"alvarado" poems
She says, "tell me more about you handsome"
I tell her I am Johnnie Alvarado, I am soul searching
She says, "No, tell me what makes you different from the rest"
I tell her I am expressive as the Italians,
I am passionate as the French,
I speak as **** as the Spaniards,
I am artistic like the late Pablo Picasso,
I play with words like captain J Cole,
I am as adventurous like "Captain Jack Sparrow"
I am handsome as the African men, but a rare gem
I am like Naruto Uzumaki I never give up
I am an African and I pride myself in that
I tell her I have a will of fire and that i am a museum full of untold tales waiting to be told.
She can't help but but say "You've touched me without touching me"
Apr 18, 2017
Apr 18, 2017 at 11:29 AM UTC
SANDOVAL
Your brigs of bustling pilgrims light at last
On this sweet-scented isle called Cozumel.
Depopulating half of Cuba’s farms,
The skills of our six hundred souls, or so,
Erupt now in a pitched activity.
We’ve confiscated idols, and our cross
Now overlooks the rising ropes and tarps;
Our cannons hedge the campground, with our horse,
As secret weapons, hidden in the ships.
ALVARADO
Now what a breezing cakewalk will it be
To pacify this docile flock of lambs!
Let’s ****** the sweetmeats from their trembling lips,
And wean them to the yoke of servitude.
Vassals alone make masters out of men.
CORTÉS
Not yet so fast. For Cuba’s stewardship
Forbids such a carnivorous regime.
Father Olmedo warns us not to tease,
Much less ****** the native nymphs.
ALVARADO Cortés,
We trust that you, like all stargazing men,
Crave glory, fortune, and above all, fame;
That royal favor and divine accord
Will light on those who quell idolatry,
And carve new lands for God and His Castile.
CORTÉS
But like a gentlemanly pirate, I.
For Cuba’s governor deceives himself.
His pure concern for human chattel, gold,
And bandying the Indies as it were
A distant annex of the Moorish war
Has wrought a desert from a paradise.
Long-term success requires a colony.
And with what wherewithal! These islanders
Stand head and shoulders o’er Carribbeans,
With their rich-painted books and towering keeps,
The graceful girding of their modesties-
SANDOVAL
Their slave trades, and their binding bright bouquets-
ALVARADO
Distilling liquor: Culture’s surest sign.
CORTÉS
Our prime directive is to baptize them,
Not march before their eyes the Seven Sins.
But how to learn their Tower-of-Babel tongues?
Oct 16, 2016
Oct 16, 2016 at 12:36 PM UTC
CORTÉS
Trailblazing pioneers, God’s harbingers:
The shining daylight of the Renaissance
Now swiftly dissipates the blindfold gloom
Of this benighted, dark, and iron age.
And as this dawn of culture greets the globe,
Our own Castile, of all the hosts of Europe,
Emerges as its greatest modern power.
If we receive the bounty of these lands,
So must we bear our duty to convert,
And shall redeem these hell-bound debutantes.
Coincidence?- That as the graceless Moors
Were drubbed and shunted from our Christian sands,
And in the very year our spiring cross
Eclipsed that toenail paring of a moon-
That new horizons opened in the west?
Do you not feel, my fresh adventurers,
That you are precious to the Lord, and chosen?
Strike sail! Exit.
ALVARADO You heard the captain. Up and at ‘em.
You porters, lash the tents to tame these winds.
The horsemen will untwine the provender. Exit Garrido.
SANDOVAL
The women must find tinder, turf, and fuel.
The sun is down. We race against the dusk. Exit María.
ESCUDERO
These heavy, gathering clouds have opened up,
And threaten to bestow unwanted gifts.
DÍAZ
It is the cyclone season out at sea.
SANDOVAL
Such scuddy weather bodes a sudden turn.
ALVARADO
Let’s hustle then to fumble up a camp,
And save our “oo-” and “ahh”ing for the dawn.
Exit all but Olmedo.
OLMEDO
Thus shall the ardent lights of Europe come,
And pour upon these newfound neophytes.
But will they be enlightening Catholic lamps,
Or a consuming fire to destroy them? Exit.
Oct 9, 2016
Oct 9, 2016 at 11:58 AM UTC
OLMEDO
Cortés, I have a new, but nagging, fear.
I sense the premonition of a time
When you might be corrupted by the taint
Of evils lying latent in our task,
That vice, which our assignment permeates,
Will tempt resolve to heinous compromise.
CORTÉS
Our mission is implicit in its vice,
In evils ineradicably steeped,
And our grand charge requires that we submit
To its contamination and decay.
