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Michael R Burch May 2020
Mayan Poetry Translations

The Receiving of the Flower
excerpt from a Mayan love poem
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Let us sing overflowing with joy
as we observe the Receiving of the Flower.
The lovely maidens beam;
their hearts leap in their *******.

Why?

Because they will soon yield their virginity to the men they love!

###

The Deflowering
excerpt from a Mayan love poem
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Remove your clothes;
let down your hair;
become as naked as the day you were born—

virgins!

###

Prelude to *******
excerpt from a Mayan love poem
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Lay out your most beautiful clothes,
maidens!
The day of happiness has arrived!

Grab your combs, detangle your hair,
adorn your earlobes with gaudy pendants.
Dress in white as becomes maidens ...

Then go, give your lovers the happiness of your laughter!
And all the village will rejoice with you,
for the day of happiness has arrived!

###

The Flower-Strewn Pool
excerpt from a Mayan love poem
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You have arrived at last in the woods
where no one can see what you do
at the flower-strewn pool ...

Remove your clothes,
unbraid your hair,
become as you were
when you first arrived here,

virgins, maidens!

These are my modern English translations of ancient Mayan love poems. Native Americans were creating poems and songs in pre-Columbian days; Mayan and Aztec literature may date back to the first millennium BCE. Unfortunately the Spanish conquerors of South America destroyed all but four of the thousands of pre-Columbian books that probably once existed (according to translator Michael Coe). Mayan hieroglyphs remain far from fully understood and dating what remains is difficult. However, the best poetry is timeless and I believe we can know our Mayan brothers and sisters a little better through their poems.—Michael R. Burch
These are my modern English translations of ancient Mayan love poems. Native Americans were creating poems and songs in pre-Columbian days; Mayan and Aztec literature may date back to the first millennium BCE. Unfortunately the Spanish conquerors of South America destroyed all but four of the thousands of pre-Columbian books that probably once existed (according to translator Michael Coe). Mayan hieroglyphs remain far from fully understood and dating what remains is difficult. However, the best poetry is timeless and I believe we can know our Mayan brothers and sisters a little better through their poems.—Michael R. Burch

Keywords/Tags: ancient, Mayan, poetry, translation, translations, love, virginity, ***, marriage, joy, happiness, flower, flowers, deflowering, clothes, hair, ******, nakedness
Karijinbba Aug 2019
My Mayan Cross: DEATH/TRANSFORMER
is Karijinbba's
Mayan birth chart
character, traits blessings gifted upon birth

So, Karijinbba/ASG

"Your Mayan Cross is comprised of six integrated, archetypal energies (also called Nawals, Day Signs or Day Lords) represented by Mayan glyphs and numerals from the Mayan sacred calendar. According to the Maya, this is your cosmic blueprint, your energetic signature, your personal Tree of Life. It is used for mapping one's life towards a destiny aligned with divine cosmic forces.

The energies of the Cross are viewed as a human form facing out. The Vertical axis represents your head, heart and feet, and the Horizontal axis represents your left and right arms.

The Year Bearer shown on the right constitutes additional qualities to the make-up of your soul.

The following is a breakdown of this Mayan Cross.
Karijinbba
Feel free to dive deeper into the meaning by rolling over and clicking on each component of the Cross, calculate other Crosses

Interpretation

Overview of Death/Transformer Energy: the great cycle, ancestors, skulls

This energy encompasses the mysteries of life, death and transformation. A profound understanding of other dimensions is deeply felt within their bones. Their clairvoyance and clairsentience leads them to Mayan priesthood and, like the day sign Dawn, is considered an auspicious day to be born because their spiritual path is certain. They are very familiar and comfortable with death and will be protected from violence, illness and accidents.

To realize their true merit, Transformer signs Aries Ram people like you should spend time in sacred places and listen to ancient voices.

The Vertical Axis, Death's Cross is strongly influenced by the direction North, where the color is white and the timbre is intellectual, analytical and cold, like the energy of winter

Heart Sign: The predominant sign of your Mayan Cross
There is an uncanny allure to people born on a Death/Transformer day which is attractive and magical to those in their process of awakening. They experience emotional ups and downs as they play out the karmic debt created in past lives, but they are wise and lucky in love. They need to remember and respect their heritage and will receive their power and direction by doing so.

Conception (head) Sign: Flint
The person born on this day is engendered by Flint which provides a good childhood and protection from any problematic situation or person. As youngsters, Transfirmers may intuit thought processes like intuiting voice like thoughts of their spirit guides.

Destiny (feet) Sign: Jaguar
A fate ruled by Jaguar provides an intense life, both good and bad experiences, but clear recognition as an authority. This energy helps Death become a master of their own land as well as match making. They often carry the gift of lightning blood and become adept healers.

The Horizontal Axis reveals those energies that need to be balanced in order to reach the destiny, influenced by the direction South, where the color is yellow as the Earth brings fulfillment, like the warming energy of summer

Left Arm – Challenges:  Road
The challenge of Road energy is to be clear about the direction in which you may lead others and to know your purpose as you travel. Staying focused with work on service projects and/or spiritual tasks can keep Death people on track. They will travel and be influential leaders.

Right Arm  – Gifts: Sun
This energy keeps Death people from being too heavy. Instead, they are vibrant, attractive and very successful. With Sun, the praise and respect are earned and well-deserved. This energy provides Death all the ingredients for becoming a highly regarded prophet or healer."

All these above in real life I am exactly.

I was born with a "knife Etznab"on one side
spiritual kind of knife that is
it cuts through the pain fire and ice of life's harships as it comes and on the other side my
Death sign Mayan
protects me from death by enemies, its
The sixth day sign of the Mayan zodiac is Death also known as Cimi, Worldbridger or Transformer. Cimi is considered a lucky day to be born because death was a day of transformation, not dying.

The sign of Death symbolized the ancestors and getting guidance from the ancestors was central to Mayan cultural practices

