El Paso Weeps, Juarez Bleeds

El Paso Weeps, Juarez Bleeds


1.
Open up the El Paso Times most days--first section, page 6 or 7, you'll read an article like the one below about the on-going narco wars going on down the hill and across the river in Juárez from where Lee and I live.


Bodies of five men found in Juárez
By Daniel Borunda / El Paso Times
Posted: 08/05/2009 04:08:36 PM MDT

The bodies of five men, one of whom was decapitated, were found in a parked sport utility vehicle Wednesday morning in Juárez, Chihuahua state police said.

The man's severed head was in a plastic bag left atop the hood of a red Jeep Patriot found about 5:40 a.m. near Avenida Tecnologico and Avenida Vicente Guerrero. The men had not been identified and appeared to have been beaten.

There had been three additional homicides by Wednesday afternoon, adding to the nearly 1,200 people killed in Juárez this year due in part by a war among drug traffickers.

Here's the rub. El Paso is ranked the third safest in the country and Men's Health magazine ranked El Paso the second "happiest city" in the country. Weird shit. I haven't studied the statistics, and, in fact, they bore me. I leave that sort of stuff to my daughter Susie Byrd who sits on the El Paso Council. She loves the nuts and bolts of running a city. I'm a poet. I like thinking and writing about El Paso and Juárez, cities that I've come to love, two cities divided by a river and an international border but which made out of the same cloth, the same place, the same roots. All sorts of paradoxes and contradictions and, as Blake called them, contraries.

2.
Open up the El Paso Times most days--
first section, page 6 or 7,
you'll read an article like the one below
about the on-going narco wars going on
down the hill and across the river
in Juárez
from where Lee and I live.


Bodies of five men found in Juárez
By Daniel Borunda / El Paso Times
Posted: 08/05/2009 04:08:36 PM MDT

The bodies of five men,
one of whom was decapitated,
were found in a parked sport utility vehicle
Wednesday morning in Juárez, Chihuahua
state police said.

The man's severed head was in a plastic bag
left atop the hood of a red Jeep Patriot
found about 5:40 a.m. near
Avenida Tecnologico and Avenida Vicente Guerrero.
The men had not been identified
and appeared to have been beaten.

There had been three additional homicides
by Wednesday afternoon, adding
to the nearly 1,200 people killed
in Juárez this year due in part
by a war among drug traffickers.


Here's the rub.
El Paso is ranked the third safest
in the country and Men's Health magazine
ranked El Paso the second "happiest city"
in the country. Weird shit.
I haven't studied the statistics, and,
in fact, they bore me.
I leave that sort of stuff to my daughter
Susie Byrd who sits on the El Paso Council.
She loves the nuts and bolts of running a city.
I'm a poet.
I like thinking and writing about
El Paso and Juárez,
cities that I've come to love,
two cities divided by a river
and an international border
but which made out of the same cloth,
the same place, the same roots.
All sorts of paradoxes and contradictions
and, as Blake called them, contraries.

Bobby Byrd

Posted over on his site, White Panties and Dead Friends
1. The actual prose written by Bobby on his blog.
2. Line Breaks by Glenn Buttkus