Ernesto (Che) Guevara was born in Rosario in Argentine in 1928. After studying medicine at the University of Buenos Aires he worked as a doctor. While inGuatemala in 1954 he witnessed the socialist government of President Jacobo Arbenz overthrown by an American backed military coup. Disgusted by what he saw, Guevara decided to join the Cuban revolutionary, Fidel Castro, in Mexico.

Me and My Arrow

Arrow and I awoke most days on the same plane of consciousness.

He as a dog.

Me as human.

We had the same hope and dreams, immediate as they were.

Settling of stomach pangs,

and movement of the bowels, though never necessarily in that order.

While on walks, me inside my thoughts,

Arrow within his own, I imagined.

We sincerely opined our wishes for better worlds.

Simple as wishes, futile to fruition, or so it seemed to me.

Arrow seemed content to trot free of his leash,

while I was content wearing mine.

Arrow would acquiesce to it when the need might arise according to the laws of the leash.

Where I would wear mine as faithfully as any human.

Occasionally, Arrow would stop ahead of me on walks sans leash.

He’d look me in the eye as I caught up,

as if to say:

“Why don’t you take yours off?”

For a good phalanx of years, I took pleasure in the appearance of my freedom.

While about one day,

Arrow and I passed by the home of a hearsay rebel.

An old man in there had shed his leash in a supposed moment of clarity.

I’d heard he was related to Che Guevara, and championed the edicts of Ayn Rand.

Rumors had blossomed from the chatter of other leashes, he’d shirked his duty

as taxpayer du jour. In prison now, he took his meals, brave man.

Always the opportunist, Arrow crapped in the gutter, and I knelt to claim his deposit in a bag

formerly reserved for my groceries. 

I began to think, as I so often had, that things might be rotten in Denmark.  

Arrow gazed with a crooked head, puzzled, as I pocketed his poop, storing it there,

according to the law, until the proper haven where it might rest, buried or otherwise.

And sometimes I thought, I may just give it too much thought, and not enough where my thoughts should go.

Arrow lived his life according to his nature, not any law. And as rainwater to parched ground, these ideas began to sink in.

I was slowly learning what Arrow had been trying to teach.

Laws, leash, and poop, belonged in the toilet, redundant as that might seem.

Like thieves and politicians, one group is licensed, while the other takes license,

but neither cleans up after themselves.

Since shirking my leash, I feel more like an arrow, it is a dog’s life. I was born without a leash and without one I’ll die.

Hasta la Victoria Siempre! 

GJH 2010