If knowing me is loving me understanding who I am is better
thanks for reading about me
~~~~~~~~~
BY:Karijinbba
grateful for your comments hugs to all stay blessed
‘Apocalypto’ is a film set in a Maya civilisation and consists of a story that takes place in one tribe and how a passing tribe affects them to a degree of destruction. The story unfolds in a linear way of storytelling which is basic but still effective. From director Mel Gibson, the director of ‘Braveheart’ and ‘Passion of the Christ’. An underrated director of sorts but a great one nonetheless. Overlooked due to his acting career, he has been holding back on us as a director.

The characters are set to be living a Mayan life and go about their days behaving as such but are rather generous and civilized for such an old race of people. They live peacefully and secluded until they interact with another tribe which brings about their downfall. And the way in which a Mayan civilization might go about solving problem as common as a natural disaster. Through sacrifices to the God's as a way to solve problems and mass results. Very accurate to the Mayan culture as well as the entire movie taking place without one word of English, all dialogue being said in the Mayan language. Another credit to the film.

The directing style for this film is beautiful and flawless to say the least. No shaky cam used or hand held cam either. All fluent movement of the camera to create a great story, one that flows naturally. The use of camera angles is creative and different, using tilted angles to convey a certain mood and straight framed shots to convey another mood.

The performances stand out as a huge positive, the actors who I have honestly never heard of give Oscar worthy performances. Mel Gibson uses unknown actors as not to compromise the film by the status of the actors. These actors and actresses give a hard performance based on body language and quiet moments, the enduring task of learning to be emotional through a foreign language. Which is why I would guess Mel Gibson used local actors who are more aware of the Mayan language than American actors.

The set design is truly Oscar worthy in this film. The Mayan temples and tribe lands are captured perfectly in the sets for this film. Well build and suited towards the amazon environment. As well as good filming locations, using the wonders of the amazon rainforest as an advantage.

In final thoughts, I believe that Mel Gibson is a stunning director with an eye for detail and a beautiful visual director. A director that can produce great work. ‘Apocalypto’ to me in the near future will become a period piece masterpiece. A tale of survival and dedication that will live on through the ages.

Rating: Film - 8.4
Personal - 8.9
For those who love film.
Emily Miller Jul 2018
On dusty streets leading from market to to the edges of a resort,
elderly men with three teeth beckon you.
The commercialized exoticism sweeps you up
and you hand over pesos
in exchange for a piece of parchment with hand-scrawled symbols...

There is no Mayan alphabet.
They'll tell you that they're writing your name,
you'll take it home and display it on a shelf next to framed pictures
of you and the family in Chichen Itza,
but nothing about it is real.
We never grow up and learn not to believe,
we just learn piece by piece what's real and what's not.
Children learn about the tooth fairy,
and mermaids,
teenagers learn about soulmates,
young people learn about their dreams,
but even as adults,
there are things we still believe in.

There is no Mayan alphabet,
and yet grown, educated people
pull coins from their pocket in an attempt to connect with a culture that seems too fantastic to be a part of reality.

There is no Mayan alphabet,
but people still believe.
They believe in utopias
and countries without debt.
They believe in world peace and infinite resources,
they'll write checks to conmen
and work for checks from them, too.
They believe in honest politicians
and perfectly healthy food.
They put stock in organic remedies
and all their trust in online articles,
and every time they think they've learned the way of the world,
they'll turn around,
and learn something new.
Adults may not believe in fairy tales,
but they will believe in the Mayan alphabet.
Michael R Burch Feb 2020
When Pigs Fly
by Michael R. Burch

On the Trail of Tears,
my Cherokee brothers,
why hang your heads?
Why shame your mothers?
Laugh wildly instead!
We will soon be dead.

When we lie in our graves,
let the white-eyes take
the woodlands we loved
for the *** and the rake.
It is better to die
than to live out a lie
in so narrow a sty.

In October 1838 the Cherokees began to walk the "Trail of Tears." Most of them made the thousand mile journey west to Oklahoma on foot. An estimated 4,000 people, or a quarter of the tribe, died en route. The soldiers "escorting" the Cherokees at bayonet point refused permission for the dead to be buried, threatening to shoot anyone who disobeyed. So the living were forced to carry the corpses of the dead until camp was made for the night. Years after the Cherokees had been rounded up and driven down the Trail of Tears, John G. Burnett reflected on what he and his fellow soldiers had done, saying, "Schoolchildren of today do not know that we are living on lands that were taken from a helpless race at the bayonet point, to satisfy the white man's greed... ****** is ****** and somebody must answer, somebody must explain the streams of blood that flowed in the Indian country... Somebody must explain the four thousand silent graves that mark the trail of the Cherokees to their exile." Keywords/Tags: Cherokee, Native American, Trail of Tears, Ethnic Cleansing, Genocide, ******, Evil, Death, March, Death March, Infanticide, Matricide, Racism, Racist, Discrimination, Violence, Fascism, White Supremacists, Horror, Terror, Terrorism, Greed, Gluttony, Avarice, Lust, ****, mrbpig, mrbpigs



Cherokee Prayer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

As I walk life's trails
imperiled by the raging wind and rain,
grant, O Great Spirit,
that yet I may always
walk like a man.

This prayer makes me think of Native Americans walking the Trail of Tears with far more courage and dignity than their “civilized” abusers.



Native American Prayer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Help us learn the lessons you have left us
in every leaf and rock.



Native American Travelers' Blessing
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Let us walk together here
among earth's creatures great and small,
remembering, our footsteps light,
that one wise God created all.



Sioux Vision Quest
by Crazy Horse, Oglala Lakota Sioux, circa 1840-1877
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A man must pursue his Vision
as the eagle explores
the sky's deepest blues.



Cherokee Travelers' Blessing I
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I will extract the thorns from your feet.
For yet a little while, we will walk life's sunlit paths together.
I will love you like my own brother, my own blood.
When you are disconsolate, I will wipe the tears from your eyes.
And when you are too sad to live, I will put your aching heart to rest.

Published by Better Than Starbucks and Cherokee Native Americans



Cherokee Travelers' Blessing II
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Happily may you walk
in the paths of the Rainbow.
                  Oh,
and may it always be beautiful before you,
beautiful behind you,
beautiful below you,
beautiful above you,
and beautiful all around you
where in Perfection beauty is finished.

Published by Better Than Starbucks



Cherokee Travelers' Blessing III
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

May Heaven’s warming winds blow gently there,
where you reside,
and may the Great Spirit bless all those you love,
this side of the farthest tide.
And wherever you go,
whether the journey is fast or slow,
may your moccasins leave many cunning footprints in the snow.
And when you look over your shoulder, may you always find the Rainbow.

Published by Better Than Starbucks



What is life?
The flash of a firefly.
The breath of the winter buffalo.
The shadow scooting across the grass that vanishes with sunset.
―Blackfoot saying, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Warrior's Confession
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Oh my love, how fair you are—
far brighter than the fairest star!



Cherokee Proverb
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Before you judge
a man for his sins
be sure to trudge
many moons in his moccasins.



Cherokee Prayer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

As I walk life's trails
imperiled by the raging wind and rain,
grant, O Great Spirit,
that yet I may always
walk like a man.

When I think of this prayer, I think of Native Americans walking the Trail of Tears.



The Receiving of the Flower
excerpt from a Mayan love poem
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Let us sing overflowing with joy
as we observe the Receiving of the Flower.
The lovely maidens beam;
their hearts leap in their *******.

Why?

Because they will soon yield their virginity to the men they love!



The Deflowering
excerpt from a Mayan love poem
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Remove your clothes;
let down your hair;
become as naked as the day you were born—

virgins!



Prelude to *******
excerpt from a Mayan love poem
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Lay out your most beautiful clothes,
maidens!
The day of happiness has arrived!

Grab your combs, detangle your hair,
adorn your earlobes with gaudy pendants.
Dress in white as becomes maidens ...

Then go, give your lovers the happiness of your laughter!
And all the village will rejoice with you,
for the day of happiness has arrived!



The Flower-Strewn Pool
excerpt from a Mayan love poem
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You have arrived at last in the woods
where no one can see what you do
at the flower-strewn pool ...
Remove your clothes,
unbraid your hair,
become as you were
when you first arrived here
naked and shameless,
virgins, maidens!



Native American Proverbs

The soul would see no Rainbows if not for the eyes’ tears.
—loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A woman’s highest calling is to help her man unite with the Source.
A man’s highest calling is to help his woman walk the earth unharmed.
—loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced.
Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.
—White Elk, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

What is life?
The flash of a firefly.
The breath of a winter buffalo.
The shadow scooting across the grass that vanishes with sunset.
—Blackfoot saying, translation by Michael R. Burch

Speak less thunder, wield more lightning. — Apache proverb, translation by Michael R. Burch

The more we wonder, the more we understand. — Arapaho proverb, translation by Michael R. Burch

Adults talk, children whine. — Blackfoot proverb, translation by Michael R. Burch

Don’t be afraid to cry: it will lessen your sorrow. — Hopi proverb

One foot in the boat, one foot in the canoe, and you end up in the river. — Tuscarora proverb, translation by Michael R. Burch

Our enemy's weakness increases our strength. — Cherokee proverb, translation by Michael R. Burch

We will be remembered tomorrow by the tracks we leave today. — Dakota proverb, translation by Michael R. Burch

No sound's as eloquent as a rattlesnake's tail. — Navajo saying, translation by Michael R. Burch

The heart is our first teacher. — Cheyenne proverb, translation by Michael R. Burch

Dreams beget success. — Maricopa proverb, translation by Michael R. Burch

Knowledge interprets the past, wisdom foresees the future. — Lumbee proverb, translation by Michael R. Burch

The troublemaker's way is thorny. — Umpqua proverb, translation by Michael R. Burch



Earthbound
an original poem by Michael R. Burch

Tashunka Witko, better known as Crazy Horse, had a vision of a red-tailed hawk at Sylvan Lake, South Dakota. In his vision he saw himself riding a spirit horse, flying through a storm, as the hawk flew above him, shrieking. When he awoke, a red-tailed hawk was perched near his horse.

Earthbound,
and yet I now fly
through the clouds that are aimlessly drifting ...
so high
that no sound
echoing by
below where the mountains are lifting
the sky
can be heard.

Like a bird,
but not meek,
like a hawk from a distance regarding its prey,
I will shriek,
not a word,
but a screech,
and my terrible clamor will turn them to clay—
the sheep,
the earthbound.



Years after the Cherokees had been rounded up and driven down the Trail of Tears, John G. Burnett reflected on what he and his fellow soldiers had done, saying, "Schoolchildren of today do not know that we are living on lands that were taken from a helpless race at the bayonet point, to satisfy the white man's greed ... ****** is ****** and somebody must answer, somebody must explain the streams of blood that flowed in the Indian country ... Somebody must explain the four thousand silent graves that mark the trail of the Cherokees to their exile."

In the same year, 1830, that Stonewall Jackson consigned Native Americans to the ash-heap of history, Georgia Governor George Gilmer said, "Treaties are expedients by which ignorant, intractable, and savage people are induced ... to yield up what civilized people have the right to possess." By "civilized" he apparently meant people willing to brutally dispossess and **** women and children in order to derive economic benefits for themselves.

These nights bring dreams of Cherokee shamans
whose names are bright verbs and impacted dark nouns,
whose memories are indictments of my pallid flesh . . .
and I hear, as from a great distance,
the cries tortured from their guileless lips, proclaiming
the nature of my mutation.
―Michael R. Burch, from "Mongrel Dreams" (my family is part Cherokee, English and Scottish)

After Jackson was re-elected with an overwhelming majority in 1832, he strenuously pursued his policy of removing Native Americans, even refusing to accept a Supreme Court ruling which invalidated Georgia's planned annexation of Cherokee land. But in the double-dealing logic of the white supremacists, they had to make the illegal resettlement of the Indians appear to be "legal," so a small group of Cherokees were persuaded to sign the "Treaty of New Echota," which swapped Cherokee land for land in the Oklahoma territory. The Cherokee ringleaders of this infamous plot were later assassinated as traitors. (****** was similarly obsessed with the "legalities" of the **** Holocaust; isn't it strange how mass murderers of women and children can seek to justify their crimes?)

Native Americans understood the "circle of life" better than their white oppressors ...

When we sit in the Circle of the People,
we must be responsible because all Creation is related
and the suffering of one is the suffering of all
and the joy of one is the joy of all
and whatever we do affects everything in the universe.
—"Lakota Instructions for Living" by White Buffalo Calf Woman, translated by Michael R. Burch



Veiled
by Michael R. Burch

She has belief
without comprehension
and in her crutchwork shack
she is
much like us . . .

tamping the bread
into edible forms,
regarding her children
at play
with something akin to relief . . .

ignoring the towers ablaze
in the distance
because they are not revelations
but things of glass,
easily shattered . . .

and if you were to ask her,
she might say:
sometimes God visits his wrath
upon an impious nation
for its leaders’ sins,

and we might agree:
seeing her mutilations.

Published by Poetry Super Highway and Modern War Poems.



Ali’s Song
by Michael R. Burch

They say that gold don’t tarnish. It ain’t so.
They say it has a wild, unearthly glow.
A man can be more beautiful, more wild.
I flung their medal to the river, child.
I flung their medal to the river, child.

They hung their coin around my neck; they made
my name a bridle, “called a ***** a *****.”
They say their gold is pure. I say defiled.
I flung their slave’s name to the river, child.
I flung their slave’s name to the river, child.

Ain’t got no quarrel with no Viet Cong
that never called me ******, did me wrong.
A man can’t be lukewarm, ’cause God hates mild.
I flung their notice to the river, child.
I flung their notice to the river, child.

They said, “Now here’s your bullet and your gun,
and there’s your cell: we’re waiting, you choose one.”
At first I groaned aloud, but then I smiled.
I gave their “future” to the river, child.
I gave their “future” to the river, child.

My face reflected up, dark bronze like gold,
a coin God stamped in His own image―BOLD.
My blood boiled like that river―strange and wild.
I died to hate in that dark river, child,
Come, be reborn in this bright river, child.

Originally published by Black Medina

Note: Cassius Clay, who converted to Islam and changed his “slave name” to Muhammad Ali, said that he threw his Olympic boxing gold medal into the Ohio River. Confirming his account, the medal was recovered by Robert Bradbury and his wife Pattie in 2014 during the Annual Ohio River Sweep, and the Ali family paid them $200,000 to regain possession of the medal. When drafted during the Vietnamese War, Ali refused to serve, reputedly saying: “I ain't got no quarrel with those Viet Cong; no Vietnamese ever called me a ******.” The notice mentioned in my poem is Ali's draft notice, which metaphorically gets tossed into the river along with his slave name. I was told through the grapevine that this poem appeared in Farsi in an Iranian publication called Bashgah. ―Michael R. Burch



evol-u-shun
by Michael R. Burch

does GOD adore the Tyger
while it’s ripping ur lamb apart?

does GOD applaud the Plague
while it’s eating u à la carte?

does GOD admire ur intelligence
while u pray that IT has a heart?

does GOD endorse the Bible
you blue-lighted at k-mart?



Enheduanna, the daughter of the famous King Sargon the Great of Akkad, is the first ancient writer whose name remains known today. She appears to be the first named poet in human history and the first known author of prayers and hymns. Enheduanna, who lived circa 2285-2250 BCE, is also one of the first women we know by name.

Lament to the Spirit of War
by Enheduanna
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

You hack down everything you see, War God!

Rising on fearsome wings
you rush to destroy the land,
descending like a raging storm,
howling like a hurricane,
screaming like a tempest,
thundering, raging, ranting, drumming,
whiplashing whirlwinds!

Men falter at your approaching footsteps.

Tortured dirges scream
on your lyre of despair.

Like a fiery Salamander you poison the land:
growling over the earth like thunder,
vegetation collapsing before you,
blood gushing down a mountainside.

Spirit of hatred, greed and vengeance!

******* of heaven and earth!

Your ferocious fire consumes our land.

Whipping your stallion
with furious commands,
you decide our fate.

You triumph over all human rites and prayers.

Who can explain your tirade,
why you go on so?



Temple Hymn 15
to the Gishbanda Temple of Ningishzida
by Enheduanna
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Most ancient and terrible shrine,
set deep in the mountain,
dark like a mother's womb...

Dark shrine,
