Prose: My old friend Dennis Armijo, an award winning journalist who was indicted and then acquitted in 1999 for reporting the failure of Michigan's adult protective services to meet their particular obligations as a... you know, a state agency... died of complications relating to AIDS while I was hospitalized at The Arizona State Hospital. I miss him greatly, he was a true friend, but I also know he would be on fire over what I write today.  

Detroit Kidzz:
teaching school circa
down time as an undergrad
while my friend dennis
"Armijo at Free Press"
showed me
how to fish for big lake white perch
with velveeta cheese and corn.

Detroit Kidzz:
reclining in the comfort
of honors level adornment
my friend dennis
"Armijo at Free Press"
showed me
how to look a pretzel vendor in the eyes
with a straight face. 

Detroit Kidzz:
walking towards mo town
with our beer in our pockets
my friend dennis
"Armijo at Free Press"
showed me
holes in the street as old as our greatest grandparents
and revealed actual stories within those holes.

Detroit Kidzz:
leaning on my desk
and making an introduction
to my group of ten year old magicians
my friend dennis
"Armijo at Free Press"
showed me
where the truth in life begins
and offered us all fast basic joy.

Detroit Kidzz:
living today as a survivor
of a place like this, that place
seeing too many old friends dead
my friend dennis
"Armijo at Free Press"
has a mind like a cross
and this is how I move today
one word at a time. 
                                                        (june 2011)

(In spring, 1995, when I introduced my fishing buddy dennis armijo, an associate editor at the time at a major newspaper, to my esteemed classroomful of east lansing's baddest one grade behind the rest fourteen year olds, he  told a joke about a snake in a shoe store who managed to find his way and bought fifteen pairs of loafers to match his ideals, rather than his feet; because snakes, of course, have no feet, and while I was lost from the beginning, my kidzz were ahead of him on the story, as it flowed from a bit of street wisdom that someone like me would have never heard about, if not for dennis, and the kidzz, of course; the lesson had to do with being the first person to the punch line- and then he sang the kidzz four traditional mexican love songs, this as his "lecture" on journalism).  

IN CLOSING: The doctors and so on at The Arizona State Hospital don't know a goddamn thing about most of their patients' life histories. They treat us all like cattle, with a slight bit more sensitivity to our need for oats over grass, and go home every night believing that they matter, in fact, while we don't, in principle. Some things in life come at you from very peculiar angles. How it might be that I am today emerging as a man assigned the task of taking down nothing short of a piss poor regime of white collared criminals is beyond me; but I am not beyond it, the task, and it fits, somehow. 

(Thanks, Dennis.) 

paoloreed@gmail.com