A man who would embrace the human lot,
To do so, must consent to be a sinner.
OLMEDO
Blood has been shed- For what? Lives squandered- Why?
You, having tripped in sin’s attractive trap,
To thus, in fragrant snares so feebly flail,
Through frail and flagrant failings such a way,
How can you say to me you are contrite?
CORTÉS
But father, mercy with my malice mingles.
These dicey circumstances find me now
In both a ruthless and reluctant role.
What seems intolerable of this plight
Is that it simply will not be reduced
To trite antitheses of right and wrong.
My conscience both opposes and demands
A rouse to action.
Enter AGUILAR, ALVARADO, MALINALLI, and a Mayan Girl.
AGUILAR Captain, by your will,
These endless battles have despoiled your foe,
Who offer you these slave girls as a bribe.
The terrorized Chontal surrender now.
They will be baptized, and befriend our king,
Provided that we leave their country soon.
CORTÉS
Easy to break that promise once we’re gone.
Tell them we shall release all Mayan soil,
And nomadize into the unknown North. Exit Aguilar.
Here, Alvarado, [indicates girl] guide her to your tent.
We’ll see what use for this one we can find.
Exit all but Malinalli.
MALINALLI
Now, silly Malinalli, drop your sights,
You pretty poppet for these bearded frights.
Jan 17, 2017
Jan 17, 2017 at 7:23 PM UTC
ALVARADO
Well, now we’ve a translator, we can hear
How much the Mayas hate us.
SANDOVAL We should leave.
As yet, we merely beg to buy their corn,
But fears impel them to combat with us.
We’ve sixty wounded, heat stroke swoons the horse,
And not a flake of gold for all these streams.
Their ruins lurk like wrecks dredged from a swamp.
ALVARADO
A stark reminder for aspiring minds
That cultures often fall as well as rise.
Here comes the father, with our medicine man.
Enter AGUILAR and OLMEDO.
AGUILAR
And so back home the Inquisition, brother,
Still rules the roost?
OLMEDO It does so.
AGUILAR Grim regime!
It clouds the air upon a thousand wings,
Whose shadows spread to pall the gloomy sun.
The cool, luxuriant trees on which it lights,
It dries. How it decays! It browns green grass,
And desolates the leafy countrysides
Until they wither as the Syrian wastes.
OLMEDO So it does.
SANDOVAL [aside] Hark! The moral landslide rumbles.
OLMEDO
Those fires of the Inquisition, lighted
Exclusively to doom the Jews, one day
Are destined to consume their smug oppressors.
SANDOVAL [aside to Alvarado]
He strains a bit to shield the circumcised.
Though I’ve a ***** mouth, my blood is pure.
ALVARADO [aside to Sandoval]
Hush, Sandoval. You go too far.
OLMEDO And you?
Know, Alvarado, there are many men
Who, through misguided zeal- yes, Sandoval-
Convince themselves that they commit no sin
So long as those they **** and violate
Are of a different faith.
ALVARADO It’s not our fault.
I hate the Grand Inquisitor myself.
SANDOVAL
Like any little-loved policing force,
However, it preserves our way of life.
OLMEDO
For its unwanted eye that never slumbers,
Its arm, unseen and ever raised to strike,
Does not o’ercast its gloom on you, but rather
On deviants, foreigners, and heretics.
AGUILAR
It bars all doors of human entry to them-
Marginalized, shorn lambs it ferrets out,
And scapegoats as the enemies of Rome.
Thus, it condemns not only deeds, but thoughts.
Dec 3, 2016
Dec 3, 2016 at 1:30 PM UTC
DÍAZ
Captain Cortés, at last our man is found.
From two days inland, natives ferried him.
Father Olmedo greets him as we speak-
A fellow priest it seems.
CORTÉS Bring him to me. Exit Díaz.
From Cozumel to here in Yucatán,
We’ve hunted this elusive castaway.
These Indians hustle us from shore to shore,
And, when their gifts of jade fail, toss us rocks.
ALVARADO
Their dizzying synthesis of amity
Backed up with menace proves unsettling.
Enter OLMEDO, SANDOVAL, and AGUILAR.
SANDOVAL
Now, wayward beadsman, meet our strategist.
CORTÉS
Who is this Indian? Where’s our long-lost priest?
AGUILAR
Hail, Christian knights! Sweet accents of Castile!
CORTÉS
Great welcome, cabined friar, you are free!
AGUILAR
Is it a Wednesday?
OLMEDO It’s the Lord’s day, friend.