like a mother's wounded breast,
blood-red and terrifying...

Though approaching through a safe-seeming field,
our hair stands on end as we near you!

Gishbanda,
like a neck-stock,
like a fine-eyed fish net,
like a foot-shackled prisoner's manacles...
your ramparts are massive,
like a trap!

But once we’re inside,
as the sun rises,
you yield widespread abundance!

Your prince
is the pure-handed priest of Inanna, heaven's Holy One,
Lord Ningishzida!

Oh, see how his thick, lustrous hair
cascades down his back!

Oh Gishbanda,
he has built this beautiful temple to house your radiance!
He has placed his throne upon your dais!



The Exaltation of Inanna: Opening Lines and Excerpts
by Enheduanna, the daughter of Sargon I of Akkad and the high priestess of the Goddess Inanna
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Lady of all divine powers!
Lady of the resplendent light!
Righteous Lady adorned in heavenly radiance!

Beloved Lady of An and Uraš!
Hierodule of An, sun-adorned and bejeweled!
Heaven’s Mistress with the holy diadem,
Who loves the beautiful headdress befitting the office of her own high priestess!

Powerful Mistress, seizer of the seven divine powers!
My Heavenly Lady, guardian of the seven divine powers!
You have seized the seven divine powers!
You hold the divine powers in your hand!
You have gathered together the seven divine powers!
You have clasped the divine powers to your breast!

You have flooded the valleys with venom, like a viper;
all vegetation vanishes when you thunder like Iškur!
You have caused the mountains to flood the valleys!
When you roar like that, nothing on earth can withstand you!

Like a flood descending on floodplains, O Powerful One, you will teach foreigners to fear Inanna!

You have given wings to the storm, O Beloved of Enlil!
The storms do your bidding, blasting the unbelievers!

Foreign cities cower at the chaos You cause!
Entire countries cower in dread of Your deadly South Wind!
Men cower before you in their anguished implications,
raising their pitiful outcries,
weeping and wailing, beseeching Your benevolence with many wild lamentations!

But in the van of battle, everything falls before You, O Mighty Queen!

My Queen,
You are all-conquering, all-devouring!
You continue Your attacks like relentless storms!
You howl louder than the howling storms!
You thunder louder than Iškur!
You moan louder than the mournful winds!
Your feet never tire from trampling Your enemies!
You produce much wailing on the lyres of lamentations!

My Queen,
all the Anunna, the mightiest Gods,
fled before Your approach like fluttering bats!
They could not stand in Your awesome Presence
nor behold Your awesome Visage!

Who can soothe Your infuriated heart?
Your baleful heart is beyond being soothed!

Uncontrollable Wild Cow, elder daughter of Sin,
O Majestic Queen, greater than An,
who has ever paid You enough homage?

O Life-Giving Goddess, possessor of all powers,
Inanna the Exalted!

Merciful, Live-Giving Mother!
Inanna, the Radiant of Heart!
I have exalted You in accordance with Your power!
I have bowed before You in my holy garb,
I the En, I Enheduanna!

Carrying my masab-basket, I once entered and uttered my joyous chants ...

But now I no longer dwell in Your sanctuary.
The sun rose and scorched me.
Night fell and the South Wind overwhelmed me.
My laughter was stilled and my honey-sweet voice grew strident.
My joy became dust.

O Sin, King of Heaven, how bitter my fate!

To An, I declared: An will deliver me!
I declared it to An: He will deliver me!

But now the kingship of heaven has been seized by Inanna,
at Whose feet the floodplains lie.

Inanna the Exalted,
who has made me tremble together with all Ur!

Stay Her anger, or let Her heart be soothed by my supplications!
I, Enheduanna will offer my supplications to Inanna,
my tears flowing like sweet intoxicants!
Yes, I will proffer my tears and my prayers to the Holy Inanna,
I will greet Her in peace ...

O My Queen, I have exalted You,
Who alone are worthy to be exalted!
O My Queen, Beloved of An,
I have laid out Your daises,
set fire to the coals,
conducted the rites,
prepared Your nuptial chamber.
Now may Your heart embrace me!

These are my innovations,
O Mighty Queen, that I made for You!
What I composed for You by the dark of night,
The cantor will chant by day.

Now Inanna’s heart has been restored,
and the day became favorable to Her.
Clothed in beauty, radiant with joy,
she carried herself like the elegant moonlight.

Now to the Noble Hierodule,
to the Wrecker of foreign lands
presented by An with the seven divine powers,
and to my Queen garbed in the radiance of heaven ...

O Inanna, praise!



The Exaltation of Inanna: Opening Lines, an Excerpt
Nin-me-šara by Enheduanna
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Lady of all divine powers,
Lady of the all-resplendent light,
Righteous Lady clothed in heavenly radiance,
Beloved Lady of An and Uraš,
Mistress of heaven with the holy diadem,
Who loves the beautiful headdress befitting the office of her high priestess,
Powerful Mistress who has seized all seven divine powers,
My lady, you are the guardian of the seven divine powers!
You have seized the divine powers,
You hold the divine powers in your hand,
You have gathered up the divine powers,
You have clasped the divine powers to your breast!
Like a dragon you have spewed venom on foreign lands that know you not!
When you roar like Iškur at the earth, nothing can withstand you!
Like a flood descending on alien lands, O Powerful One of heaven and earth, you will teach them to fear Inanna!



Temple Hymn 7: an Excerpt
to the Kesh Temple of Ninhursag
by Enheduanna
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

O, high-situated Kesh,
form-shifting summit,
inspiring fear like a venomous viper!

O, Lady of the Mountains,
Ninhursag’s house was constructed on a terrifying site!

O, Kesh, like holy Aratta: your womb dark and deep,
your walls high-towering and imposing!

O, great lion of the wildlands stalking the high plains!...



Temple Hymn 17: an Excerpt
to the Badtibira Temple of Dumuzi
by Enheduanna
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

O, house of jeweled lapis illuminating the radiant bed
in the peace-inducing palace of our Lady of the Steppe!



Temple Hymn 22: an Excerpt
to the Sirara Temple of Nanshe
by Enheduanna
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

O, house, you wild cow!
Made to conjure signs of the Divine!
You arise, beautiful to behold,
bedecked for your Mistress!



Temple Hymn 26: an Excerpt
to the Zabalam Temple of Inanna
by Enheduanna
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

O house illuminated by beams of bright light,
dressed in shimmering stone jewels,
awakening the world to awe!



Temple Hymn 42: an Excerpt
to the Eresh Temple of Nisaba
by Enheduanna
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

O, house of brilliant stars
bright with lapis stones,
you illuminate all lands!

...

The person who put this tablet together
is Enheduanna.
My king: something never created before,
did she not give birth to it?



Update of "A Litany in Time of Plague"
by Michael R. Burch

THE PLAGUE has come again
To darken lives of men
and women, girls and boys;
Death proves their bodies toys
Too frail to even cry.
I am sick, I must die.
Lord, have mercy on us!

Tycoons, what use is wealth?
You cannot buy good health!
Physicians cannot heal
Themselves, to Death must kneel.
Nuns’ prayers mount to the sky.
I am sick, I must die.
Lord, have mercy on us!

Beauty’s brightest flower?
Devoured in an hour.
Kings, Queens and Presidents
Are fearful residents
Of manors boarded high.
I am sick, I must die.
Lord, have mercy on us!

We have no means to save
Our children from the grave.
Though cure-alls line our shelves,
We cannot save ourselves.
"Come, come!" the sad bells cry.
I am sick, I must die.
Lord, have mercy on us!

NOTE: This poem is meant to capture the understandable fear and dismay the Plague caused in the Middle Ages, and which the coronavirus has caused in the 21st century. We are better equipped to deal with this modern plague, thanks to advances in science, medicine and sanitation. We do not have to succumb to fear, but it would be wise to have a healthy respect for the nasty bug and heed the advice of medical experts.--MRB



Regret
by Michael R. Burch

Regret,
a bitter
ache to bear . . .

once starlight
languished
in your hair . . .

a shining there
as brief
as rare.

Regret . . .
a pain
I chose to bear . . .

unleash
the torrent
of your hair . . .

and show me
once again―
how rare.

Published by The HyperTexts and The Chained Muse



The Stake
by Michael R. Burch

Love, the heart bets,
if not without regrets,
will still prove, in the end,
worth the light we expend
mining the dark
for an exquisite heart.

Originally published by The Lyric



If
by Michael R. Burch

If I regret
fire in the sunset
exploding on the horizon,
then let me regret loving you.

If I forget
even for a moment
that you are the only one,
then let me forget that the sky is blue.

If I should yearn
in a season of discontentment
for the vagabond light of a companionless moon,
let dawn remind me that you are my sun.

If I should burn―one moment less brightly,
one instant less true―
then with wild scorching kisses,
inflame me, inflame me, inflame me anew.

Originally published by The HyperTexts



The Effects of Memory
by Michael R. Burch

A black ringlet
curls to lie
at the nape of her neck,
glistening with sweat
in the evaporate moonlight ...
This is what I remember

now that I cannot forget.

And tonight,
if I have forgotten her name,
I remember:
rigid wire and white lace
half-impressed in her flesh ...

our soft cries, like regret,

... the enameled white clips
of her bra strap
still inscribe dimpled marks
that my kisses erase ...

now that I have forgotten her face.



Villanelle: Because Her Heart Is Tender
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

She scrawled soft words in soap: "Never Forget,"
Dove-white on her car's window, and the wren,
because her heart is tender, might regret
it called the sun to wake her. As I slept,
she heard lost names recounted, one by one.

She wrote in sidewalk chalk: "Never Forget,"
and kept her heart's own counsel. No rain swept
away those words, no tear leaves them undone.

Because her heart is tender with regret,
bruised by razed towers' glass and steel and stone
that shatter on and on and on and on,
she stitches in wet linen: "NEVER FORGET,"
and listens to her heart's emphatic song.

The wren might tilt its head and sing along
because its heart once understood regret
when fledglings fell beyond, beyond, beyond ...
its reach, and still the boot-heeled world strode on.

She writes in adamant: "NEVER FORGET"
because her heart is tender with regret.



To the boy Elis
by Georg Trakl
translation by Michael R. Burch

Elis, when the blackbird cries from the black forest,
it announces your downfall.
Your lips sip the rock-spring's blue coolness.

Your brow sweats blood
recalling ancient myths
and dark interpretations of birds' flight.

Yet you enter the night with soft footfalls;
the ripe purple grapes hang suspended
as you wave your arms more beautifully in the blueness.

A thornbush crackles;
where now are your moonlike eyes?
How long, oh Elis, have you been dead?

A monk dips waxed fingers
into your body's hyacinth;
Our silence is a black abyss

from which sometimes a docile animal emerges
slowly lowering its heavy lids.
A black dew drips from your temples:

the lost gold of vanished stars.

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: I believe that in the second stanza the blood on Elis's forehead may be a reference to the apprehensive ****** sweat of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. If my interpretation is correct, Elis hears the blackbird's cries, anticipates the danger represented by a harbinger of death, but elects to continue rather than turn back. From what I have been able to gather, the color blue had a special significance for Georg Trakl: it symbolized longing and perhaps a longing for death. The colors blue, purple and black may represent a progression toward death in the poem.



Turkish Poetry Translations

Attilâ İlhan (1925-2005) was a Turkish poet, translator, novelist, screenwriter, editor, journalist, essayist, reviewer, socialist and intellectual.

Ben Sana Mecburum: “You are indispensable”
by Attila Ilhan
translation by Nurgül Yayman and Michael R. Burch

You are indispensable; how can you not know
that you’re like nails riveting my brain?
I see your eyes as ever-expanding dimensions.
You are indispensable; how can you not know
that I burn within, at the thought of you?

Trees prepare themselves for autumn;
can this city be our lost Istanbul?
Now clouds disintegrate in the darkness
as the street lights flicker
and the streets reek with rain.
You are indispensable, and yet you are absent ...

Love sometimes seems akin to terror:
a man tires suddenly at nightfall,
of living enslaved to the razor at his neck.
Sometimes he wrings his hands,
expunging other lives from his existence.
Sometimes whichever door he knocks
echoes back only heartache.

A screechy phonograph is playing in Fatih ...
a song about some Friday long ago.
I stop to listen from a vacant corner,
longing to bring you an untouched sky,
but time disintegrates in my hands.
Whatever I do, wherever I go,
you are indispensable, and yet you are absent ...

Are you the blue child of June?
Ah, no one knows you―no one knows!
Your deserted eyes are like distant freighters ...

Perhaps you are boarding in Yesilköy?
Are you drenched there, shivering with the rain
that leaves you blind, beset, broken,
with wind-disheveled hair?

Whenever I think of life
seated at the wolves’ table,
shameless, yet without soiling our hands ...
Yes, whenever I think of life,
I begin with your name, defying the silence,
and your secret tides surge within me
making this voyage inevitable.
You are indispensable; how can you not know?



Fragments
by Attila Ilhan
loose English translations/interpretations by Michael R. Burch

The night is a cloudy-feathered owl,
its quills like fine-spun glass.

It gazes out the window,
perched on my right shoulder,
its wings outspread and huge.

If the encroaching darkness seems devastating at first glance,
the sovereign of everything,
its reach infinite ...

Still somewhere within a kernel of light glows secretly
creating an enlightened forest of dialectics.

In September’s waning days one thinks wanly of the arrival of fall
like a ship appearing on the horizon with untrimmed, tattered sails;
for some unfathomable reason fall is the time to consider one’s own demise―
the body smothered by yellowed leaves like a corpse rotting in a ghoulish photograph ...

Bitter words
crack like whips
snapping across prison yards ...

Then there are words like pomegranate trees in bloom,
words like the sun igniting the sea beyond mountainous horizons,
flashing like mysterious knives ...

Such words are the burning roses of an infinite imagination;
they are born and they die with the flutterings of butterflies;
we carry those words in our hearts like pregnant shotguns until the day we expire,
martyred for the words we were prepared to die for ...

What I wrote and what you understood? Curious and curiouser!



Mehmet Akif Ersoy: Modern English Translations of Turkish Poems

Mehmet Âkif Ersoy (1873-1936) was a Turkish poet, author, writer, academic, member of parliament, and the composer of the Turkish National Anthem.



Snapshot
by Mehmet Akif Ersoy
loose English translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Earth’s least trace of life cannot be erased;
even when you lie underground, it encompasses you.
So, those of you who anticipate the shadows,
how long will the darkness remember you?



Zulmü Alkislayamam
"I Can’t Applaud Tyranny"
by Mehmet Akif Ersoy
loose English translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I can't condone cruelty; I will never applaud the oppressor;
Yet I can't renounce the past for the sake of deluded newcomers.
When someone curses my ancestors, I want to strangle them,
Even if you don’t.
But while I harbor my elders,
I refuse to praise their injustices.
Above all, I will never glorify evil, by calling injustice “justice.”
From the day of my birth, I've loved freedom;
The golden tulip never deceived me.
If I am nonviolent, does that make me a docile sheep?
The blade may slice, but my neck resists!
When I see someone else's wound, I suffer a great hardship;
To end it, I'll be whipped, I'll be beaten.
I can't say, “Never mind, just forget it!” I'll mind,
I'll crush, I'll be crushed, I'll uphold justice.
I'm the foe of the oppressor, the friend of the oppressed.
What the hell do you mean, with your backwardness?



Çanakkale Sehitlerine
"For the Çanakkale Martyrs"
by Mehmet Akif Ersoy
loose English translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Was there ever anything like the Bosphorus war?―
The earth’s mightiest armies pressing Marmara,
Forcing entry between her mountain passes
To a triangle of land besieged by countless vessels.
Oh, what dishonorable assemblages!
Who are these Europeans, come as rapists?
Who, these braying hyenas, released from their reeking cages?
Why do the Old World, the New World, and all the nations of men
now storm her beaches? Is it Armageddon? Truly, the whole world rages!
Seven nations marching in unison!
Australia goose-stepping with Canada!
Different faces, languages, skin tones!
Everything so different, but the mindless bludgeons!
Some warriors Hindu, some African, some nameless, unknown!
This disgraceful invasion, baser than the Black Death!
Ah, the 20th century, so noble in its own estimation,
But all its favored ones nothing but a parade of worthless wretches!
For months now Turkish soldiers have been vomited up
Like stomachs’ retched contents regarded with shame.
If the masks had not been torn away, the faces would still be admired,
But the ***** called civilization is far from blameless.
Now the ****** demand the destruction of the doomed
And thus bring destruction down on their own heads.
Lightning severs horizons!
Earthquakes regurgitate the bodies of the dead!
Bombs’ thunderbolts explode brains,
rupture the ******* of brave soldiers.
Underground tunnels writhe like hell
Full of the bodies of burn victims.
The sky rains down death, the earth swallows the living.
A terrible blizzard heaves men violently into the air.
Heads, eyes, torsos, legs, arms, chins, fingers, hands, feet ...
Body parts rain down everywhere.
Coward hands encased in armor callously scatter
Floods of thunderbolts, torrents of fire.
Men’s chests gape open,
Beneath the high, circling vulture-like packs of the air.
Cannonballs fly as frequently as bullets
Yet the heroic army laughs at the hail.
Who needs steel fortresses? Who fears the enemy?
How can the shield of faith not prevail?
What power can make religious men bow down to their oppressors
When their stronghold is established by God?
The mountains and the rocks are the bodies of martyrs! ...
For the sake of a crescent, oh God, many suns set, undone!
Dear soldier, who fell for the sake of this land,
How great you are, your blood saves the Muslims!
Only the lions of Bedr rival your glory!
Who then can dig the grave wide enough to hold you. and your story?
If we try to consign you to history, you will not fit!
No book can contain the eras you shook!
Only eternities can encompass you! ...
