The following poetic memoir is part of an upcoming chapbook titled “Walking Backward over Broken Glass.”

In 1968, I was nineteen, living in Da Bronx.

It was the year of cities burning. New York. Baltimore. Boston. Chicago. Detroit. Kansas City. Newark. Washington, D.C.

I wanted to join the urban guerrillas 
     committed to tearing it all        down
I no longer wanted to sit on the sidelines 
     watching televised chaos

I couldn't tell how deep the water was around me
     nor did I realize I was nearly drowning
My mind and life were stuck 
     in an ocean of depression 
and 
     anxiety

Chaos was on the horizon
     Youths were challenging the world order

War was everywhere
     in distant lands
     on American streets
and 
     within our souls

The Vietnam War devoured the young even as we protested across the nation. Leaders of a peaceful movement were assassinated. Class and racist forces opposed our American progress.

The old voices told us to believe 
America was exceptional
     racism
     sexism
     income disparity
and 
     class conflict 
were just anomalies

They called us communists
     troublemakers
and 
     traitors

The real threat to America

They unleashed police violence on us. Bodies and blood whipped like a Cyclone through America’s cities.

I fought to survive inside the cyclone
     living two wars

during the day 
     an everyday life 
at night
     a dope fiend 

It wasn't what I dreamed about as a kid
or 
what my parents wished for

I pushed back against the waves of depression with long subway rides from the South Bronx to Greenwich Village to seek camaraderie with other anti-war comrades.

Fridays with my friends at Saint Anselm Catholic Youth Organization. We would shoot hoops and play pool, then head to Carlos’s basement apartment to smoke weed and listen to Red Foxx and Moms Mabley comedy albums.

In the midst of chaos
a quiet but deadly threat lurked about in the Bronx

Its deadly campaign pulled me in
     my life overwhelmed 
by heroin addiction
     petty crimes to feed it
and 
     inevitable drug overdoses

I was scared, confused, angry, and convinced I was doomed to six feet under.

	In the dope world
everyone lies 
and 
cheats 

	It’s the bargain with the devil 
I don’t remember his name
I remember the moment
burned into my mind 
like a movie that never stops

	Death 		
waiting in a 
South Bronx stairwell
the smell
too much alcohol
too many cigarettes
too much weed

	Grease-stained 
brown garbage bags 
its content spilling 
a trail of dead food
half-empty beer cans
old smelly rags

	from their apartment door 	
to the steps below me
old blood 
dripping down walls 
that haven’t been washed 
since the building began
or 
the smell 

        “Man, 
did someone 
shit up in here?” 

This is not Good Housekeeping certified

	Smack	 H   Chiba   Junk   
Skag   Dope
hooked
strung out

        riding the white horse
into the main vein
direct to my brain 

My friends were disappearing from the neighborhood, drafted to become the wounded and dead bodies that kept piling up in field hospitals and black bags 8637 miles away.

I was old enough to go to Vietnam 
I bluffed my way out
     promising military service only in a war 
or national emergency

Young people
     the fodder for the war machine
     lost faith in the war 
that wasn’t a war or national emergency
and 
     the illusion 

America was exceptional

Even as the grim reality of the war 
     filled the evening newscasts 
and 
     newspaper headlines

America insisted America was winning

I only saw death and hopelessness

In protest
I burned my draft card at a UN rally

The war ignored me

I left a Wall Street trading job to join the South Bronx social justice movement fighting for community control of public schools. The New York City Teachers’ Union closed the city schools in opposition to community control, marking the largest strike in the city’s history. Community groups, parents, and teacher allies vowed to oppose both the union and the Central Board of Education in the streets and in schools. The days were filled with marches, takeovers of school board meetings, and Black and Brown parents mobilizing to fight for local control. Social Justice 1968 style .

	There is always a ritual 
when preparing for death

         into the bottle cap 
the heroin 
imported 
from some foreign country

         smuggled 
across thousands of miles 
hidden in suitcase bottoms 
to apartments 
where naked women 
mix it with baby milk powder 

         (or worse) 
into glassine bags 
into the hands of Paco
down the block

         to pissed on steps 
leftover 
from the last overdosed fool
crying for his mommy

         into 
an overused rusting bottle cap 
with water 
you know ain’t clean 
through a dirty needle 

into your main vein

The cops formed a military-style line, shoulder to shoulder, on Friday, September 13, in front of JHS 52, with their shiny badges and crisp uniforms. Their police hats sat neatly on their clean crew cuts. Their job was to deter the threatening crowds of Black and Brown mothers and their children from imagining a new life and future beyond the South Bronx, public housing, and rundown tenements. 

The parents were there to open the school for their kids so they could pledge allegiance to the flag, become successful Americans, and move to New Jersey, Long Island, New Rochelle, or Connecticut. It could happen. It’s the American Dream.

Instead, they were expected to take low-wage jobs. You might see them at the greasy spoon in El Barrio, shuffling clothes racks along 7th Avenue, or sorting through boxes of vegetables at Hunts Point Market. 

	The man with the lost name will not save you 
nor can you save yourself
falling down broken stairs
swearing you hear heavenly music 

         Get up, dude! Get up!
your back thrust up against the wall
legs splayed 
down and up the stairs

         your soul falling
looking down 
on yourself
shrinking ever smaller
becoming a blurred memory

The police megaphone announced that there would be no trespassing that day. Not on their watch. The spotlight shifted to one constable, a defender of social order and the frontline against chaos. A young, fresh-faced protector of a way of life, holding an ax handle. This ax handle, usually 32 to 36 inches long, was not the typical police nightstick. Longer ones are better for large timber and splitting wood. Shorter lengths work better for smaller timber and general tasks. The shorter was also preferred for beating those black and brown people who thought they could trespass onto public property as if they were taxpayers. On this day, the American Dream turned into an American nightmare. The one defender of the social order would use that ax handle as he saw in those news reports from the south. He knew how to use the ax handle properly. Swing and never miss.

       Suddenly, I was falling
out of the apartment
down broken stairs

	spilling out into the street
cursing 
where I heard heavenly music 
crashing with the sounds of sirens, 

	imagining 
what my father would later call me 
in the emergency room,

	desagradecido, ungrateful

It was madness run amok. They went after the first Black guy they saw, swearing he was part of the Black Panther Party, as if they all looked the same. Brown hands reached out to stop the arrest. Nightsticks and an ax handle blocked the charging crowd. I grabbed a blue uniform. A club and an arm then wrapped around my throat, choking me. My glasses crashed onto the sidewalk. My breath escaped from my lungs. Two arms became four, then six, as I was lifted and hauled into a waiting police car.

The picture before me was vivid, haunting my nightmares for years. Swing, baby—crush some heads, indulge in Friday daydreams. Swing that ax handle as if it’s 1968. The angry spittle foamed from his face and those of his comrades. The message was clear. The ax handle would smash through heads and bodies to send a message: “Don’t fuck with us. We’re the man. We are the power.” 

Those guardians of society proved they would do anything to defend their American Dream.

        Suddenly fear strangles you
but it is way too late 
for broken tears 
and regretful promises

         You’re taking this ride on the main line home
where this ain’t no fairy tale 
and you don’t live happily ever after

      I’m shrieking
I’m alive
I’m alive.