 Hi everybody. Nice to see you here. Thanks Jack. This poem is about a fellow performer, a puppeteer who is from El Salvador. It's called El Quinto de Comandante Tomate, the story of Comandante Tomate. So I wrote it in his words. I rode the bus or train all by myself, six years old. It's why I can never sit still. I'd been everywhere by the time I was six. Only one in my family at a boy's school. It's why I'm still shy with girls. Always in the company of older boys. Prickly cacti I had to scale. My mother always said, You must play with younger boys. You are growing up too quickly. Older boys are just poison to you. At eight, they lured me to the house of ill repute. I told them I'd already been. Hope that would get me off the hook. But they were 14, eager to re-initiate an eight year old. They stuck two colones in my hand. It became a black snake, coffee, candy. I thought of how two colones would be fun for an entire week. Plastic cars, mumbo gum, rights to the city and new books. A bony finger pulled me into a room. I saw rivulets, oceans. The woman began to undress. I shook volcanically in tears. The woman grabbed money from my hand. Now get out of here, you big baby. I stepped out the door, dried my tears, waited in the hallway for the other boys. How was it, they asked. Good, good, I said. And you? I wanted to be outside in the air. A payaso, a clown, an astronaut. I read everything. I read flyers on the street. I read billboards. I read labels on foods. No words escaped me. I learned English at seven in school. The colors, the numbers. My father bought me a book of colors. I learned it. I memorized it. In three days I lost it. I was overcome with sadness. My father beat me. 12 colones, a $5 book, a day's work. And I had not finished coloring the colors yet. The science of military fascinated me. My teachers thought I was crazy. I idolized General Douglas MacArthur and Gregory Peck, who played him. At 15, I joined the militia. We were young. Nopales spoke behind the ears. But we tried so hard to use a gun. My Gregory Peck fascination subsided. The pistol pulsed on its own. Had its own ambulances and mourners. It was dark and had teeth. A relative of the ghost of Hustesia judgment. Who would pass by you in the city, growing to seven feet tall in front of you. And just walk past. Walk into water and never drown. Even in the middle of the ocean. Or it was the headless pre-sort. I was afraid to use a gun. What new spirits would shoot out? I shot at my feet. I did puppetry in the city. For children, it was the man who stole a sausage from the butcher. But blamed it on a dog. Because everyone knows dogs love sausage. So the dog went to prison. La Carcel. But the kids knew really who stole the sausage. And begged us to flee. Free El Perrito, the little dog. They wanted to tear down the paper jail until the real culprit. A thin man with big mustache appeared. Admiring he stole the sausage because he was hungry. And had no colonis in his pocket. Nobody invited us to the factories. But we went. The National Guard marching outside with long rifles. There was not enough fabric for many characters. The bird La Pajarita with the prettiest voice in the countryside saying to the other seamstresses. About not having enough colonis for tortillas, salt, free holes, and palm bread. The phantom. A white-glove figure with black eyes took the Pajaro. The little bird from her factory for organizing a strike of seamstresses and broke her neck with his white hands. Scars became the other birds in the factory and flew at the throats of the guardia. Sometimes I lose my voice. I never had any training. One year at the university, till it closed. Militarized guardia phantoms. Students in hiding. All blood leaves your face and your veins. When you carry off someone shot in the street. Or when you find someone buried or thrown sloppily in the dirt. A finger missing, tongue absent. Private parts gone. It is that introduction to death which is the true induction. Everything once in you washed out. Any blood in the veins dried. And you have to reinvent your whole circulatory system. How the blood moving makes your fingers move. How your heart feels the rivers. Fear is the antidote. Fear is the medicine that makes you lean. That makes you listen better than to any lesson in high school. To a bullet cutting the air cleanly. To someone walking behind you. To your own breath afraid to come out. With this introduction it's easier to measure the speed of a new bullet. How fast the belly can flop to the earth. I'm the two dogs. If the dark one crossed your path, bad luck. We all had it, everyone I knew. Even if we walked in the other direction. I had to leave. My boyhood friends. Now in the mountains or imprisoned. Everyone off the streets by dusk. I left my family. My partner. The fur animal puppets. The La Pajarita. Two weeks ago my partner was captured. I imagine La Guardia threw the puppets away or shot them. I am a printer now. Have two boys. Six and two. They play with their plastic cars. Toy men. No one is hurrying them to grow up. But they see different spirits than the ones I bring them. And the elder one wants to read everything. And believes nothing.