AGUILAR
Of course it is! Grace to the only God!
My only link with Europe, all these years,
Has been to count the crawling calendar.
CORTÉS
We’ll need your past, to learn their policies.
AGUILAR
I wish I could. But of their etiquette
I’m ignorant, save slavish drudgery.
CORTÉS
You speak the language, though?
AGUILAR Why, like a native.
CORTÉS
Your name?
AGUILAR Gerónimo de Aguilar.
OLMEDO
Dear Aguilar! Your mother, home in Spain,
On hearing you’d been snatched by cannibals,
Abstained from meat, and cringed at frying flesh,
For fear, by chance, it might be part of you.
AGUILAR
Oh, rush me home to Écija, back where
The only blood drunk is the wine of Christ,
The only flesh consumed, our sacrament.
CORTÉS
What fate befell your fellow countrymen?
AGUILAR
The luckless women were harassed to death,
The men, dishearted. But a happy few
Broke from our cages and were spared for slaves,
Within the warlike clutch of Na Chan Can.
My freedom have your wax and honey bought.
One stubborn soul, Guerrero, stays behind.
Nov 2, 2016
Nov 2, 2016 at 5:17 PM UTC
ALVARADO Old friend, admit,
You have not crossed this river Styx before,
But I and that long-suffering soldier have,
And seen such sights to make your codstones crawl:
I mean the hell of human sacrifice.
When trumpets howl, and myrrh infects the air,
A wall-broad drum resounds a thundering knell,
To call the cultists to their grisly pyramid.
A drum is heard, repeating at intervals.
One victim strains across the clammy slab,
A ghoul down-wrenching at each tortured limb,
To keep the spinal shambles tautly arched;
To see the black, satanic hangman leer,
With clotted snarls of hair, and clawlike nails,
Lifting the cutlery to tremble skyward,
And to this brittle bird cage plunge the flint;
He loots the poor chest of its jewel. The heart,
Exhumed, hot from the plundered cavity,
Reluctant to desist its wonted pulse,
Still shudders in the fiend’s vampiric gripe,
Which he uprears to slake the smoldering sun.
Unearthly, braying like a beast possessed,
And, wielding disarticulated joints-
The fleshless femurs of a ****** maid-
Or, glaring through a mask of patchwork flesh,
The druid forges down the crannied steps,
Cascading with a rill of molten marrow.
He kicks the corpse to tumble in the throng,
Who spring to ****** his gobbets for their dish,
And chant (the word goes) “Now our gods are coming . . .”
They exit.
Oct 18, 2016
Oct 18, 2016 at 12:04 PM UTC
TEUHTLILLI [aside]
The unknown guests which call me to the east
Are such a hoax-like sighting as may lend
To superstition credence; rumors, weight.
I fear some rash infection has arrived.
Reports pour in of towers on the waves,
Maneuvered by a spectral race of men,
The truth of which I must submit to test.
And so it goes: The fleet of hueless troops
Approaches from the seashore as I speak.
Now, after weeks of waiting in the sticks,
At last, my first glimpse of these lily-skins.
Gods grant that they behave.
Enter CORTÉS, ALVARADO, SANDOVAL, AGUILAR.
AGUILAR Behold, Cortés,
Your foremost model of a Mexican.
TEUHTLILLI
Hail, friends of Mexico! Which is your chief?
Enter MALINALLI.
CORTÉS
Well, Aguilar?
AGUILAR He speaks a nonsense tongue.
We’re too far north. I can no longer help.
TEUHTLILLI
I ask again: Where is your leader, friends?
MALINALLI [aside]
(Now, silly girl, or never.) [indicating Cortés] This is he.
TEUHTLILLI
What’s this? A mediating concubine?
AGUILAR
You speak his language, girl, as well as mine?
CORTÉS
What, will this slave girl double-cross us all?
MALINALLI
Our humble chieftain greets your emperor
And many times does kiss those regal hands.
TEUHTLILLI
That’s well.
AGUILAR That’s well!
CORTÉS This all seems to be well.
AGUILAR
Rejoice, Cortés! This maid is double-tongued.
She’ll translate his words into my Chontal-
From him to her, from her to me, to you.
CORTÉS
Then let us test these true but tedious links.
MALINALLI You were saying, sir?
TEUHTLILLI How many braves trail in your train?
MALINALLI How many warriors tread in your wake?
AGUILAR How many soldiers shadow you?
CORTÉS Five thousand.
AGUILAR Uh, five thousand.
MALINALLI They’ve a thousand, sir.
TEUHTLILLI
I’ll see your thousand and I’ll raise you two.
