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Joaquin

Saturday, January 19th, 2008

Growing up in poverty and conflict, I may have known some people who could be classified as “Notorious”- in one form or another. Yet, for the life of me, when tasked to pretend to know one and write about them, all I could do was ask my father-in-law, if he knew or heard of anyone notorious enough to write about. He then proceeded to tell me of about this guy, Joaquin Murietta, who supposedly got captured and beheaded, with his head being put on display.

There seems to be a lot of myth, good old-fashioned rumor and half-truths about the guy and his story (life and death) from what little research I could do due to an imposed time constraint. But I figured, if he made a good subject of both fiction and truth, he would make a good subject to write about in a poem (however weird, it may seem).

Here’s what I came up with under 15 minutes of writing and editing:

Joaquin

You walk a path, grim trodden
Bent on avenging those you lost
Blood, stains your worn dark boots
Dead bodies, strewn in your wake

Was it not but a while ago
you tended to farming with such love?
Now your eyes are cold as ice
Your heart, beats terror and death

Wish time could be rolled back
to days of love, hope and peace
when your smile and laughter
yielded more, than golden fields

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