Oh martyr, son of the martyr, do not ask me about the grave:
The prophet awaits you now, his arms flung wide open, to save!



Sessiz Gemi (“Silent Ship”)

by Yahya Kemal Beyatli
loose translation by Nurgül Yayman and Michael R. Burch

for the refugees

The time to weigh anchor has come;
a ship departing harbor slips quietly out into the unknown,
cruising noiselessly, its occupants already ghosts.
No flourished handkerchiefs acknowledge their departure;
the landlocked mourners stand nurturing their grief,
scanning the bleak horizon, their eyes blurring ...
Poor souls! Desperate hearts! But this is hardly the last ship departing!
There is always more pain to unload in this sorrowful life!
The hesitations of lovers and their belovèds are futile,
for they cannot know where the vanished are bound.
Many hopes must be quenched by the distant waves,
since years must pass, and no one returns from this journey.



Full Moon
by Yahya Kemal Beyatli
loose translation by Nurgül Yayman and Michael R. Burch

You are so lovely
the full moon just might
delight
in your rising,
as curious
and bright,
to vanquish night.

But what can a mortal man do,
dear,
but hope?
I’ll ponder your mysteries
and (hmmmm) try to
cope.

We both know
you have every right to say no.



The Music of the Snow
by Yahya Kemal Beyatli
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This melody of a night lasting longer than a thousand years!
This music of the snow supposed to last for thousand years!

Sorrowful as the prayers of a secluded monastery,
It rises from a choir of a hundred voices!

As the *****’s harmonies resound profoundly,
I share the sufferings of Slavic grief.

My mind drifts far from this city, this era,
To the old records of Tanburi Cemil Bey.

Now I’m suddenly overjoyed as once again I hear,
With the ears of my heart, the purest sounds of Istanbul!

Thoughts of the snow and darkness depart me;
I keep them at bay all night with my dreams!

Translator’s notes: “Slavic grief” because Beyatli wrote this poem while in Warsaw, serving as Turkey’s ambassador to Poland, in 1927. Tanburi Cemil Bey was a Turkish composer.



Thinking of you
by Nazim Hikmet
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Thinking of you is beautiful, hopeful―
like listening to the most beautiful songs
sung by the earth's most beautiful voices.
But hope is insufficient for me now;
I don't want to listen to songs.
I want to sing love into birth.



I love you
by Nazim Hikmet
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I love you―
like dipping bread into salt and eating;
like waking at night with a raging fever
and thirstily lapping up water, my mouth to the silver tap;
like unwrapping the unwieldy box the postman delivers,
unable to guess what's inside,
feeling fluttery, happy, doubtful.
I love you―
like flying over the sea the first time
as something stirs within me
while the sky softly darkens over Istanbul.
I love you―
as men thank God gratefully for life.



Sparrow
by Nazim Hikmet
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Little sparrow,
perched on the clothesline,
do you regard me with pity?
Even so, I will watch you
soar away through the white spring leaves.



The Divan of the Lover

the oldest extant Turkish poem
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

All the universe as one great sign is shown:
God revealed in his creative acts unknown.
Who sees or understands them, jinn or men?
Such works lie far beyond mere mortals’ ken.
Nor can man’s mind or reason reach that strand,
Nor mortal tongue name Him who rules that land.
Since He chose nothingness with life to vest,
who dares to trouble God with worms’ behests?
For eighteen thousand worlds, lain end to end,
Do not with Him one atom's worth transcend!



Fragment
by Prince Jem
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Behold! The torrent, dashing against the rocks, flails wildly.
The entire vast realm of Space and Being oppresses my soul idly.
Through bitterness of grief and woe the sky has rent its morning robe.
Look! See how in its eastern palace, the sun is a ****** globe!
The clouds of heaven rain bright tears on the distant mountain peaks.
Oh, hear how the deeply wounded thunder slowly, mournfully speaks!



An Ecstasy of Fumbling
by Michael R. Burch

The poets believe
everything resolves to metaphor—
a distillation,
a vapor
beyond filtration,
though perhaps not quite as volatile as before.

The poets conceive
of death in the trenches
as the price of art,
not war,
fumbling with their masque-like
dissertations
to describe the Hollywood-like gore

as something beyond belief,
abstracting concrete bunkers to Achaemenid bas-relief.



Excerpts from “Travels with Einstein”
by Michael R. Burch

for Trump

I went to Berlin to learn wisdom
from Adolph. The wild spittle flew
as he screamed at me, with great conviction:
“Please despise me! I look like a Jew!”

So I flew off to ’Nam to learn wisdom
from tall Yankees who cursed “yellow” foes.
“If we lose this small square,” they informed me,
earth’s nations will fall, dominoes!”

I then sat at Christ’s feet to learn wisdom,
but his Book, from its genesis to close,
said: “Men can enslave their own brothers!”
(I soon noticed he lacked any clothes.)

So I traveled to bright Tel Aviv
where great scholars with lofty IQs
informed me that (since I’m an Arab)
I’m unfit to lick dirt from their shoes.

At last, done with learning, I stumbled
to a well where the waters seemed sweet:
the mirage of American “justice.”
There I wept a real sea, in defeat.

Originally published by Café Dissensus



The Leveler
by Michael R. Burch

The nature of Nature
is bitter survival
from Winter’s bleak fury
till Spring’s brief revival.

The weak implore Fate;
bold men ravish, dishevel her . . .
till both are cut down
by mere ticks of the Leveler.

I believe I wrote this poem around age 20, in 1978 or thereabouts. It has since been published in The Lyric, Tucumcari Literary Review, Romantics Quarterly and The Aurorean.



The Hippopotami
by Michael R. Burch

There’s no seeing eye to eye
with the awesomely huge Hippopotami:
on the bank, you’re much taller;
going under, you’re smaller
and assuredly destined to die!



Ballade of the Bicameral Camel
by Michael R. Burch

There once was a camel who loved to ****.
Please get your lewd minds out of their slump!
He loved to give RIDES on his large, lordly lump!



The Echoless Green
by Michael R. Burch

for and after William Blake

At dawn, laughter rang
on the echoing green
as children at play
greeted the day.

At noon, smiles were seen
on the echoing green
as, children no more,
many fine vows they swore.

By twilight, their cries
had subsided to sighs.

Now night reigns supreme
on the echoless green.



Unlikely Mike
by Michael R. Burch

I married someone else’s fantasy;
she admired me despite my mutilations.

I loved her for her heart’s sake, and for mine.
I hid my face and changed its connotations.

And in the dark I danced—slight, Chaplinesque—
a metaphor myself. How could they know,

the undiscerning ones, that in the glow
of spotlights, sometimes love becomes burlesque?

Disfigured to my soul, I could not lose
or choose or name myself; I came to be

another of life’s odd dichotomies,
like Dickey’s Sheep Boy, Pan, or David Cruse:

as pale, as enigmatic. White, or black?
My color was a song, a changing track.



Spring Was Delayed
by Michael R. Burch

Winter came early:
the driving snows,
the delicate frosts
that crystallize

all we forget
or refuse to know,
all we regret
that makes us wise.

Spring was delayed:
the nubile rose,
the tentative sun,
the wind’s soft sighs,

all we omit
or refuse to show,
whatever we shield
behind guarded eyes.

Originally published by Borderless Journal



The Shijing or **** Jing (“Book of Songs” or “Book of Odes”) is the oldest Chinese poetry collection, with the poems included believed to date from around 1200 BC to 600 BC. According to tradition the poems were selected and edited by Confucius himself. Since most ancient poetry did not rhyme, these may be the world’s oldest extant rhyming poems.

Shijing Ode #4: “JIU MU”
ancient Chinese rhyming poem circa (1200 BC - 600 BC)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

In the South, beneath trees with drooping branches
thick with vines that make them shady,
we find our lovely princely lady:
May she repose in happiness!

In the South, beneath trees with drooping branches
whose clinging vines make hot days shady,
we wish love’s embrace for our lovely lady:
May she repose in happiness!

In the South, beneath trees with drooping branches
whose vines, entwining, make them shady,
we wish true love for our lovely lady:
May she repose in happiness!

Shijing Ode #6: “TAO YAO”
ancient Chinese rhyming poem circa (1200 BC - 600 BC)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The peach tree is elegant and tender;
its flowers are fragrant, and bright.
A young lady now enters her future home
and will manage it well, day and night.

The peach tree is elegant and tender;
its fruits are abundant, and sweet.
A young lady now enters her future home
and will make it welcome to everyone she greets.

The peach tree is elegant and tender;
it shelters with bough, leaf and flower.
A young lady now enters her future home
and will make it her family’s bower.

Shijing Ode #9: “HAN GUANG”
ancient Chinese rhyming poem circa (1200 BC - 600 BC)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

In the South tall trees without branches
offer men no shelter.
By the Han the girls loiter,
but it’s vain to entice them.
For the breadth of the Han
cannot be swum
and the length of the Jiang
requires more than a raft.

When cords of firewood are needed,
I would cut down tall thorns to bring them more.
Those girls on their way to their future homes?
I would feed their horses.
But the breadth of the Han
cannot be swum
and the length of the Jiang
requires more than a raft.

When cords of firewood are needed,
I would cut down tall trees to bring them more.
Those girls on their way to their future homes?
I would feed their colts.
But the breadth of the Han
cannot be swum
and the length of the Jiang
requires more than a raft.

Shijing Ode #10: “RU FEN”
ancient Chinese rhyming poem circa (1200 BC - 600 BC)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

By raised banks of the Ru,
I cut down branches in the brake.
Not seeing my lord
caused me heartache.

By raised banks of the Ru,
I cut down branches by the tide.
When I saw my lord at last,
he did not cast me aside.

The bream flashes its red tail;
the royal court’s a blazing fire.
Though it blazes afar,
still his loved ones are near ...

It was apparently believed that the bream’s tail turned red when it was in danger. Here the term “lord” does not necessarily mean the man in question was a royal himself. Chinese women of that era often called their husbands “lord.” Take, for instance, Ezra Pound’s famous loose translation “The River Merchant’s Wife.” Speaking of Pound, I borrowed the word “brake” from his translation of this poem, although I worked primarily from more accurate translations. In the final line, it may be that the wife or lover is suggesting that no matter what happens, the man in question will have a place to go, or perhaps she is urging him to return regardless. The original poem had “mother and father” rather than “family” or “loved ones,” but in those days young married couples often lived with the husband’s parents. So a suggestion to return to his parents could be a suggestion to return to his wife as well.

Shijing Ode #12: “QUE CHAO”
ancient Chinese rhyming poem circa (1200 BC - 600 BC)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The nest is the magpie's
but the dove occupies it.
A young lady’s soon heading to her future home;
a hundred carriages will attend her.

The nest is the magpie's
but the dove takes it over.
A young lady’s soon heading to her future home;
a hundred carriages will escort her.

The nest is the magpie's
but the dove possesses it.
A young lady’s soon heading to her future home;
a hundred carriages complete her procession.

Shijing Ode #26: “BO ZHOU” from “The Odes of Bei”
ancient Chinese rhyming poem circa (1200 BC - 600 BC)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This cypress-wood boat floats about,
meandering with the current.
Meanwhile, I am distraught and sleepless,
as if inflicted with a painful wound.
Not because I have no wine,
and can’t wander aimlessly about!

But my mind is not a mirror
able to echo all impressions.
Yes, I have brothers,
but they are undependable.
I meet their anger with silence.

My mind is not a stone
to be easily cast aside.
My mind is not a mat
to be conveniently rolled up.
My conduct so far has been exemplary,
with nothing to criticize.

Yet my anxious heart hesitates
because I’m hated by the herd,
inflicted with many distresses,
heaped with insults, not a few.
Silently I consider my case,
until, startled, as if from sleep, I clutch my breast.

Consider the sun and the moon:
how did the latter exceed the former?
Now sorrow clings to my heart
like an unwashed dress.
Silently I consider my options,
but lack the wings to fly away.



The Drawer of Mermaids
by Michael R. Burch

This poem is dedicated to Alina Karimova, who was born with severely deformed legs and five fingers missing. Alina loves to draw mermaids and believes her fingers will eventually grow out.

Although I am only four years old,
they say that I have an old soul.
I must have been born long, long ago,
here, where the eerie mountains glow
at night, in the Urals.

A madman named Geiger has cursed these slopes;
now, shut in at night, the emphatic ticking
fills us with dread.
(Still, my momma hopes
that I will soon walk with my new legs.)

It’s not so much legs as the fingers I miss,
drawing the mermaids under the ledges.
(Observing, Papa will kiss me
in all his distracted joy;
but why does he cry?)

And there is a boy
who whispers my name.
Then I am not lame;
for I leap, and I follow.
(G’amma brings a wiseman who says

our infirmities are ours, not God’s,
that someday a beautiful Child
will return from the stars,
and then my new fingers will grow
if only I trust Him; and so

I am preparing to meet Him, to go,
should He care to receive me.)

Keywords/Tags: mermaid, mermaids, child, children, childhood, Urals, Ural Mountains, soul, soulmate, radiation



On the Horns of a Dilemma (I)
by Michael R. Burch

Love has become preposterous
for the over-endowed rhinoceros:
when he meets the right miss
how the hell can he kiss
when his horn is so ***** it lofts her thus?

I need an artist or cartoonist to create an image of a male rhino lifting his prospective mate into the air during an abortive kiss. Any takers?



On the Horns of a Dilemma (II)
by Michael R. Burch

Love has become preposterous
for the over-endowed rhinoceros:
when he meets the right miss
how the hell can he kiss
when his horn deforms her esophagus?



On the Horns of a Dilemma (III)
by Michael R. Burch

A wino rhino said, “I know!
I have a horn I cannot blow!
And so,
ergo,
I’ll watch the lovely spigot flow!



The Horns of a Dilemma Solved, if not Solvent
by Michael R. Burch

A wine-addled rhino debated
the prospect of living unmated
due to the scorn
gals showed for his horn,
then lost it to poachers, sedated.



The Arrival of the Sea Lions
by Michael R. Burch

The sound
of hounds
resounds in the sound.



Hounds Impounded
by Michael R. Burch

The sound
of hounds
resounds
in the pound.



Prince Kiwi the Great
by Michael R. Burch

Kiwi’s
a ***-wee
but incredibly bright:
he sleeps half the day,
pretending it’s night!

Prince Kiwi
commands us
with his regal air:
“Come, humans, and serve me,
or I’ll yank your hair!”

Kiwi
cries “Kree! Kree!”
when he wants to be fed ...
suns, preens, flutters, showers,
then it’s off to bed.

Kiwi’s
a ***-wee
but incredibly bright:
he sleeps half the day,
pretending it’s night!

Kiwi is our family’s green-cheeked parakeet. Parakeets need to sleep around 12 hours per day, hence the pun on “bright” and “half the day.”



Ah! Sunflower
by Michael R. Burch

after William Blake

O little yellow flower
like a star ...
how beautiful,
how wonderful
we are!

Published as the collection "When Pigs Fly"
Mateuš Conrad Apr 2016
you're drinking, and then you can't control
the reaction upon entering the tetragrammaton...
one h is for hushed up laughter, for sighs (ah),
and then the alter deja vu
is a cocktail of:
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha,
yeah, so many, so you can look at it rather than
say it... it's a sunny day, go out and play
or something... leave me with the anchor of ****
humanity dragging us down, or simply basing us
in the underwater fudge of mud to a standstill...
it's sunny, go out and play, ride a bicycle or something...
you know, living 20 odd years in an english society
i never had an english girlfriend, i'm told she's a real
firecracker fortune-cookie... my hands are cold,
i swear by the oath of the old Bailey i never touched
her thighs... scouts' honour, cross my fingers
and wear woman's underwear with a bowler hat
to match my serious demeanour...
yep, an Abbey Road's standstill... a fifth beetle
chatting cheeky chat chat of a chirp...
gurgles of fizz in carbonated wine known as champagne,
well that's me... or as the roadrunner said to
speedy Gonzales... hark a sayonara when changing
the gears to a 100m sprint world record.
the Mayan disease? ah right... excess spontaneous
laughter, unstoppable like a tide;
got chatting to a ms. khan... Genghis' great great...
great great great great great... great great granddaughter...
a doctor from pakistan... nice english accent
gets you all the pleasantries so everything can
go to hell... the sleeping pills prescription is waiting...
now the sick-note... so i don't crash a plane
into the Swiss elevations by "accident"
while sitting on an arm-chair of nails while everyone
else is farting into cushions.
honest to god, the tetragrammaton is like a brick
wall for vowels, you hit the ball against the four
walls, and the vowels are either ****** up
or they extract the consonant stability of the four letters,
and your safest bet to express them is
to laugh;
well, i do call it a Mayan disease... because
my stomach is aching from building a six-pack with
the giggles.
Sydney Victoria Dec 2012
I Was Hoping Today It Would Be Fine,
That The Mayan Prophesy Was Divine,
That We Would Be Saved By A Glowing Light,
I Was Stirring  In My Blankets All Night,
For Curiosity Bubbled Inside,
To Bathe The Spirit In Which I Confide,
Yet The Road To Redemption Is Still Coarse,
Screaming For Wanted Change; My Voice Is Hoarse,
We Still Hold The Bottle To Our Stained Lips,
Holding On To Hope But Losing My Grip,
Today I Wish Humanity Is Healed,
But The Atmosphere Is Starting To Peal,
Why Should I Hate When All I Feel Is Love,
Yet All The Owls Are Killing My Doves
Again Trying Iambic Pintameter! I'm Deathly Afraid Of Owls So That Explains The Last Line
Illumine me Mayan moon
As your sisters the sparkly stars
Fall like flares in the sky afar
While I lay on the beach in Tulum

I bathe in your milky glow
Soaking softly straight into my marrow
Entranced by the things I might borrow
From the light as your whiteness grows

Leather capes flitter over my head
The bats starving swarm from their tomb
Some seaweed and sand for a bed
I give you my heart thorns to prune

Then I puzzle a piece of your birth
In the Rubik's cube universe
With my will I can pull you to Earth
And our blanket of black is dispersed

