ZIGZAG

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads

No tracks within a good
ten miles of here
but on a misty morn
that horn
is ridin' the breeze
cutting through my brain fog
it echoes
like the call of the wild
from back in the day

I shouldn't have switched on the TV 
cuz some Trumpster shill
is telling Martha Radditz 
who the "normal" Americans are
pretty sure Caitlyn isn't on his list

I traveled all this way 
doin' the transcontinental zigzag
just to end up in a world where
transgender crappers 
would be the hot button of the day 

you can be 
whatever you wanna be
on the inside
the outside's just a shell
that we tortoises use
to deflect the rain 

(and I don't know who I am
but life is for learnin')

so when I present the idea 
of trans-racial
I'm sayin' it's not a bridge too far
cuz we am what we am
and we are what we are

not the same as mixed blood
it means starting out identifying
as one ethnicity 
but waking up one day to realize
that in your heart 
you are something else

never knew why I always wanted
to jump out of this pale skin
til I ran into the lost ones (who
like the Indians Columbus encountered
were never lost to themselves and thus
had no need of being "discovered")
and found there was Cherokee blood
from grandma 

the most captivating woman 
at age 32
I've ever seen 
her eyes foretold me
foreshadowed the coming 
of the little bastard
and one by one the pieces
began to fall into place...

a half-bro
who is half Hispanic
all the time spent 
south of the border
and in the Caribbean 
where I saw a way of life 
that was impervious to sorrow
whenever a street band would play
and knew so strong in my gut
that it was a part of me
and always had been

how my paths zigzagged
and crisscrossed
like an etch-a-sketch sky
spinning round so fast sometimes
I met myself speeding in the other direction

I'm not what I appear to be 
bro
though you would never know

and now I'm reading Sherman Alexie
who says that Indians seldom travel
in a straight line

not even the Crows