[to a servant] Deploy two thousand men to build them huts,
[aside] But crammed with warlocks, witch doctors, and spies.
Exit a servant.
AGUILAR
This works well.
CORTÉS Thus the fragile chain is forged.
Friend, you must look upon our advent here
Not with unease, but as a world of good.
Mar 28, 2017
Mar 28, 2017 at 9:27 PM UTC
ALVARADO
Yes, raise the curtain of this maiden world!
Now, shall we find the halls of El Dorado,
Where princes make an almshouse of their mines,
And paupers plate their lumber-shacks with gold.
SANDOVAL
See where the jungle frowns against the shore:
A burial-ground of bright, backwater wealth.
Might there the Seven Enchanted Cities lie,
Where opals roll like pebbles in a brook?
Enter ESCUDERO.
ESCUDERO
My failing eyes still seek the Fount of Youth.
What waste is it to search for sixty years
When one charmed beverage shall reset my clock?
If I should find this spring, then- like Apollo-
I’d shrug at heaven’s everlasting souls,
And strut till doomsday on a deathless earth.
Enter MARÍA DE ESTRADA and GARRIDO.
MARÍA DE ESTRADA
A premiere world!
GARRIDO The theme of long-lost songs.
MARÍA DE ESTRADA
Are there tall tribes of savage Amazons,
Who bend their husky bows with coppery arms,
And lop their milkless ******* to aid their aim?
GARRIDO
Are there foul-featured men- if men they be-
Whose ox-like trunk supports two partnered heads?
Or, floppy-eared and dog-faced manikins,
Who live (they say) on but the scent of blooms?
And yet, if in this thicket dwell such men
As dark as they who cheered me at my birth,
We’ll call you Spanish but a schoolboy’s tale.
And what a pretty picture that will make!
ALVARADO
Cortés alights!
SANDOVAL All silent for Cortés!
Oct 8, 2016
Oct 8, 2016 at 12:08 PM UTC
CORTÉS
Friend, you must look upon our advent here
Not with unease, but as a world of good.
AGUILAR [simultaneously] . . . but as a world of good.
My potent monarch rules beyond the seas,
And rumors tease his ears of Mexico.
I come to you as his ambassador,
MALINALLI [simultaneously] . . . to you as his ambassador,
With gifts I must in person grant your lord,
And bring him tidings that will save his life.
TEUHTLILLI
[aside] (Fresh off the boat, and asks for audience!)
My ruler also is a busy king,
Like yours, and he will send for his desires.
MALINALLI [simultaneously] . . . he will send for his desires.
He’s locked in caucus from his island throne:
The teeming, lacustrine metropolis
Of Mexico, called also, “Cactus Rock,”
AGUILAR [simultaneously] . . . called also, “Cactus Rock,”
Whose minions by the millions stir with drive,
And fructify the land on floating farms.
CORTÉS
A land with gold in hand?
TEUHTLILLI By heaps and mounds.
CORTÉS
“Why ask?” you’ll ask. I ask because I know
That precious metal heals an arrant heart.
My men are languishing from that complaint.
TEUHTLILLI
We have the cure to purge bad-hearted men.
[aside] (By god, his helmet flashes on my mind:
Dead ringer to the one our war god wears.)
[to him] May I, sir, as a token of goodwill,
Present my lord your brilliant helm?
CORTÉS You may,
If you return it filled with grains of gold.
We’ll test by trial if this New World’s veins
Are worth the circulation of the Old.
Come sir, we’ll further parley by the fire.
Escort this minister to my retreat.
Exit Alvarado, Sandoval, Teuhtlilli, and servant.
Well now, young lady. What whelp have we here?
AGUILAR Your name, child.
MALINALLI Malinalli.
AGUILAR Ah, Malina.
CORTÉS Well! Marina, then.
I’ll sponsor you, in my kind custody.
Mellifluous and honey-throated dame,
Your golden tongue must buy us a good name. All exit.
Apr 6, 2017
Apr 6, 2017 at 1:15 PM UTC
CORTÉS
But how to learn their Tower-of-Babel tongues?
I think I have an inkling. Sandoval,
Bring me that Díaz from the footmen’s ranks-
A proud alumnus of this school of vice. Exit Sandoval.
Young Sandoval shows promise of promotion,
But, Alvarado, you’re my confidante,
As well as in effect my deputy.
We must concur about these Indians.
They are not possibly the “natural slaves”
Of which the pagan Aristotle spoke,
And can be raised to all the dignity
Of sons of Christ.
ALVARADO I’ll take your word.
