"incas" poems
Dedicated to John and Bob
From first flesh we move down widening halls
That lead to lives of wondrous walls.
Our spidered fingers gripped walls of brick,
Cruets, cups and candle sticks.
Incense clouded open graves
When we too believed we too were saved.
Between Annex walls we learned our phonics,
On tin-roofed walls we lived our comics.
Garage walls scaled showed different views,
Kitchen walls steamed with soups and stews.
Our school yard walls tallied pitches
That marked our summers of youth and wishes.
Now lift memory's pane and go back
To the white-framed walls of a secret shack.
There, in confusion we would cling
To the unknown wonders girls would bring.
These young boys' walls we both outgrew;
Now new walls sprang, as we did too.
Coffee House walls offered something new.
Wet kisses lingered near shadowy walls,
We heard poetry read in a backroom stall.
Recreationals made our new skin crawl.
Cliff walls were breached by stairs of clay,
Carved by Incas on a turquoise day.
Tent walls echoed with impish fray,
Green walls beckoned at the end of day.
These walls gave rise to hot desires,
Like Vikings planning funeral pyres.
New music, cheers and weekend guests
Stood us ***** to pound our chests.
Those walls no longer ring our shores;
Time swept us forward with worldly lures.
We doffed our coats of suede and frills,
And donned new clothes and workday skills.
The walls of work are a rocky climb,
Stones laid by us, for yours and mine.
Such towers & turrets of heart & hearth
Guard all we know of any worth.
I see distant walls on cliffs, in fields;
Where do they lead? What will they yield?
Yet, there three friends climb one more hill,
Climb one more wall. Then all is still.
Jul 13, 2014
Jul 13, 2014 at 2:58 PM UTC
I'm eating chocolate,
the kind the Swiss
keep for themselves,
the quality kind
that can only be delivered
by security truck,
Chocolate that the Incas
would **** a thousand in cold blood,
Chocolate that's so good
it will turn a committed ******
into a ******* sweet ****
*Touring Venice with the Chocolateer is paying current dividends!
Dec 25, 2010
Dec 25, 2010 at 10:21 AM UTC
Earthy mottled brown,
Pomme de terre
The humble spud,
When not covered in mud;
Chipped, boiled or mashed,
Steamed roasted or hashed.
First the Incas of Peru,
Used them in a stew.
Now the tubers grown in space,
To further the human race.
Chopin, Mozart, and Vivaldi,
Can all be bought at Aldi.
(Other supermarkets are available.)
(More varieties are saleable.)
A versatile Maris Piper,
Couldn't be any riper,
When served perfectly baked.
© Nick Strong 2014
Oct 27, 2013
Oct 27, 2013 at 6:59 PM UTC
I arrive in Lima
The sweat-sogged poverty
lumped onto concrete
pushes at my heels
The tight black air
swallows the nakedness
of prostitutes and thieves
Pockets empty like a traveler’s stomach
growling beneath the world of Los Incas
In Cusco
My head throbs in the thin air
with the sound of boys
trying to shine my boots, my sandals
my bare feet
no problemo
women sell fresh papaya and guava
sweaters and trinkets
Hawkers surround me
like a tightly stitched T-shirt
Cusco
The Navel of the Earth
A bulging belly
throbbing
digesting
living
Sunset
I spread my toes
over the evaporated flood waters
of the Rio Urubamba
where it once flowed
from the fingers of Manco Inca
over the fleeing conquistadors
at the top of Ollantaytambo
Momentary brilliance
before you retreated to the jungle
Spain, always gnawing at your heels
It’s a mouth-full-of-coca-leave’s journey
to Macchu Picchu
I enter the dream
spitting wet leaves
on the silence of a dead kingdom
Gasping for air that once filled lungs
of Inca messengers
carrying news of defeat and conquest
over the great Andes
Los Incas Caminos
The cloud-dripped mountains
spread green across my eyes
I see ghosts
a steady move of feet through the depleted air
Porter, takes my backpack
carries it against his brown crusty skin
ancient, sun-baked descendant
of the Earth’s naval
A toothless, painless smile
It must have been different
before we came