Illumine me Mayan moon
Like Zirconia facets that twinkle
By allowing our essence to mingle
And then crumble me all into ruin

Written by Sara Fielder © Dec 2013
Andy Cave Dec 2012
Well the twenty first has finally arrived
yet I'm still writing, very much alive.
The mayan's were wrong
doomsday is not here
so enjoy your day
and have an ice cold
beer.
Wuji Seshat Oct 2014
I

The successive suns of summers
swim in me like a balcony of heat
I glow with the sol of sols

the pine cone of lava that
makes my cheeks full, white
the sun-drop of diamonds
have petrified in my heart
and I am creation rushing down

ii

On all that is below, these stars
know me and I among them
we are like water in water

ocean creatures of great adventure
vertigoes of light, layers of softness
suns of paradise, legends of golden noons
revolutions of princely sunspots
cliff of mortality, planets revolving

iii

Around a center, galaxies revolving
around a black-hole that was once
a great sun, time has pink candle-like veins

but she knows the sun, the sparkling rocks
the matter and energy of our destinies
caught up in a seabed of lights
the successive suns of summers
swim in me like an ode to sun-religions

iv

but I am here, drinking sun-wine
in the surreal view of full eyes
with a body of silver for the kaleidoscope

and a naked face dismantled by another eclipse
another wonder, another design of day.
K Mae Dec 2012
Mayans saw us
Not
beyond this point.

We map our extended calendar
with dreams expanding.

Soaring beyond mind
All that we are
Changing here

Creation
until now
Unimagined.
Joel A Doetsch Jan 2012
What would I do for you?  There's lots of things, actually


I would spontaneously start speaking Hungarian for you...but it probably would sound like nonsense

and some Hungarian dude

   Would be all like "Haver, nem beszél magyarul"

        I would shrug, because
        
              I don't know Hungarian...

But I'd still do it for you, if you wanted me to.



I would fly us to ancient Mayan burial grounds, where we could

   Learn all about a lost culture

           We would run into a cursed
                
                   Mayan Chief, but he'd actually be pretty cool
          
              He would teach us how to do a rain dance,

         Every once in awhile he'd look at you and say "kíichpan"
  
   and I'd be like..."Dude, back off..."

                       He's like 2000 years old...
                                
                         ­    He's way too old for you.



I would carve you an Ice Sculpture in your likeness

        Taking care to make sure that every detail was perfect and reflected
          
            Your beauty
              
               In every possible way.

     I'm not too good at Ice Sculpting, though, so it might just end up looking
              
            Like an oddly-shaped block of ice.


      Sorry...

            I hope you would like it anyway



For you, I would count to infinity

     Which might not sound like a feat, at first

   But then I would count back to zero

  I'm pretty sure no one's done that before....

     I won't be able to do it all in one day

So it might take awhile...

                  Hope you don't mind waiting for me




    I would write poetry every day for you


            Because I know that I would never run out of things
  
       To write about







....Well, maybe every 'other' day.
"Haver, nem beszél magyarul" means "Dude, you can't speak Hungarian" in Hungarian.  For some reason, though, when you put it through a translator, it will tell you that it means "You cannot speak English".  This is somewhat offputting.  "kíichpan" means "pretty" or "beautiful" in Mayan.
HRTsOnFyR Aug 2015
it's 3:23 in the morning
and I'm awake
because my great great grandchildren
won't let me sleep
my great great grandchildren
ask me in dreams
what did you do while the planet was plundered?
what did you do when the earth was unraveling?

surely you did something
when the seasons started failing?

as the mammals, reptiles, birds were all dying?

did you fill the streets with protest
when democracy was stolen?

what did you do
once
you
knew?

I'm riding home on the Colma train
I've got the voice of the milky way in my dreams

I have teams of scientists
feeding me data daily
and pleading I immediately
turn it into poetry

I want just this consciousness reached
by people in range of secret frequencies
contained in my speech

I am the desirous earth
equidistant to the underworld
and the flesh of the stars

I am everything already lost

the moment the universe turns transparent
and all the light shoots through the cosmos

I use words to instigate silence

I'm a hieroglyphic stairway
in a buried Mayan city
suddenly exposed by a hurricane

a satellite circling earth
finding dinosaur bones
in the Gobi desert
I am telescopes that see back in time

I am the precession of the equinoxes,
the magnetism of the spiraling sea

I'm riding home on the Colma train
with the voice of the milky way in my dreams

I am myths where violets blossom from blood
like dying and rising gods

I'm the boundary of time
soul encountering soul
and tongues of fire

it's 3:23 in the morning
and I can't sleep
because my great great grandchildren
ask me in dreams
what did you do while the earth was unraveling?

I want just this consciousness reached
by people in range of secret frequencies
contained in my speech


©2003
Lucky Queue Dec 2012
It's a bit funny
But on doomsday I found
No fear or tears shed by me
Somehow on the day of doom
I only found love and happiness
My best friend wasn't a loss
When he lost that title
In fact it was a gain,
And he exchanged for a new one
Fingers intertwining
Sitting close and talking
My incessantly icy fingers
Warmed by your touch
My smiles always flow easier
And more readily around you
I either talk too much or too little
But with you it seems fine
I wouldn't change much about
My doomsday
It was pretty **** near perfect
On my doomsday I found hope
What did you find?
For Gary
Robyn Dec 2012
You're welcome, Earth.
Tim Knight Dec 2012
It’s a 5 day world out there,
followed by a 2 day scare
of baths and walks
and holiday forecast talks.

Planning goodbyes before you’ve left and gone
whilst sitting still on Subway platform one,
with stationary thoughts
like the stationary train,
wiped down and dried
by the city state rain.

It’s a 5 day world out there,
followed by a 2 day scare,
together another
7 day affair.
RAJ NANDY Nov 2014
Friends, in the Introductory portion we have seen how Herodotus
gave birth to the subject of 'History'. Now I conclude this true story
by quoting a poem by the English poet Edgar O' Shaughnessy, which
is very appropriate for my Story! Please take your time to read, there is no hurry! Thanks, -Raj Nandy.

        HISTORIANS  AFTER  HERODOTUS
Herodotus became the trail blazer with his narration
of History,
Inspiring several Greek and Roman chroniclers as  
we subsequently get to see!
There was Thucydides, Livy, Sallust, Xenophon, and
Polybius,
Not forgetting chroniclers like Julius Caesar, Tacitus,
and the oft quoted Plutarch!
The Roman scholar Cicero had called Herodotus the
‘Father of History’;
But later the Greek historian Plutarch criticized him
for his many hearsay inaccuracies!
Even though Herodotus had cautioned his readers in
his Historical narrations, -
About those hearsay accounts and doubtful portions!
Greek historian Thucydides, who was a junior and a
contemporary of Herodotus,
For his accurate historical rendering of ‘The
Peloponnesian War’ between Athens and Sparta, -
Was praised by later scholars very much!

CYCLIC AND LINEAR PATTERNS OF HISTORY:
Herodotus believed in Nemesis and a repetitive
pattern of History.
While Thucydides with his strict investigation drew
a line between myth and reality!
Thucydides viewed history as a political struggle
based on the nature of man;
And felt that since human nature does not change
often, -
The past events would reoccur once again !
The Greeks believed in this cyclic notion of History,
Also developed a prose style to narrate their stories!
Unlike the Greeks, Roman History did not begin in an
oral Homeric tradition,
But they had a ready-made Greek model for their
historical narrations!
Roman historiography began after the Second Punic
War against Hannibal of Carthage,
When Quintus Flavius Pictor wrote Rome’s History
in Greek, instead of Latin!     (around 200BC)
Cato the Elder, was the first to write in Latin Rome’s
History,
While the Roman Livy born in Padua in 59 BC, was
praised for introducing a ‘milky richness’ of style  
for narrating these true stories !
From Julius Caesar’s accounts we learn about the
Gallic Wars and events of those ancient days;
But he Romans had used History for propaganda
and self-praise !
Also to make the conquered world to look up to them
with wonder and admiration;
For the Romans were creating History with their
conquests in a steady progression!

CYCLIC VIEW OF TIME AND HISTORY
Perhaps the cyclic view of Time has influenced the
cyclic concept of History to a great extent,
Since this cyclic view was held by many of those
Ancients !
Ancient doctrine of 'eternal return' like the seasons
of Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring, existed
in old Egypt, and the Hindu religion;
Also with the Greek Pythagoreans and Stoic
conceptions;
As well as in the Mayans and the Aztec Civilizations!
In the East, cyclic theory of History as succession of
dynastic rule developed in China,
While the Vedic Hindus developed their theory of
Cycles of Yugas!    (epoch or era)
Writing of Indian History had commenced with
the Colonial British initially,
Who had criticized India for its lack of a sense of
History and Historiography!
The ancient Hindus were more concerned with
religious philosophy, and the essence of existence,
Rather than getting absorbed with historical details!
The Hindus divide cosmic time into cyclic eras of
Satya, Tretra, Dwapara, and Kali Yugas;
With each era covering many thousands of our
human eras!
These Yugas or Cyclic segments of time is said to
repeat itself in a cyclic motion, -
Which had perhaps mystified their early views
of a clear Historical perception.
However, later Indian historians have corrected
the earlier British interpretations, -
By dividing Indian History into Ancient, Medieval
and Modern Periods,
Replacing the earlier Hindu, Muslim, and British
Periods as Colonial segregation!
And also by correcting the British Aryan Invasion
Theory as Aryan Migration;
Based on more accurate historical research and
better perception!

CHRISTIAN AND LATER VIEWS OF HISTORY:
St. Augustine during the 4th century AD, systematized
the Christian view of History, -
As a struggle between the City of God and the City
of Man, where the City of God gains victory, -
Establishing peace and prosperity!
The Christian view is therefore Linear with a
positive beginning and an end;
A providential view from the Creation of Adam
till the Day of Last Judgment!

THE RENAISSANCE: (14TH - 17TH CENTURIES):
During this period the theological view gradually
begun to fade, giving rise to the Cyclic concept of
History,
As illustrated by the decline and fall of the mighty
Roman Empire, immortalized by Edward Gibbons
in his narrated story!
This cyclic view was also maintained by Oswald
Spengler, Nikolai Danilevsky, and Paul Kennedy,
during the 19th and the 20th Centuries.

AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT : THE 18TH CENTURY
This period advocated the use of reason to obtain
objective truth, when human beings made all the
difference freed from superstition and bigotry;
Which led to favoring a Linear and a progressive
view of History.
Voltaire symbolizing the spirit of this age had
supported human wit and education, -
Since only enlightened people could give History
a positive direction !
For Karl Marx Feudalism was followed by Capitalism,
and Capitalism by Communism.
History of existing Society as the History of Class
Struggle - was Karl Marx’s new concept!
For social material forces drove History, and this
‘historical materialism’ as a revolutionary view, -
many later Scholars did accept!

SOME MODERN CONCEPTS ABOUT HISTORY
Now I share the views of three of our renowned
Historians; the German Oswald Spengler, the
British Arnold Toynbee, and the American
Carroll Quigley,
To provide you with three different concepts
of History.
Oswald Spengler (1880-1936):
Spengler’s reputation rests on his work titled
‘Decline of the West’, considered as a major
contribution to social theory;
Where he rejects the ‘Linear’ view in favor of
definite, observable, and unrelated cycles of
History!
Rejecting the Eurocentric view of History and its
Linear division into ‘Ancient-Medieval-Modern’
Eras,
Spengler recognizes eight ‘high cultures’ which
evolve as organism, following the cycles of
growth, development, and decline;
And his views astonished the Western mind!
These high cultures were the Babylonian,
Egyptian, Chinese, Indian, Mexican ( Mayan&
Aztec), Classical (Greece& Rome), Arabian,
and Western or Euro-American!
Cultures have a life span of about a thousand
years each,
So the Western Civilization too shall decline one
day, - Spengler did teach!

Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975):
Toynbee’s 12 volumes on ‘A Study of History’
covers a wider spectrum of 23 Civilizations,
Where he rejects Spengler’s cynical theory of
growth and decline of Western Nations!
“Civilization is a movement and not a condition,
a voyage not a harbor”, Arnold said;
Like human beings Civilizations were free to chart
their own course with the capacity to ‘consciously’
choose its destiny, he had felt!
Arnold moves on to formulate his Theory of
‘Challenge and Response’, since by responding to
such challenges Civilizations could move on !
These challenges could be social or environmental
he had said;
The Greeks responded to their growing population
by taking to the seas and maritime trade,
And also prospered as their overseas colonies had
begun to spread!
Toynbee’s Civilization start to decay when they lose
their moral fiber,
He perhaps over emphasized the religious and
cultural aspects, ignoring those economic factors!
But his views were certainly more popular than
the cynical Spengler!

Carroll Quigley (1910-1977):
Quigley’s scientific trained mind could not accept
either of the above views,
So he created a synthesis of Spengler and Toynbee,
while paying History its dues!
Quigley laid down seven stages for the evolution
of Civilization;
Commencing with Mixture, Gestation, Expansion,
Conflict, Universal Empire, Decay, and Invasion!
His Civilizations are neither groups nor individuals,
But each is a system which share some common
traits.
In Quigley’s model each system come into being
adapted to their environment;
But since environment always changes, Quigley
states with some relish, -
Systems which cannot adapt themselves, must
necessarily perish!

WE ARE ALL LIVING PARTICIPANTS IN THE
  LONG UNFOLDING HUMAN STORY!
“Know Thy Self” said Socrates, and the Delphic
Oracle had pronounced that he was wisest of
the Greeks!
To know ourselves truly we must know about
our past,
For this evolutionary process shall continue as
long as the Human species last!
Today we remain as a living monument to the
past,
We continue to make History as long as humans
on this planet shall last!
Our planet earth is around 4.5 billion years old;
While the first ****-erectus emerged around
two million years hence - we are told!
By walking ***** the two hands became free to
develop,
With flexible fingers and the rotating thumb;
Which was crucial for shaping the destiny of
the Human species on earth!
Our Civilization proper dates back to about
five thousand BC,
Thus an emerging pattern we can easily see!
With the development of human consciousness
we have learned to delve inwards, -
To discovered within a vast macro world!
Now, I would love to conclude this narration by
quoting from the English poet Arthur William
Edgar O’Shaughnessy’s book ‘Music and
Moonlight’;       (1874)
Do try to follow the philosophical content relevant
to the Cyclic History of Mankind!

“We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-brakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World losers and world forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams;
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties,
We build up the world’s great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire’s glory.
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And there with a new song’s measure
Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And overthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world’s worth;
For Each Age Is a Dream That’s Dying,
Or One That Is Coming To Birth.”

Thanks my readers and poet friends,
Sincerely hope you will now appreciate
History better, and love its contents!
**ALL COPYRIGHTS ARE WITH THE AUTHOR
RAJ NANDY OF NEW DELHI
Friends, those who have read part one will find the concluding portion in this narration of mine, which I tried my best to simplify! Mentioned the two basic views of History, the Linear & the Cyclic views in my narrated Story! Hope you liked the poem quoted at the end by me ! Thanks, -Raj
Could there be any truth in the prophecies
that the Mayans had written?
Over five thousand years ago about 2012
foretelling a spiritual awakening!
And the possibility of the end of mankind
is it fiction that's outlined?

Prophecies written have come and long gone
scholars say they've happened.
Were these disasters predicted as it was told
or how they were interpreted?
Whether vague and their meanings calculated
their accuracy debated!

Many are sceptical of those who say they foresee
from past times to present.
Though a lot of predictions of the natural type
what of mankind's folly?
If there's a way that the future can be seen
to know seems obscene!

Usually nothing can be done to prevent it
causing fear and uncertainty.
Prophecies of the past make no difference
those of the future no comfort!
Whether the Mayans is true it's a short wait
if not next year let's have a debate!

The Foureyd Poet.
The Mayans prophecies are suppose to occur on the 21 December 2012. Not long to wait to see if they come true! The Foureyed Poet.
Micheal Wolf Feb 2013
Phoenician to  Aramaic 950 BC the start of modern writting for others to see
Then Hebrew to  Moabite then Phrygian as well around 800 BC
The written word was now afoot, oh Ammonite as well

Then a split as often comes between one arab and another
Old North Arabian and Old South Arabian argue with each other
So moving west Etruscan came at 700 BC
Then Umbrian and North Picene you heard of them today?

As Lepontic and Tartessian tried to talk to others
Now we start to get a grip and influence the modern
From Lydian to Carian,  Thracian to Venetic
All around the 6th century BC people started jotting

Old Persian came and went Latins still around
Then South Picene and Messapian to Gaulish
Language now ruled the world and all the ways we wrote it

Mixe–Zoque some say isnt really true
But Oscan and Iberian followed on through
So Meroitic,  Faliscan at 300 BC came next
Then Volscian and Middle Indo-Aryan or Prakrit the Ashoka calls it
Then one thats still around Tamil you might know it

Christianity was on its way as Galatian was used
Pahlavi and Celtiberian al cald pre antiquity
Lets move on till after Christ and language moves full on

Bactrian and Proto-Norse in northen europe common
