Youth were challenging the world order. 

War was everywhere, in faraway lands, 
on American streets, in our souls. 

Champions of a peaceful revolution 
were assassinated. 

Racist forces held their ground against the forward movement of American history. 

The old voices told us to believe 
America was exceptional. 

Racism, sexism, income disparities, and class warfare were merely aberrations. 

They called us 
communists, rabble-rousers, and traitors. 

They said 
we were the real danger to America. 

They unleashed police violence on us. 

Bodies and blood flowed like a flash flood across America’s urban landscape.

Amid the chaos of 1968, 

a silent but deadly 
epidemic emerged

Heroin Smack	 H   Chiba   Junk   Skag   Dope

Its deadly spread swept through black and brown neighborhoods in New York City,

claiming the lives of many young people, 

including me.

Abandoned buildings in the South Bronx 

became shooting galleries for addicts 

leading double lives

—working by day and junkies by night 

and on weekends. 

Addicts overdosed alone in dark stairwells 
or candlelit apartments, 

while others fell victim to lethal "hot shots," leaving their bodies behind.

I was old enough to go to Vietnam 

but obtained a one-year deferral for military service, 

qualified for service only in times of war or national emergency.

The Tet Offensive

Battle of Huế

Siege of Khe Sanh 

My Lai Massacre 

We would not call Vietnam a war, 

as American bodies kept piling up
the battles and massacres in our name 
raged on.

My personal war was being fought
on the streets 

in abandoned buildings 
of the South Bronx

Not Vietnam 

In a dilapidated tenement off Willis Avenue, 

my violent episode was unfolding, 

etching itself into my memory
like a relentless bad movie. 

I can't recall his name, 
as it has faded into the shadows of my mind. 

The man, 
whose name I no longer remember, 

had hands stained with pain, blood, and dirt. 

Death hovered in the final stairwell 
of an apartment building near Willis Avenue. 

A discarded brown shopping bag, 
greasy and stained, 

lay abandoned in the stairwell, 
its contents spilled out

—spoiled food, half-empty beer cans, and old, foul-smelling rags.

1968 was a presidential election year.

President Johnson announces he would not run for reelection.

Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy 
is murdered in Los Angeles. 

The Democratic National Convention 
riots in Chicago 
guaranteeing a win for 
Richard M. Nixon, 

the law-and-order candidate.

The air was thick with the scent 
of cheap wine, cigarettes, and Yerba. 

Brown fingers 
nervously fidgeted with makeshift tools, 

their only goal to inject heroin into their veins, 
allowing it to travel through the arm into the brain.

Above us, 
death seemed to linger on the stairs, 
silently waiting.

In 1968, I joined the vanguard of community organizing

during one of the largest teachers’ strikes in New York history

Mothers, their children, the teachers who defied their union’s picket line,

dreamed of crossing picket lines 

to fill classrooms with 

dreams of hope and a plea for a new life 

a future beyond the South Bronx 

and public housing and run-down tenement buildings.

This is not what my mother and father had wished for me. 

This is not what I dreamed of when I was a kid looking into the future. 

The pain I felt was relieved 
on those filthy stairs
of broken-down tenement buildings
in the South Bronx.  

Don’t worry about sterile. 
Ignore the dirt on the stairs, 
the old blood dripping down walls, 
old piss, dying garbage 
or the smell that you swear is 

“Man, did someone shit up here?” 

It was my first dance with mainline straight into the main vein.

Heroin it’s the bargain with the devil. 

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 
to the hands of Paco down the block in the human shit infected hallway 

There will be no trespassing today

No picket lines 
No scabs they shouted
Not on their watch. 
Not with long nightsticks at the ready,

ready to kick some 

fat old brown and black mother’s ass. 

There’s a ritual. 

There is always a ritual 
when preparing for death. 

The man with the lost name dug into a small paper bag. 

He pulled out the wine bottle

a bottle cap to cook the juice
an eyedropper with a small needle with a red cap.

Don’t fuck with us. We’re the man. 

We have the guns, nightstick, baton, truncheon, Billy club, nightstick, and the national guard, if necessary, to protect that American Dream 

and no amount of black and brown mothers with their innocent children at their sides is going to stop us. 

Hey, you, why you running? I got something for you. 

Swing baby, crush some heads,

Swing that hate like it’s a 1968 American city on so many black and brown heads 

They’re going to crash through some heads and bodies to teach them a lesson
this is our America

In the name 
of the Father, 
the Son, 
and the Holy Ghost. 
Amen.

On those piss-stained steps 
leftover from the last fool 
who overdosed crying for his mommy. 

Suddenly fear strangles you
but it is way too late 

for broken tears 
and regretful promises. 

your back thrust up against the wall
legs splayed 
down and up the stairs
your soul falling

falling down broken stairs
out the front door 
onto Willis Avenue

swearing you hear heavenly music 

crashing with the sounds of sirens 
and people were screaming. 

In the name 
of the Father, 
the Son, 
and the Holy Ghost. 
Amen.