch

then for dessert force rifles up their cunts

just like in that georgian parking lot
where the drunk men surround juan the bartender
last one to leave the club that fourth of july
as the billy club god-mob flash their head beams

jesus jose y maria

rolls off his lips as they tie him up
haul him in the back of the black pick-up
light firecrackers up his ass
then throw him into the baptizing river
just to see if a flaming fag could swim

and papá
look here in san diego
where lupita's parents kidnap her at night
take her to mexico
so el padre can exorcise her love for lourdes
ties her shaking hands to the wooden bed posts
makes the sign of the cross with holy water
on her sweaty forehead

bless me father for I have sinned

spills from her lips
in a small dark dank confessional of a room
never to leave
til she opens her legs
for Him

just like in laramie, wyoming
how the two boys pick the young man up at the bar
take him for a ride down the narrow desolate freeway
and beat and beat and beat Leviticus into matthew
crucify him on a rickety wooden fence
the moonlight of a western sky
leaves a scarecrow silhouette of a broken boy
along the highway like any other warning sign
this is God's country

or at the military base
where they obliterate adam's skull
no limb no skin no rib spared
the pulverizing blows of those god fearing
good nature well groomed American soldier boys
pound his head like a preacher's fist on the bible
and when his mother arrives to identify him
the military chaplain's steely eyes glare back at her

don't ask
how they disfigured him
don't tell
why they killed him

or look daddy in north carolina
the lone gunman enters the gay bar
he unloads the liturgy of his gun
one bullet at a time one round at a time
he sprawls a graffiti of brain n blood
along the walls
chants over n over

I am a shepherd of the Lord
I am a shepherd of the Lord

like this very moment
across the table from you daddy
i know you see god as a church
a spirit
a heaven awaiting
but to me
god is a gun
a punch
a rape
a bat
a kick
a stick
a fist
a hell
made only
for queers
like me

marcos ramírez © 2002
Poetry for the People Academic Coordinator

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