CORTÉS Take God’s.
Enter DÍAZ.
DÍAZ God save you, captain! What mighty business of state pulls my
rare proficiencies away from tent-tying?
CORTÉS
So Díaz,
Twice now have you arrived in Cozumel
With this old villain, who reveals to me,
When last you pitched your tents, a year ago,
Your fleet encountered awestruck Indians,
Who nodded at the whiteness of your hides
And uttered, “Castilán . . . Castilán.”
Who came before, that they knew you by face?
DÍAZ
Some say that eight years past, lost in the fog,
A Spanish galleon shattered on these reefs.
Her ribs discharged a dash of castaways
That disappeared into these gloomy woods.
ALVARADO
And thus within hide our interpreters.
DÍAZ
So: Castellano . . . Castilán.
CORTÉS Well done.
Commune with these glad-handed Indians,
And sleuth it out through means of pantomime
If any of our cast-off countrymen
Might swelter yet in this unsparing clime. Exit Díaz.
ALVARADO
And as regards your noble savages?
CORTÉS
I shall induct them to the host of Christ.
I’ll give them scissors, candles, silver mirrors,
With tops and kites to cheer their little ones.
As your bombastic threats have scattered them,
I must so kindly call to coax them back.
ALVARADO
With prayer and kindness- Save us all! Kind words!
CORTÉS
Speak now, or hold your peace. . .
Oct 17, 2016
Oct 17, 2016 at 5:23 PM UTC
MARÍA DE ESTRADA
Freeze, ***** It’s your mistress bids you halt.
Let’s see what trulls the latest nets have trawled.
Not bad, sad slave. You’ll fit your new career:
A teenage tartlet to refresh their tents.
Don Alvarado keeps a natty ring
Pranked up with goads, whose stingers top its face,
To spur reluctant steeds through rocky rides.
You’ll buckle underneath such battery.
I hope your yelps won’t stir my husband’s sleep.
María de Estrada, at your service, serf.
I reign sole victrix of this manly camp,
For I’m not fit to mince and kiss my hand,
Like all those gingerbread girls back in Spain.
No, Cuba was a rowdy, lax frontier
Where I was raised to tussle with the boys,
And now stand champion in these warlike ranks-
For boundaries built up by prejudice
Are not reformed by mediocrities.
Once I have overmatched your Amazons,
I’ll force those tomboy squaws to nurse my brats-
If but a single, over-muscled pap
Can fortify the husky chaps I’ll breed.
Enter GARRIDO with baggage, and passes over the stage.
Look to your maidhood, miss, or be dismayed.
[to Garrido]
Hold, boy! You’ve got my bag of needments there. Exit.
MALINALLI
What gibberish! So much chin-music to me,
But something of her drift I comprehend.
I must assert my merit here. But how?
My *** A trump card every girl here holds.
But what my prodigy at languages?
I’ll trail their chieftain, and my gift of tongues
Shall lift his veil unto this ****** world. Exit.
Feb 22, 2017
Feb 22, 2017 at 3:25 PM UTC
AGUILAR
But a happy few
Broke from our cages and were spared for slaves,
Within the warlike clutch of Na Chan Can.
My freedom have your wax and honey bought.
One stubborn soul, Guerrero, stays behind.
CORTÉS
And with slave’s ransoms, we must rescue him.
AGUILAR
He will not come.
ALVARADO You must mean “could not,” man.
What exile, broiling in the pits of hell
Is tossed a rope from heaven and will not come?
Your Spanish rusted in these humid airs.
AGUILAR
These Mayas have seduced him to their cause.
When I confronted him, he spoke to me:
“I am a wartime chieftain, and their judge,
And see how lovely are my wife and sons!”
Three handsome half-castes nestled at his hip.
“You go,” he said, “and may God go with you.
But black tattoos have spiraled round my eyes,
And broad, thick discs now pierce my ears and lips.
Would Christians welcome one so scarified?”
CORTÉS
God only scorns the scars of souls.
OLMEDO Well said.
AGUILAR
His crabbed wife waved in my face and spat:
“What grimy scarecrow dares provoke my lord?
Shove off!” But our Guerrero caught my arm.
“I’ve warned our Mayas of Castile,” he hissed.
“If Spanish visitations will be suffered,
The scabies of their ‘culture’ will erupt,
And Europe’s slow, inexorable flow
Must soon encrust and case these florid lands
As running wax will coat a candlestick.
Then must I trim Death’s wicks.”
CORTÉS What can that mean?
Nov 3, 2016
Nov 3, 2016 at 3:21 PM UTC