For Reverend Pedro Pietri's Hat

Throw in some obituary spray for
the living if you're broke.

Or if you got-some
tombstones that breathe anti-
freeze epics

En mi viejo no in my
new healing I learned that
we are all sick.

Yerbayerbayerbayerba
yerbabuena.
Rub this shit on your
stomach and tell the Holy
Ghost that you are busy.

Come back from the
dead like a breeze of
first drafts.

Burn all the
celebrity scarves.

Put a condom on the
mic so we can read hard,
upside down even.

Put wax from a Chango
candle in our ears
so we can memorize
poems in our sleep.

Your god-body name
would be
Reverend Pedro Reborn,
again and again.
First down there
then over here
back over there
and now over here-
again.

Come with your
welfare poets, your
butterflies, your
chupacabra dactyls,
and always come dressed
in black like you doing a
promesa for your
grandmother who sees
better in the dark.

Willie Perdomo
NYC, June 2005