The Notebooks of a Chile Verde Smmuggler- 81-105

"Fifteen years later at another institution in a much smaller room at Zapata lounge, a Chicano dorm: no special lights, just an expensive mike." (83)

He is describing a typical Chicano club. The lights are dim and they don't focus on the looks of the singer or speaker but rather what they are saying. They aren't these fancy club with shinning lights and people shouting, its quieter and they just relax more. But at the end of the page he says "but, who listens?" He thinks it as changed. Those lounges are no longer the same people less people because everyone has left for the other American "institutions"

"the earth that moans from pollution, quakes from its own tectonic blast? The earth divided? The earth abandoned, the earth reclaimed through armed struggle, through one more war? Power through ledges, thru words, thru flesh.” (97)

In this poem he touches on political, war, environmental, and racial issues. In this quote he talks about the earth, and what we have done to it. How we have made it moan because of our pollution and how our war as split it up and fought for it with flesh and blood. And how we over look that as we just go along with it. The earth struggles as we tare it apart.