Cham and Mayan, Gothic and Ge'ez and accepted Arabic
Christs been dead 300 yrs and language starts to flourish

Primitive Irish now exists and an odd one called Ekoi
Try to remember though its still only the 4th century

Georgian now is used in a  church in Bethlehem
A bible is written  in Armenian
Kannada in Halmidi
West Germanic to that becomes  Old High German
English now for the first time starts to rear its head

Old English to Korean  Tocharian to  Old Irish
In parts of southern England they even speak Cornish  
Centuries before Pol *** there is now Cambodian
Others speaking Udi, Telugu and Tibetan
Now language is getting modern

Old Malay in the far east to Welsh in my back yard
It wasnt long before the world was writting many forms
Mandarin and English now are common place
A miriad of people and language in their states

So venture forth to foreign lands and visit as a guest
Take a pen and paper to help you on your quest
If you can cross your legs or draw a beer you really cant go wrong
Remember you dont speak their tongue its you not them thats dumb!!!
Rustle McBride May 2016
I am Guatemala
I am its mountains and its shore
I am its black sand beaches. I am its artists and its poor

I am the mist from its volcanoes
I am its limestone richly carved
I am the Mayan, and the Latin. I am the hungry and the starved

I am its folklore and its future
I am its markets and its clothes
I am the abandoned and forgotten. I am its children no one knows

I am its colorful conventions
I am its jungles and its fare
I am its colonial traditions. I am the pilas in the square

I am Guatemala
I am its living and its dead
One is always Guatemala, no matter how far we are spread
my heritage
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2021
bypassing the 502 error: title - whiplash...
body... cream...

original intent:

they're doing road works on a stretch of road
where the brothel sits:
house of the rising sun or whatever you want
to call it... i'm not ready for the thrist:
for the plunge that will extend into half a decade's
worth of not *******...
i'll give it a week or so... before i take the plunge:
proper... mind you... i've already found
the perfect formula for drinking...
the cheapest bottle of australian wine...
at 14%... mixed into the glorious Mayan drink
of the gods' that's kalimotxo...
and if i'm still not "feeling it": i'll top myself
off with some slender-man's whiskey glug-glug...
it worked so well for 4 years without
touching a woman's body...
what the hell prompted me?
to wake up from this slumber?
oh... right... i own two maine **** cats
and when i was grooming the female...
she stuck up her brunt right into my hands...
it felt like: trans-species ******* for a while...
a cog in my brain went loose...
for days i cycled in the night into central London
looking at the flesh market:
of the free peoples of the western world...
what prompted me...
i was grooming my maine **** cat and she
was tempting me with a: ******* hairy apple...
no... wrong... just plain wrong...
perhaps i swing around beard envy & ha...
***** envy (well... imagine a rabbit ******* an elephant...
big **** genre of: and how deep is that...
ahem... hole? standard kama sutra...
not one size fits all)
but when your cat starts to imitate getting it...
**** me... the night... cycling... sweating it off...
until you have to touch the antonym...
but suppose you come across a timid girl
and you get a case of erectile dysfunction...
while you end up caressing her: timidly kissing
her because she's timid...
pointing at her eyebrows... nose... eyes...
ears... pimples... freckles and moles...
the mirror... fingers... elbow... knees...
and asking her to say the Romanian words for them...
sure... a momentary lapse in sanity:
the reason(s) was already self-evident...
take a woman like Ava Lauren...
now... my god... by god... that's a ****-machine...
an *** like a Lamborghini and a body
like a leather armchair...
and she stuck through it... a mandible body
of the extension of the jaw...
some people are born to be boxers...
she was built to be ****** in the confines of
orthodoxy...
dead pornstars though... i.e. Shyla Stylez...
it's really a joke if i ask: would it be necrophilia
if i'm doing it to images of a dead pornstar?
"doing it": best on the toilet...
no... no scented candles... no eager kangaroo *****
no webcam... no thrill...
3 birds:  1 stone: on throne of thrones...
no better way and all the best excuses to later
jump under the shower and get on with the dead...
sorry.. day...
4 years i did... grooming a cat awoke in my a thirst
i thought i had long forgotten...
- kinks: mostly foreplay...
       kissing after all that 2nd base foreplay
while she's on top of you veiling you with her
Turkic raven hair...
immediately after the act: all that virility...
now... dilution...
            kinks: i still tend to rub my hands against
a brick wall before i enter their abode...
i rub my hands against bricks
to demand more from when i'm touching
flesh... nothing can come close when standing
at the altar of a woman's naked body
in dim lighting... with at least 2 mirrors on the wall...
reassurances of cleanliness are highly
welcome... even though by a tonne load of surprises
she would perform ******* with the rubber
commoner of promiscuity...
- kinks: any body attired in latex...
  that's the height: ms. gimp...
                          well... there's that or me endowed
with a cockerel sized endowment about
to **** a maine **** cat during grooming...
as "sick" as finding out you've been doing
the nos. 1, 2 & 3 on the throne of thrones
to a dead pornstar like Shyla Stylez...
in third person: lover-boy all smooches
and octopus tentacles reading the geography
like he might pick up the braille of all the grooves
and hinges...
interruption: i'm no pornographer!
although there's this one allusion:
    Venus in Furs... ol' Leo von Sacher-Masoch...
on the tip of my tongue:
at the tip of my fingers...
to turn stone in skin...
   - i remember being in a strip-club once...
i had to fly to Athens for that one...
i walked into a market sq. and met up with
some random... Greeks... Algerians...
Medi- olive skinned folk...
complete strangers... we drifted around the nightclubs
and watched the girls coming out...
how's that scale of nought through to ten?
below average... and highly demanding...
the four of us decided: **** it...
we climbed into a car and drove to the outskirts
of Athens to a strip-club...
unlike a dog that's chasing cars
i couldn't just... look... a few drinks down
and still eyeing the prize
i had two women around my arms
and my face buried in one's *****:
while some demon-she look on from
the other side of the platform of lost clothing...
another put a green peg on the table
informing me i could have more...
by then i was out of debit... my card was
returned... a bouncer escorted me to the nearest
cash machine in a hotel... started talking
to the receptionist while i was pretending to
withdraw money i didn't have...
right there and then i became a child:
******* my clothes... excitement, fear... both...
dunno... drunks have this build in GPS...
Athens... a city i only just arrived in...
blind drunk mad with love...
i managed to find my way back to the hostel...
**** the guiding beacons into my dreams...
eh... a ******* is never going to be a brothel...

i don't like the argument of:
look... but don't touch... touch... but don't taste...
taste but don't... what comes after taste?
if ever i catch myself watching pornogrpahy
it has to be classic Italian flicks...
on silent...
i can never be fully absorbed:
i'll wait for a real experience to come
with the flood of the senses...
i can't give myself to simulation with all
the sense...
after all... i was probably one of the last
boys who bought a ***** mag in a shop
with... actual expedience of trade...
it was still in the open...
i might have died of shame but at least
i didn't hide it...

                  no shame in Belgium though...
we were visiting world war I graveyards
and the trenches... but at the same time
we were looking for the best brothel in Ypres
while i was the only boy buying a ***** mag...
all ****... shaved... unshaved...
no *******: because a man's imagination
was still fertile... you had a woman's body
impose itself on your psyche like
an x-ray... and you had all that imagination
to subsequently have to swallow...
third party ***** weren't involved:
you never felt like a cul de sac ******...
oddly enough... limp **** hey presto:
can't perform when asked...

ooh... ol' Turkic raven hair:
all her talents in the foreplay...
and all the smooching during *******...
thank god i could never marry...
father children...

4 years it has taken me to wake up to this...
"repressed" reality...
repressed or... even the Teutonic Order
had a brothel in their capital-citadel of Malbork...
Marienburg...
for the love of women who also love:
cleanliness... and the aesthetics of arousal...
for all that's love and all that's not love...
for all that beside love: intimacy without question:
but all the answers...
for two bodies imitating slugs or serpents
where no words are exchanged or given
toward *******: autonomous bodies reaching
for braille with eyes wide open...

- the road to the brothel was closed...
the guys doing the road works cut it off...
not tonight... tonight i'm going to bemoan how:
well... when you start writing...
don't expect to have the same sort of privacy rules
implicit of... whatever the hell you do besides...
why wouldn't a plumber raise these words
from the domain of thought that's probably
his most cherished freedom?
people can still pretend to hide in anonymity
on the internet...
but... why would you... write bogus comments
and troll...
before words become carbon on paper: pencil...
the circus of thinking ought to be enough...
unless: like me... you're going at it like a bull...
i don't think i can have "privacy" anymore...
not that that bothers me...
i'll wear a mask when i put my face on...
but literacy so squandered for the upper-hand
in slighting someone anonymously...

                    ha!           someone would have
written a confession: Anne Sexton brush-up on:
what's important... Anne Sexton... now there was
a ***** that if she was willing could make you
dream all day and night...

why are so many pornstars so... ******* attractive
that you'd wish to push them
into bird-cages with the parrots
or adorn them with white linen niqabs?
as much as i want:
my words are not sacrosanct:
but they're also no Mammon slot-machine
golden-goose mine: perhaps when i'm dead:
something might trickle down into the coffers...
but i doubt that...
words never become shapes or colours
or therefore paintings...
words burn... words and all that becomes
collateral as they dig and drown into
the unconscious: of course... no motive...
just a motif...
    
brother Balaam: fellow diviner of the god
of the Hebrews...
brother Balaam... give me the strength of purpose
to chase more shadows: more more more!
speak to me from under the depths
of the sea of death...
they have left these northern lands...
and as they now stand: proud in their multitude:
and still persist in their clinging to the diaspora:
for i will not glutton myself over
the accomplishments of but one Hebrew:
when i can glorify their deity!

literacy has been squandered:
best strip these people of their "knowledge"
of letters: letter by letter:
let them return to smearing **** on cavern ceilings!
hostile barbarians: paradoxically:
the Vikings were renowned in their celebration
of "effeminate" males: poets...
i could warn a dog or two to bark as i thus:
howl...
               little creatures of dispute...
little belittling lords of shovel ****!
hey! prompt! all verb no noun...
something these leeches might understand... "might"...

all this lubricated tongue has made me think
of something else that happened today...
beside me revisiting the cinema of memory...
grandfather and i: the hyenas of the graveyard:
although even he pronounced that
he was unable to laugh: i guess i started to laugh
for the both of us... eagerly, proper:
with the vowel catcher of the first
arm of the tetragrammaton: HA HA...
while the "other" vowel catcher would
smother the vowels in sighs: AH AH!
exasperated... almost...

       call it PR or whatever you want to call it:
i'd rather stack shelves in a supermarket
than work at a call-centre...
the deceit and the Peter Pan *******
i said: it's not the Shetland Islands...
it's the South East...
i was rummaging on an internet speed
of... 0.1Mbps (megabytes per second)
for a while... i reached a zenith of 0.6 - 0.8(Mbps)...

for a year... if not longer...
and there she was: she came...
this bleached-blonde pchła of a... she did put on just
enough mascara...
obviously taken...
i don't think *** entered my thoughts
when... she... didn't... parade her keychain
that involved a picture of her and her child...
pchła: an endearing term for a girl
of timid build... a body my shadow at noon
could break like a walnut...
i called her an engineer...
she wasn't going to construct a bridge...
she was going to fiddle with my router...
my internet connection...
a woman who had desire for fiddling with:
"dead" things: shadows...
arteries... veins... a concept of a heartbeat...

i just admired her hair...
obviously not natural... bleached...
     she was a body occupying a space...
a welcome intrusion nonetheless...
i sort of enjoyed the silence i surrounded her with...
"sort of": i clearly did...
best be on your way...
a female engineer...
well... from 0.1Mbps... coming up for air
now standing at... 5.6Mbps...
she asked: how did "we" manage?
we just watched a lot of the show live...
but... there were more important things to mind...

the bothersome truth is that:
you can't exactly dig into: pristine good...
this girl who became a "cable guy" engineer...
engineer: "engineer": "tech. support":
i'm not trying to demean her purpose:
i'm the one doodling words on a makeshift
canvas...
i'm no painter or mind having
enough nepotistic authority of: father painter
so i become a fashion designer... etc.

i pin-pointed the proper term though: no?
nepotism?
you just can't objectify certain women...
both of us beguiled having internet providers:
so... shouldn't they penalize the companies
that are all software and bar users?
will the software providers turn off my...
electricity?
the PR Peter Pan stunts... as i told her:
you being the engineer and me being the customer...
we can talk... face to face...
but over the phone?
put me in a confessional booth
with a woman from Mecca and her... double take
on what's to be seen: what's to be heard...
what's to be ******... what's not to be seen / heard...
eaten...

an eager *****: if a ***** is going to give...
but if... she's... this occupied presence...
it's impossible to penetrate her with words...
all i have is:
bleached blonde hair...
heavy mascara... something insinuating combating
nervousness: i am what i am: sorting out cables:
i reassured her: the aesthetics will be dealt with...
a drowning man will cling to a razor's edge to save
himself...
why do i feel so hardly alone
around people who invest so much
in... having children?
it's not like i'm expecting 3rd party sources
to come and salvage me: when completely decrepit...

a woman completely devoid of any ****** advances:
perhaps performing the role of a dentist:
a surgeon: it's already exploited by me
when it comes to: seeing her most ******
parts: her hands... at the grace of a supermarket cashier...
let her be... she's already averting her eyes:
i might insinuate a receding question:
there's the moon... the forest...
come autumn...
maybe i'm focusing on exaggerating myself...
i am: exaggerating myself...

toward a focus of timidity...
as best i can...
    i am a dead end joy-**** at best...
an underperformer at least...
              my own very self worn down
skipping barefoot in memory
right now probably better adorned by a straightjacket...
but who's fooling who...
the readied ***** or this girl working out
cables?

i can respect this one without a need
to pressurise her with a... ******* niqab...
until she might bloat over:
over-suckled... fat... nothing more than
a speed machine for *****-count...
something that doesn't deserve limbs:
is all torso and belongs
to the cult of the bone tomahawk cannibals...

that one motto cited by all Arabs
and pseudo-Arabs: there no water in the desert...
spoken in dearest of the dear that's England:
this green and pleasant land...
where's the ******* desert?!
shovel! both a verb and a noun...
how rare.... perhaps not so much...
        proverbs from the Middle East...
******* to the Middle East and let me
riddle my own: better a sparrow in your
hand than a dove on your roof...
how's that?

better joy in the immediacy of your own:
than peace among your closely associated.
******* H'arab...
you're no Jew... esp. when sitting
on Dino-Lamborghini juice...

castles in the sky: so the psychiatrists says...
or cities built on sand...
every Pakistani / Bangladeshi knows this
proverb...
the times of appeasing the "forever" sober
Arab and his sober-Arab libido...
i'll wait... are now... like i once said:
the horrible has already ah-happened...

and if it hasn't: then i'm still... pretty much
taking a proper role in being the only watchman
on a sly of a kipper...
n'est ce pas?

irritation culminates with:
when you make your own wine...
but don't have the filter equipment...
all that excess "fibre" probably gets your more
drunk than expected...

i haven't had enough to my liking to
somehow dissolve the pledge
to keep at least 72 ****** on a leash...
all that's eternity: given all that's
available and will be:
within the confines of un-chartered space...
send me a postcard from the eye of Jupiter...
i'm more than asking:
imploring: i'm... sort of making:
chain you to me: demands...

tomorrow's a sober head:
tonight... i'll be drunk with both wine
of my own making and...
the memory of a naked body of a woman...
exactly: if she's an engineer: "engineer"
fiddling with my phone socket...
she has a photograph of her and her child
on her keychain...
i wouldn't even dream of...
usurping her... status...

            looking at her felt like eating...
oats... something wholesome...
i met up with you... herr grey...
i did't find any child-fiddling bits...
what... were... you... hiding?!
i will laugh: if you tell me: a heart...
melt my stony enclave...
burn the whole world while you're at it!
there was never going to be any sacrifice
in the crucifix pose:
only purpose for focus: for... submission...
as someone devoid of wanting to continue....
he didn't die for "our" sins...
he died in order to be worshipped...
**** him... let him hang on... father of proselytes...

- point of closure...
for now... i never rose high enough
to suddenly turn cold-turkey: goosebumps
on the *******... still... dead...
i wasn't born into a Buddhist harem...
therefore i sometimes relapse into
the gimmick of the tease...
periodically... every half a decade....
i drink unfiltered self-made wine
and talk about hardly the ******
"exploits":
i come across magnets equivalent to
timid schoolgirls...

some supposed ****** revolution happned:
lob-sided...
given how the girls took the strap-on off
and shoved the **** down
the ******* brains of their bank account
squadron...
     the ******: "******" revolution came out
***-****-side first: thirst:
lopsided: the girls have all their fun...
we die... they come close to old age:
it continues: men tend to think throughout:
that period of concern: supposedly-deemed:
life...

the feminine agony of old age...
grandma's apple pie: **** grandma's apple pie!
i want to drink my wine
with... blisters and...
dis-ingestion...
              
         sucker punch:
            suckle toward a knuckle that might just...
make creases with caresses.
Colin E Havard Mar 2014
Not an enigmatic smile
Like the constipated, condescending smirk
Adorning, and inexplicably adored, on the Mona Lisa's smug face;
But a smile to justify God's existence;
A smile that, when dazzlingly bestowed
Upon one fortunate soul, caught rabbit-like in its
Wondrous radiance, infinitesimally, and cumulatively,
Increases the World's joy. Where every living thing -  
Whatever exists on the planet, imperceptibly hums
To a new, more celestial pitch -
An effervescent vibration celebrating Life's mysteries:
A reason for existence.

It's a smile to make an Alchemist cry -
Turning a leaden heart to gold in an instant.

It's a smile to make a mediocre poet struggle
To articulate an adequate description
Using all the hyperbole, simile and metaphor at his limited disposal.

Inestimably more brilliant, and more valuable,
Than the most flawless diamond ever found -
And, perhaps, just as rare.

Thankfully, a renewable resource,
Enabled to enlighten and heat
The recesses of any beneficiary's
Heart and invigorate their soul.

Helen may have caused a thousand ships to sail,
Destroying a nation as a consequence;
And Cleopatra nearly caused the collapse of an Empire;
But Tao's smile, unleashed in all its glory
Could melt the Antarctic ice-sheet -
Drowning us all in its magnificence.

Mayan's have a myth that states such a smile
Only comes around once every twelve thousand years,
In the Great Galactic turning.

Einstein's General Theory of Relativity
Is often mistakenly considered to concern gravity,
But is, in fact, concerned with one's relative position
To Tao's smile - an inescapable vortex of pleasure.

No music conceived of the fabled Celestial Spheres
Compares to the silent, ethereal harmonies tattooing my heart
Whenever, beacon-like, that smile flashes fleetingly in my direction.

And Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle has not a Quantum core,
But revolves around the statistical uncertainty of being blessed
With the ephemeral thrill of a benign grim.
25/4/2009
The Missing Link - Gaia's Boy Toy
The human sacrifices begin at noon. I must hurry to prepare the ruins.

Good: The pyramids retain their purity of line; the hieroglyphs balance out the skulls, more or less. Let us say, oh, two to one.

A Diego Rivera mural stretches from wall to wall of the Mayan ball court. (Are those blues really from nature?)

Heads will roll! I predict.

I need more coffee — any style. Bring me the big, steaming bowls of France that you must slurp two-handedly. Bring me the tiny espresso shots of Italy, bitter and inadequate, always calling for another cup.

Bring me café in an ornamental Mexican jar painted in bright ochres and reds. Set it on a geometrically designed serape with just a hint of purple on the fringe.

I will sop up the last drop of caffeine with my tortilla, while dining room tables multiply like serpents.

I must hurry. The sacrifices begin at noon.

Already, the humidity clings to my skin like a cheap cologne.

How stupid of me not to have worn a white linen suit, huaraches, and a Panama hat  (straw, of course).

In any case, I am the expert. My art criticism begins now.

Rivera’s human figures roll in a wave of revolutionary fervor: too rounded, too cherubic, too pastel. Industry, agriculture, fraternity, socialism. Hand me the hammer. But no bare *******, as in Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People.

A careless oversight. ****** always adds a pleasant focal point to a painting.

Suddenly, bad news breaks. The sacrifices have been called off; the ballplayers  have converted to Communism. Viva la revolución!

                                                 + + +

Frida Kahlo twirls her mustache to match the flair of Salvador Dali’s.

Her heart flutters for the Spanish surrealist, who has bug-eyes only for Gala.

Kahlo deigns to paint his portrait, which turns out to be another of her
 self-portraits. So many selves. So many portraits.

This one sports ample ****** hair and a monkey on her shoulder, who leans across to eat the gardenia behind her right ear. Or is it a carnation? Ah, carnations only calcify into clichés. Let us call it a hibiscus, and be done with it.

(Still, are those lurid colors from nature?)

I must hurry. The exhibition will begin at 2 a.m., the hour when all the wine shops close, and the retablos disappear from the churches. No respect for authority after la revolución. Only the self, the self. Always the self.

Kahlo twists her mustache into a braid for her next self-portrait: Liberty Leading the Mexican People. She squeezes into an orthopedic corset, bare-breasted.

I pull out my droopy Dali watch to eye the time. The hands cross at midnight.

I must hurry. Yet Kahlo insists I sit.

She paints my portrait with a spike through my spine, a shattered pelvis, and partial paralysis of the legs. I can no longer walk a straight line.

She thinks I am she, in trousers. The self, the self. Always the self.

My moustache grows heavier than hers, however, and I painstakingly pluck out the unibrow.

But I adore her monkey, with his close-set eyes. He eats a carnation for penance each morning, then primps before the mirror. The self, the self. The primate self.

More bad news: Dali cancels the exhibition. He has been demoralized by the retablos, which radiate beauty in six dimensions: height, breadth, length and the omnipresence of the Holy Trinity.

A genuine milagro: The streets fill with gardenias and hibiscus. The Mayan ballplayers convert to Catholicism.

A white skeleton dances with Kahlo in the moonlight. He wears her leather-and-steel braces.

No matter. I am the art critic, and I declare all Mexican colors indigenous, naturalistic, and caffeinated. Then I turn out the dining room lights.

A starry, starry night. The humidity sinks into the cenote.

Tomorrow, I shall buy a monkey and teach it to paint. All colors from nature, of course.
This is an imaginative riff based on a trip to the Yucatan Peninsula. It's also a poem where the reader has to judge whether the speaker of the poem, the "I", is the author. I'll leave the answer to you. It helps to know the works and ****** portraits of Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, Mexican self-portraitist Frida Kahlo, who was impaled and had her pelvis shattered in a bus accident, and the Spanish Surrealist painter Salvador Dali. You can Google all of them.
evolove Nov 2021
Travis scotts concert was 100% a satanic soul harvest. He sent those souls to another dimension.
Think I'm stretching? READ ALL THE WAY THROUGH.
First off. He called his event a "festival".  The definition of a festival is a feast. Did you see a large amount of food?
Or did you see a feast of souls?
His stage was the symbol for alchemy.  The egyptian ankh. The Egyptian ankh has to do with life. Because the wealthy know when you die and when you are born, you create a ripple in time and space for your soul to come and go. The best way to describe it is like a pool. Imagine you are about to jump into your local swimming pool. The water will break your entry and you will safely hit the bottom. Now. Imagine there is a person at every single part of the edge and you all jump in at the same time. Now you've got a problem. Soul harvesting is the same way. When you die your soul creates a ripple and it can safely leave. But. When you have a bunch of people dying in the same spot the spiritual realm becomes stressed in that location due to the high amounts of energy our souls resonate as they are leaving and entering the in between of this realm and other dimensions.  Therefore they have created machines that have tapped into the in between to ****** your soul. Who gets it and where it goes?  Other things are possible as well. Like the exchange of a good soul for whatevers on the other side?. Have you ever heard of cern? The large hydron collider. It's the largest machine in the world. This is NOT knew technology. The Mayan indians knew about this. The egyptians knew about this. THIS IS WITCHCRAFT AT THE HIGHEST DEGREE.
Let me break it down.
Travis Scott is a WITCH. The microphone is his wand. He is a (M.C.) (Master of ceremonies).  
With his wand he uses his voice (frequency) to help bring in the energy needed to open the portal. He brings a crowd of 50 to 70 thousand people who are generating IMMENSE amounts of energy into a low vibration. Love is the highest. Aggression is the lowest.
Then the design of his stage along with the lights become the sigil to help open the portal. Remember his stage was the symbol for alchemy?
YOU can't see the portal. You just see a fancy light show.
But those who are dying and their souls are separating from their bodies can.
The only way a living person MAY see through the portal is if they had taken an Elixir like Ayahuasca.
Do you ever wonder why all these "rappers" want to date the highest ranking Arminian witch family Kardashians?
Could it be because they are witches?

They do these kind of rituals behind closed doors all the time. What you saw was them coming out in the open.
The goal for you is to pass on and move to a higher dimension. You are drawn to the heavens because that's where you came from.
When you start gaining wealth, you start the search for immortality. Wealth is a drug that most refuse to part with.  So this is where satanism comes in. There's a theory of  reincarnation if you can create enough negative energy for yourself, you can weigh your soul back down. This is where the technology of transferring your consciousness back into another avatar has its place.
You can see why we are at a cross roads of transhumanism and luciferienism.
Some believe the elites WERE once humans and during the days of Atlantis that changed. Their technology hit a point they no longer needed human bodies. And they became the pinnacle of Transhuman. But no longer human. Something else. Maybe this is what "sanat kumara" is? A.K.A. Satan.
Truth. Facts travis scott Hollywood
vircapio gale Jul 2012
she is my nihilistic god;

i am a stag leap.
the fainter wind-caress
felt deep in trunks and boulder bed.
i am delight for loosened thorns
that piercing underfoot will spur to run
my naked body's open-air embrace
atop the callus of my seasoned fun,
skirring flora shadow-dancing bright
descending mountainside of noon
in blurrs refracting sightful bones.
i am the sense of
transtemporal glacial moans,

the heartbeat of the soil breath
to puff from feasted log a mycophile's awe
or want for all placental webs in view
for naming earth a seeping sorrows tithe:
my consciousness of things alive.

the stinging lungs atop the path
are emblems of a winging truth
to overcome her nearing death.
i am the lingham of creations' race.
i am the sensate reeling blow by empty blow.
the gravity of light and dark;
gray theopolis of fists and falls.
envelopment of massive meanings filled
in nether-branchings' net
and mediatrix scorn: the wider world absorbs my self as ~ all~
~. .all. . ~
prating some nepenthean law
to sour our poetic hate
and deeply bury seismic seeds she wants to sow, like
ancient clues of metagender fact:
hermaphroditic **** to 'normal' eyes.
icecaps to resize and singing moralize;
a dolphin midwife toning yoni love
for labor certain nuns call "gift"
as crown of pleasure heights
on par with mysteries;
regrowing infant fingertips,
to pi recited over days,
to vaster mindscapes drawn in ways
'beyond the genius of the sea'

why wait for ease of shame?
thin veils of culture lift
and family bonds anew to tow
the peace from out irratic weight of nation rifts;
instantiations burst beyond the tunnel course~
rhythmic doomsday yearnings line the halls of humantime:
prophetic visions of a sea to come,
Utnapishtim keeps himself alive
to garden with his wife a thriving mortal line.
Quetzalcohuatl finds himself *****
to bloodlet savior sexuality,
his heart a morning star, a Mayan Venus shine.

i see the standing trees
entwine slow-love to sky
so i can swing and heave
my universe above the words,
to carry thorns as well as petals, doves.
the vision ends. the new begins
to filter dyad lies through
inter-
corporeal lens.
embodied ivy climbs the tree of death
to rewind love and deepen love,
to bound the loss with goddess wisdom ends and other ends
of ouroboros shedding clear
of limits insight thrives to near.
sunglance peeking is the hovering of me,
steady comfort crosses floating lotus feet.
the softest rock has melded under thee
to join a forest pausing here.
a berry soaks itself of all i am
while nutty chipmunks chirp in whirls;
the clouds are girls you've been,
Nephelae to tease in quenching gowns
the verdant book of men we've known, who leaf
the air to taste another form of fairness lent.
silver is the sun in times of stillness overached.
sifted tensions drift to lie awake, but
drowning in a stream of glowing calm,
i am the woody balm.
the scent of bark unnestled dry
and leaves remembrance when
the breathing stops, the final
fleshing in of nowhere, never then.
you are transcendent of transcending
pure. end, endure and lucid ending live again
in empty worship ringing plenum om.
Cinnam Muscat Jul 2011
He loves his soca and
His carnival.
He calypsos
Like only Dionysus could.

His power is like the
Nymph's - the Oceanid daughter that
Kept Odysseus from
Penelope - only stronger.

So mesmerising: his smile
Bursts with a contagious
Warmth, like the sun
Over his island homeland.

A gold cross hangs from a chain
Around his dark, dark neck.
The smell of his skin spices the air around him,
Making my mouth salivate.

He tastes like Mayan chocolate;
Slightly bitter and tinged with chilli.
The scars on his shoulders and back
Feel like a ripe nectarine againt my tongue.

I want to bite down and feel the juices
Run.
But.
He's a good Christian boy.

This island boy is an enigma.
Tall and willowy
Like a rapier, and
Strong and beautiful.

I wonder if this island boy
Would sheath his faith
In my worship,
For just one, cool, island night.
I tromped across North America a few years back
Following the Mayan Elders
Listening to the powerful Lakota Brothers sing songs of mourning and joy
Building community

I was following a White Cherokee
We created clan
I was motivated by the teachings of the Anishinaabe
And represented Thunderbird Clan

We stopped in sacred spaces such as Serpent's Mound
And Cahokia Mounds
We peered briefly through the veil; Samhain
I followed the red path and eventually found I had always been on it

I met Hopi and Navajo elder's
And my friend Sea, a pipe carrier brewed a special tea
I was gifted tobacco that had been grown from seeds
Recovered from an iceman's medicine bag

She transmuted the ancient tobacco into a tea
By folding it into a sweetgrass and cedar brew
Sea gave it to me in a basic stainless steel carafe
Every time we drained the carafe
I refilled it and the essence was just as powerful as the previous brew

When I finally caught up with the Lakota brother's in Sedona
Their voices were raw
We all were
I shared the tea with them

So much magic on that journey
The joy on those brothers faces as the tea reached their throats
I gave them the carafe and told them
It was the gift that keeps on giving

Their thankfulness has been the gift that keeps on giving
Je tricote avec de la laine rouge (the ember from my daugther, Noelle)
What did you say to me?
How did you say to be?
Scent of the flowers sweet,
I fell off the path; the beat.
Metamorphoses buzzing creep.

Bumblebee, Bumblebee

Nectar pollen and wiggle-dance,
Tear off the shirt and pants,
Without it I’m incomplete,
Rotting in self-defeat,
Awashed in a wild sea,

Bumblebee, Bumblebee

Buzzin’ so high and flyin’
Honeycomb drunken Mayan,
Falling west, rising east,
The party will not surcease,
While I am the Bumble-beast!

Bumblebee, Bumblebee
I am the Bumblebee,
Bumblebee, Bumblebee
I am the Bumblebee

The flight it takes off and from,
As flowers of life become,
Praying up to the Sun,
What am I imagining?  (image-gen-nun)
August vino de lum

Bumblebee, Bumblebee
Bumblebee, Bumblebee
I am the Bumblebee,
Bumblebee, Bumblebee
I am the Bumblebee
MYSTICAL VOYAGER Apr 2016
We all have our own destiny,
written in the celestial mystery,
Mayan cycles in the eternal so trippy,
transition of ego death can be accepted,
our souls last forever protected,
fear is only a shadow from light of awareness,
experience deathless consciousness,
nothing but a transformative change,
a quantum jump strange,
fictional in the cosmic game,
rearrange dance celebrate and play,
welcome the unknown foresty beyonds,
all webs of being are woven better,
we are all one from the beginning until forever,
ceremonial tribal & shamanic let's gather together.
Drinking my tea
Without sugar-
    No difference.
                                        
The sparrow *****
    upside down
--ah! my brain & eggs
                                        
Mayan head in a
Pacific driftwood bole
--Someday I'll live in N.Y.
                        
Looking over my shoulder
my behind was covered
with cherry blossoms.
                                        
        Winter Haiku
I didn't know the names
of the flowers--now
my garden is gone.
                                        
I slapped the mosquito
and missed.
What made me do that?
                                        
Reading haiku
I am unhappy,
longing for the Nameless.
                                        
A frog floating
in the drugstore jar:
summer rain on grey pavements.
        (after Shiki)
                                        
On the porch
in my shorts;
auto lights in the rain.
                                        
Another year
has past-the world
is no different.
                                        
The first thing I looked for
in my old garden was
The Cherry Tree.
                                        
My old desk:
the first thing I looked for
in my house.
                                        
My early journal:
the first thing I found
in my old desk.
                                        
My mother's ghost:
the first thing I found
in the living room.
                                        
I quit shaving
but the eyes that glanced at me
remained in the mirror.
                                        
The madman
emerges from the movies:
the street at lunchtime.
                                        
Cities of boys
are in their graves,
and in this town...
                                        
Lying on my side
in the void:
the breath in my nose.
                                        
On the fifteenth floor
the dog chews a bone-
Screech of taxicabs.
                                        
A hardon in New York,
a boy
in San Fransisco.
                                        
The moon over the roof,
worms in the garden.
I rent this house.

[Haiku composed in the backyard cottage at 1624
Milvia Street, Berkeley 1955, while reading R.H.
Blyth's 4 volumes, "Haiku."]
Karijinbba Nov 2018
My old true love rdd=PC
wrote this poem to me on HP.
~~~~~
"I fall in love."
"Death would be liberating
but I wouldn't suggest jumping off a cliff"
                                               NO
"And for the life of me I hold on
to shaddy realities,
and an odd feeling of never being enough."

