For the Party and its little heart beat
(Dedicated to a baby)

By frh

amor de mis amores, el único
y el amor más grande en toda
mi vida

it’s true that men have written
about great loves for centuries
– of conquest and devotion

but when we speak, what we
write about, it is beyond the
warm embrace of romance and
intimacy

i found you like the wandering
prophet in the desert searching
for his prophecy

in the darkest depths of the
urban wilderness where
fireworks mix with the night
air of gun shots and ghetto
birds, with the saturday
morning evangelical opiate
sermons and sunday fiestas
with cumbias and jumpers

but louder than all i hear the
little heart beat of the Party
soft but not weak, struggling
but courageous and filled
with brilliance and history
carrying forward the great
people’s war and the closing
of the Party’s great
reconstitution

comrades do not give birth to
babies but rather to sons and
daughters of the proletariat
who populate the rank and
file of the Party, the army and
the new state/front

i apologize for my seeming
indifference to your repeat
petitions for tenderness and
love –  but everything i do
like a soldier in the trenches
is for the people, for the
proletariat, for all of us

my heart may be defective
but it is not weak, and blood
manages to find its way to it
and throughout my body; the
instruments help, especially
the three of revolution, and
here i am, alive, a little older
maybe a little colder but

i never stopped writing love
poems – all my poems have
always been about love, and
the greatest love anyone can
have is for the Party, and its
beautiful
little
heart
beat