with money the color of unpicked rice
Now I hear your belly-groan
Between the perfectly fitted stones
of Sacsayhuaman
My voice bounces circular
off invisible walls
because your magic has survived you
Macchu Picchu
Unknown and majestic
Hidden from blood
from the stink of vultures
No more
Black raven feather
drops on my skull
floats on the shiny gray stone
under my feet
which are wrapped in dried, brown skin
naked, without a heartbeat
It’s past sunrise
the tourist bus has arrived
and the flat shadow of the crowd
blocks the light of the ascending sun
that tries to penetrate
the perfect holes
of a perfect wall
in an imperfect dream
Aug 13, 2014
Aug 13, 2014 at 3:28 PM UTC
You're my solitude, my course
The majestic random
Violins in the Penumbra
Roars of Gogin
My imperial dark light
Wisdom of the Incas
I see thy empty soul
You're the soul
My sickness, disease
Fevers
And the onomastic music begun
Jun 4, 2013
Jun 4, 2013 at 3:10 PM UTC
You unwrapped my blind fold
I could only see this mess of deconstructed bones
The smog filled my bleeding nostrils
I gasped to know the truth of a world rotating in circumvention
Tangents of humiliation
A crab crawls back into its used receptacle
It does not have to face the uneven shadows
Fairy wings brittle and break
The ashes of frightened unicorns
Paths off way far into the emasculated jungle
Hidden silences wielded in your depth
Machines and paper plates
The trees of battered car horns and biohazard bags
The stereotypical infantile jungle world
Without the echoes of the children you never should have had
Mary prostitutes herself on the corner
The Holy Ghost burns unnoticed
Please let us go back to a time
When we could sit still without retrograding voices
Telling us to progress and revolve
We can no longer feel awesomed in the presence of a structural anomaly
One that had never lived or breathed
Or failed
We were on the verge of a revolution
Before they took our fairytales away
The myths were replaced with shear and utter disgust
For the entire human community
Let us retreat to the forest of Incas and attack dogs
For we can not have a revolution of one.
Nov 30, 2010
Nov 30, 2010 at 9:22 AM UTC
It was a five finger discount
Just a benign theft
It wasn't hurting anyone
Besides, it was going to look good in my breakfast nook
I put on my "cross your heart" seat belt and jetted home
It was a beautiful coffee mug crafted by Incas
It wasn't like I looted the store
I now refer to it as my stolen-Incan made-oversized coffee mug
But I guess I should have seen the warning label
"ATTENTION THIEF, THIS MUG IS CURSED BY ANCIENT SPIRITS! AND IF YOU DARE KEEP THIS MUG ALL THINGS DRANK OUT OF IT WILL CAUSE YOU HORRIBLE PAIN AND SUFFERING"
Now every time I have my morning coffee it either tips over on to my lap or gives me a sudden case of the runs
Jun 26, 2014
Jun 26, 2014 at 8:25 PM UTC
I question how they took the trail here
How many men it took
And did many die trying
I question their strength
Are they a breed of superhuman?
To build such weight at this height
I would question why here
If the views did not speak the answer already
And for knowing their mountainous belief
But how is my biggest question
Just really how did they make it possible
For this path should fall to its' death
I give the Incas questions
But moreover I give them my greatest respect
Feb 25, 2014
Feb 25, 2014 at 12:44 PM UTC
In thousands and thousands of years,
our successors, who or whatever they are,
won’t just find our bones.
They’re going to find our living rooms,
our I-pods, coffee mugs,
suitcases, post-it notes.
The quiet little things that become our lives,
and they’ll look at each other, our successors,
and they’ll think: ‘how charming…how primitive they lived.
This is what they wore on their feet,
and this is the thing they used to listen to music
with before they had the microchips implanted.”
But it makes me think.
This is exactly what we say now
…about the Greeks, the Mesopotamians,
the Incas, Mayas,
all the loin-cloth wearers.