"I don't know what will happen"

IT IS ALL OUT OF MY HANDS

IT'S ALL OUT OF TIME"
~~~~
( my spontaniety of first thought)
my response 2018 is:

I fall in love too I choose life.
dearest true love of yore
from your holy hands
your love unto my heart falls
joining my spirit soul
precious twin flame
and here with me  love won't die

nor can unconditional love
into my hands ever perish

true love needs not be liberated
as no TREASON ever existed
you just got me ALL WRONG!

And since when orphanes
in protective custody hiding for their life after Feds and murderers buchered her family and loved ones in childhood

and throughout adolecence years  a faulty weak covert adoption witness protection program forcing victim to live as an exiled fugitive??
due to a horrendous loss of life

You simply didn't know me
for the task you and your brother assigned to me dearest ones
and isn't it treason on your part to abandon an amnesic loved one
only because it wasn't written in an old script?
some lovers being in love
feeling betrayed and hurting
do jump off a cliff
like you did It hurts do much to understand your pain physical and mental too
Still others jump into amnesic shocks becoming like I did
DEATH CALM! its very painful
i had no shell shick therapyst no councellings just hell left behind
I don't recomment either one
ways to hurt for living one another presence was needed!

both ways of hsndling pain
are equally distructive unfruitful look at me now!
you have support family bank
structure how do I win from here  I healed living in denial.
my ignorsnt ways ended in heartbreaking tragedy more for me than for you
You were my hero my knight
I loved you always will i was in love with you I hurt too
We were so identical twin flames from the inside thinking modes
both feeling so small
and never enough for each other!
because we were apart!
And both so brightly colored in the outside with Gs light
very rare occurance
a triumph for the finding
worth the fame intended
worth the pain of defeat endured
for the best can only be bought at the cost of great pain and sacrifice!!
my pain went to sleep in an amnesic transformative shock
I have always loved you
and as you see I did jump!
Right into 'death' and 'knife'
i transformed to survive
Read my birth chart both Death and Knife remain a blessing and a curse to me such mystery
but both protecting me just the same!
two protective mechanisms
per the Mayan calendar.
such a mystery we both are.
Death saving me from 'death'
and knife'cutting' through my pain a cold ice blade
there transforming me
Death Calm and silent!
I am not insensitive I feel love
death needs not be liberating
my soul knowing true love
will rest in peace with some regrets
I promised our unborn childten that no love fame nor great fortune would be greater then the love I feel for them all
and I kept my painful promise
but it was the end of me
In your eyes
I must have shrank smallest yet
misunderstood I go unless you read me here on HP the final fronteer unless you read
my memoir but we are both running out of time
lovers die in more ways than jumping off cliffs

precious love thank you for loving me
it hurt me very deeply to let you go so long ago
I am the woman who loves you the most in this whole wide world
I could have given my life for just one day though to have understood you grabbed you!
to have known what to do
what not to do,
where to go, where not to go,
what to say, what not to say.
what to think and what not to think!
i didn't understand you!
so I feared you
I couldn't fight every greedy jealous woman for your love as the left behind gap how?
forgive me please beloved
I felt too small and worthless

I had no idea anyone on earth would love me too back!
much less enough as to jump of a cliff to hurt that much for my life to benefit as new Eve
even changing earth with you
a worlds new adam Back then

I sincerely did not understand what you had planed to do after my impatient ignorant fall

Life had only taught me
to feel insignificantly tini especially when being taunted
mistreated and challenged
abandonement syndrome
was my demise dince childhood
your mind games and head riddles smothered my dreams
of you me for us.

loving you more than
I loved myself was understood
very well that's what life
had taught me to do
to let go of everything I ever loved the most
when all life did was take chunks of my family and my life.
You were life's reward to me
without you by my side
I became speechless Dead Calm
stump like on Mothers day.

'sorry' can't depict the black hole
that has swallowed you
and me apart
nor pain depict the bottomless pit that living without you is

I too fell into my death
heartbroken as you announced
a JaneHilton freeway driving
in oposite directions was agony when in your letter
you wrote you had a wife!

I fell into the abyss and I died
I was only nineteen then

Then came hell getting me stranded at the fork road
all the way to hell Greece

smily kind penpal demons helped me up a plane ticket

two in all even married me not to avert authorities of my impending death with their treacherous agendas
IT WAS ALL STAGED
as was much of my life on earth.

I am glad we met
glad we loved each other
near or far
in G
s hands we both are.
~~~
By:Karijinbba-Copy Rights
2017 revised 03/ 29/2020.
excerpt from my Memoar written throughout my life.
bobby burns Jan 2013
today i will look for
chocolate and flowers
and find a pound of
belgian dark in my
pantry, and wilted
tulips on the counter.
i will hand write a
poem because it's
just so much better
on paper, and i will
serenade my darling
with bright eyes
on a scholastic field
after the last bell rings,
for at last i can stop
musing on possibilities
and begin to dwell
on solidity.

today i will bring you
a rose, for the petals
and lines and worn
down world-weary
ravines contained
in you; i will bring
you sweet darkness
in a plastic wrapping
for all the sugar laced
in with your hair and
irises, and despite your
fire and your heritage,
i will leave out the heat
of sacred mayan ritual
peppers because together
we'll be warm enough.

     finally, i will lean
  down close to you and
    whisper what i have
     not whispered for a
  million seconds or more,
    because i just haven't
     had the opportunity:
  *Ya llegué, mi querida.
loosely translated: I'm home, my dear.
Geno Cattouse Feb 2013
Sprang forth with no branches or leaves. Small roots.
Bore mangoes, papayas,guava and bananas. Hybrid, mid limb grafting.
The trunk is a figment but it stands non less. You see
my family tree never was and always will be.
A roadside shade with low hanging fruit.

Was never planted.It was a deposit from the bowels of an exotic bird
of the jungles that sampled at leisure the offerings of the rain forests.
The Hardtack and marmalade came on ships with the kings business
Mixed with the Nigerian Fu-Fu  ,the Aztec maize the Mayan legumes.
and all points of the compass.

Old Joe Denegri, The Blancaneaux , The Cattouse, The Melado, The Pinks
The Flowers,The Orozco and more. And boundless from the ***** of opportunity.
Piecemeal and untethered. But it is the tree that I must cling to.
However rough the bark.

The sap runs heavy and slow in the humid Belizean heat.To meet the earth.
Cool breezes blow a haunting disharmony. A sweet unity in chaos.
The soil is rich,pungent and forgiving.  Soon, A bell tolls  in the distance.
The Sea mists my dreams.

A stairway of coconut fronds to azure skies.
Nighttime smells like creation.
The still slackened pace.
The small rat race.
Tempest in a teapot.
Urban-rural.

Coolie gal.
Creole boy.
New Chinese.
Old African.
Ubiquitous Espania.
Garinagu. Mosquito coast.
Children of Mennon.
Old Basque faces.
Things we call races left with small traces
of what?

My tree, her tree, histree.
I am you and you are me.
I see me in your face and you see me.
We are  and will continue to be.
Blended.
a hybrid. An orchid wild.
Ivie Jan 2014
Funny how life seems everything but not worth any more pain,

the snow is reducing to hail outside my Parisian window but it will take me years to thaw your heart

I put the frozen peas in the microwave and hope what would it be like to have all fragments of your should lay defrosted on my bone china plate

But all that happens is that I keep on romanticizing pain and contemplating that if my ruptured ligament can heal up in 3 weeks,

                  Then why can’t our hidden love embolden up into a bone?

Funny how all my dreams seem to have left their axis and moved farther away into some other galaxy and nothing seems right anymore,

            And you who seemed like the only date I waited for in the calendar,

Has turned into the Mayan code of Mayan calendar that I can’t decipher at all.
Marieta Maglas Jan 2015
Extraterrestrial humans have traveled through a warp,
Galactic gate to this world wanting to engage with us.
They sought treaties with our United Diplomatic Corp.
'Mayan descendants coming from Nibiru', wrote the press.

'On 5000 BC, that earth map had big continents.
During the time Of Moses, strange Mycenaeans appeared
Having an alphabet for hieroglyphic documents,
While an alien space from Atlantis, for sure, disappeared.'

'Thutmose had a place of the ear for Amun unique god.
For 2000 years, human societies have been like tides
In revolutions of states continuing to maraud.'
'Our telepathic thoughts keep all your historic asides.'

'That Atlantic civilization described by Plato
Disappeared in water together with its continent.
The Aegean islands formed by Santorin volcano
Have been subject to that historical change consequent.'

'Some underground bases with space gates to other planets
In Egypt, Siberia, Germany, China and States
Can be built by us.''This is not foretold by our prophets.'
'The strands of DNA are the same, thus we can be mates.'

'Anunnaki are described on Sumerian tablets.
They crossed the asteroid belt having shipped to reach us.
The Earth slave labourers looked like being chained black rabbits.
Human rights can be assailed.There is nothing to discuss.'

'The origins of the Illyrians remained unclear.
Unlike Dorians, they disappeared into Slavic zones.'
'It's all hooked up with the Illuminati, and it's clear
That with this pass, Nibiru cracks its planetary stones.'

'There's too many of you here, when you are teleported.'
'This unseen infrared planet is ours, though you see us.'
'Vatican knows this, and to keep the secrets they ordered.'
'You need knowledge to survive.''This thing we do not discuss.'

'We belong to this dual-binary solar system.
In the Oort Cloud, there is a large low-mass aborted star
Making our planet orbits be elliptical. Listen
To the interplanetary plasma that breaks so far! '

'Odd records around these times of comets and disasters
Lead to the disintegration of civilization.
This old world sows confusion due to our last massacres.
Many birds, animals and people die from starvation.'

'We're not those lizards, or those giants from your Vedic myth.
We represent the Federation of Living Planets.'
'For us, to celebrate Life with Peace means a Holy gift.
You are near our thermonuclear reactor blankets.'

'Your refusal leads to intergalactic incidents.
Our friends traveled through a spatial wormhole to be with us.
Does the Six Day War support 'elongated' imminence? '
'In front of St Thomas Aquinas we stop to discuss.'

Poem by Marieta Maglas
On the day Liz Taylor died,
CNN called Larry King
out of retirement to
eulogize her during
the mornings
breakfast segment.
Tears were shed.

On the day Liz Taylor died,
TEPCO stated that one
of the Fukushima nuclear
reactors was on fire.
Tears of cataclysm
were shed.

On the day Liz Taylor died,
government officials warned
that Tokyo's water was
contaminated with
radiation and was not fit
for infants to drink.
Tears of anguish
were shed.

On the day Liz Taylor died,
the crew of the
USS Ronald Reagan
scrubbed the deck
clean of TEPCO
radiation.
Tears of worry
were shed.

On the day Liz Taylor died,
Oregonians rushed out to
buy potassium iodine
tablets to counteract
radiation poisoning.
Tears of affliction
were shed.

On the day Liz Taylor died,
NATO forces continued
to fire missiles and drop
bombs on Libya.
Tears of agony
were shed.

On the day Liz Taylor died,
a terrorist bomb exploded
in Jerusalem, killing one
and injuring many.
Tears of vengeance
were shed.

On the day Liz Taylor died,
the Syrian Army fired on
demonstrators
calling for reforms.
Tears of hostility
were shed.

On the day Liz Taylor died,
The USA Today reported
that during the past decade
the population of Detroit
declined by 25%.
Tears of loss
were shed.

On the day Liz Taylor died,
a dilapidated brownstone
in Philadelphia collapsed;
city officials expect
many more to occur.
Tears of distress
were shed.

On the day Liz Taylor died,
President Obama cut
short his Latin American
trip by skipping a tour of
Mayan ruins.
Tears of dismay
were shed.

On the day Liz Taylor died
the Dow Jones Industrial
Average closed
up 67.39 points.
Tears of joy
were shed.

On the day Liz Taylor died,
Elton John dedicated the song,
Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me
to the memory of his departed friend.
Tears were shed.

You Tube Music Video:
Elton John,
Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me

Lewes DE
3/23/11
jbm
Like a stroke of genius,
of just plain blind luck
rising from the jungle floor,
the majestic rubble of the Maya calls,
at once the founder and judge of all Time.

First as the serpent whose plumes turn to wings,
then as the eagle boldly eyeing its prey,
and en fin! as the jaguar, sinewy and sleek,
El Castillo looms
against the hardened, sun-baked sky --
the shifting citadel of Kukulcan,
its shadow splayed across my days.

All of them numbered,
all of them too short,
all of them fading
in the cold
, hard light of distant failure...

Perenially
built and rebuilt,
like the Church,
El Castillo stands
to meet the need of holy obligation,
to meet my need for initiation,
bounded only by the firmament and the underworld,
final triumph of the dead.

And so I stand,
alone upon the sacred causeway --
enervated, unenlightened,
the bitter taste of dust in my mouth.

Until I, too, will be turned
to stone --
the languid chac mool,
sated in sweet repose.

I will drift toward the sunken cenote,
drink deeply from its oasis of evening cool,
where the memory of man and grain and god is sung:

An anthem of order, power and vision,
the great Mayan hymn of meaning.
I will hear, at last, from the porous depths of Yucatan,
what it is to be called human.

— The End —