We talk about them
like they were exempt
from unremarkable daily existences,
that their run-of-the mill equivalences’ to Tuesdays
were filled with human sacrifices,
complex rituals and **** like that.
We never talk about how they must have felt exactly like we do now…
We never talk about how they could have easily felt alone in a crowd,
or how they could have felt unrequited love.
They’re always talked about like they were better or worse than we are.
But I think we’re really just exactly the same as them.
Sep 27, 2010
Sep 27, 2010 at 6:36 PM UTC
El agua la manda el cielo,
la tierra la puso dios.
Viene el amo y me la quita,
¡la p...ita que se partió!
A ver, respóndame, hermano:
si esta fue tierra ´e los incas
¿de donde hay dueños de fincas
con títulos en la mano?
Pa mí que al pobre serrano
le vienen tomando el pelo.
Acequia, puquio, riachuelo
todo en títulos se fragua.
¿De ´onde tiene dueño l´agua?
¡el agua la manda el cielo!
Y por último, los incas
no han sido los más primeros;
antes los huancas ´stuvieron
y antes que ellos los mochicas.
Ora hay haciendas tan ricas
pa sólo un dueño o pa dos
y gritan a toda voz
que heredaron de su padre...
¡Que no me vengan, compadre,
la tierra la puso Dios!
Donde no hay minas de gringos
hay tierras de gamonales,
pagan míseros jornales
y te andan a los respingos.
Se trabaja los domingos
Más pior que en tiempo ´e la mita.
Y hasta si tengo cholita
para mi pobre querer,
por el gusto de ...poder
viene el amo y me la quita.
Creo que, ultimadamente,
debiera ser propietario
quien fecunda el suelo agrario
con el sudor de su frente.
Así espera nuestra gente
y así mesmo espero yo.
Y así ha de ser, pues si no
a gringos y gamonales
vamo a recontrasacarle
¡la p... ita que se partió!
1.1k
the lost city of the Incas,
survives and breathes
with this cataclysmic vegetation
still malignant and undying
to conjure divinity
for those lack,
in the purest form,
it awed Neruda and Che
with the shimmer of the first light,
the smell is a poisonous offering,
the view is like an unforgotten love,
most of the nights in my sleep
I come back from there
and some of the nights
I wish I could never.
Jul 5, 2017
Jul 5, 2017 at 6:24 AM UTC
Hay un tropel de potros sobre la pampa inmensa.
¿Es Pan que se incorpora? No: es un hombre que piensa,
es un hombre que tiene una lira en la mano:
él viene del azul, del sol, del Océano.
Trae encendida en vida su palabra potente
y concreta el decir de todo un continente...
Tal vez es desigual... (¡El Pegaso da saltos!)
Tal vez es tempestuoso... (¡Los Andes son tan altos!...)
Pero hay en este verso tan vigoroso y terso
una sangre que apenas veréis en otro verso;
una sangre que cuando en la estrofa circula,
como la luz penetra y como la onda ondula...
Pegaso está contento, Pegaso piafa y brinca,
porque Pegaso pace en los prados del inca.
Y este fuerte poeta de alma tan ardorosa
sabe bien lo que cuentan los labios de la rosa,
comprende las dulzuras del panel y comprende
lo que dice la abeja del secreto del duende...
Pero su brazo es para levantar la trompeta
hacia donde se anuncia la aurora del Profeta;
es hecho para dar a la virtud del viento
la expresión del terrible clarín del pensamiento.
Él sabe de Amazonas, Chimborazos y Andes.
Siempre blande su verso para las cosas grandes.
Va como Don Quijote en ideal campaña,
vive de amor de América y de pasión de España;
y envuelto en armonía y en melodía y canto,
tiene rasgos de héroe y actitudes de santo.
«¿Me permites, Chocano, que como amigo fiel,
te ponga en el ojal esta hoja de laurel?»
Tal dije cuando don J. Santos Chocano,
último de los incas, se tornó castellano.
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