The Mayas of Colemnar Viejo for the last twilight hours
of early May exist in mature thoughts, statues unable to address
the questions designed to unseat their repose from  
spectators marching  into shadows.  By night they will
know the answers that will secret their lives, grateful for
Ermita de Remedios for the revelation and insight that will
allow them to play until the miracle appears. Their mothers
will bless them, remembering their time when it was their duty
to stay still enough to hear God breathe and acknowledge
the old beehive for pollinating wildflowers for their throne.

The Mayas flower with the secret whispers passed down
from grandmothers to mothers to daughters from before
when Maia echoed to a month, when she was the very flow
of the vegetable world, the monthly blood, Pleiades nights,
the first fingers of cotton lavender, narcissus, spurge,
and hyacinth poking the spring bloom with shy joy, until
adult enough to be a proper escort for  mute child queens.
Her aura surrounds the Mayas, a halo echoing earth, sky
and sun, the unnoticed slow revolve of all repose
only noticed in the dissolve from night to day.

The tapestries are heirlooms: two borrowed from
a photographer’s closet, one unfolded in the attic,
another a dust collector hung to cover a wall crack,
and the last, depicting a  tangle of horsed knights
in a tropical land on a royal leopard and lion hunt,
ancient enough to have kissed the walls of twenty houses
and become familiar with a dozen Last  Suppers.
Every house in Colemnar Viejo blessed with a nina
has a tapestry with a true or mythic history
suitable enough to be a Maya dreamscape.

The Mayas are serenaded by a brass band attired in paunchy black and white
that parades from pose to pose playing canciones praising  their beauty and style.
They wear relics carefully preserved and handed down: white petticoats
and shirts, Manila shawls of celestial yellow, blue heaven, weeping black,
vibrant Spanish carnations, and pure white, eloquently tied in the back.
Clustered around the town’s center the Mayas can see all the others
solemnly carved in silence and slow time, know that the basilica beyond
houses forever the crying ****** and the anguished Christ surrounded
in golden murals and feel the sadness  that in minutes the frozen
can only watch them freely move, dance and play.

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 ****-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.

Mil quinientos treinta y siete.
Julio. Sol vivo y radiante
En claro azul ilumina
El Valle de los Alcázares.
En la llanura no hay oro
Ni esmeraldas. Sólo hambre.

Del botín que recogieron
Cada cual tomó su parte.
Para Fernández de Lugo
Raudos mensajeros salen
Con oro y gemas, lo suyo,
Y con los quintos reales.
Y aquellos soldados rasos
Que mal cubrían sus carnes
Con harapos, y en Castilla
En algún feliz instante
Sólo unos ochavos vieron
Como premio a sus afanes,
Tejos de oro bien esconden
De compañeros rapaces,
Y si hambre sienten ahora,
Pensando en sus pegujales
Olvidan viejas angustias,
Pues ya se ven por las calles
De Madrid o de Sevilla
Luciendo vistosos trajes,
O requiriendo de amores
A las manolas ya amables,
Y que antes a sus requiebros
Respondían con desaires;
O bien de dones oyéndose
Llamar, con aire arrogante,
Porque es baldón la pobreza
Y el oro las puertas abre.

Viendo gordos los caballos
Quesada, y a sus infantes
Aburridos, y perdiendo
Sus tejos junto a los naipes,
Su ocupación sólo entonces,
Y estando quietos los sables,
Una expedición ordena
A la tierra de los panches.

El Capitán Juan de Céspedes
Con unos valientes sale
Por tierra de «sutagaos».
Marcha y se traba el combate.
Con flechas envenenadas
Caballos e infantes caen.
No es ésta la raza muisca:
En sus venas otra sangre
Corre. Batalla dudosa
En los ásperos breñales,
Hasta que rueda el Cacique
De lanzada formidable.

¡Sangre de panches ardiente
Como fuego de volcanes!
Triunfó al fin España... pero
Sobre el último cadáver!

Y Quesada cavilaba:
¿Qué montañas o qué valles
Ocultarán en sus vetas
Las esmeraldas radiantes
Que he visto ante mí, suspenso,
En diademas y collares?
¿Cerca?... ¿Lejos? Pues si es lejos
No importa arriesgado viaje.
Esmeraldas son ducados
Y ducados son alcázares;
Vestes de grana en la Corte
Y de nobles homenaje.

Y de pronto, por un indio,
Dónde está la mina sabe.
¡Somondoco! A Somondoco
Van y socavones abren;
Y a las piedras adheridas
Aparecen destacándose
En claroscuro las gemas,
Que entre perlas y diamantes
Habrán de ser en el mundo
Gala en coronas reales.

Otro secreto los indios
Guardaban, secreto grave,
Pero logró descubrirlo
Deuda de vertida sangre.
Rey en dominios potente
Gobernaba extenso valle,
Dueño de ricos tesoros
Y súbditos a millares;


Su nombre, Quimuinchateca,
De Tunja temido Zaque.
Y a vencer ya acostumbrados,
Todos para Tunja parten.
Con regalos detenerlos
Quiso y corteses mensajes,
Pues tiempo ganar quería
Para llevar a distante
Lugar sus riquezas todas;
Pero avanzaron.
La tarde
Iluminaba el palacio;
El cercado roto cae,
Y en los muros planchas de oro
Vivo incendio fingen, ante
Los rojizos resplandores
Del sol, ya pronto a apagarse.

Acero en mano, Quesada
Entra con diez oficiales;
De sus enormes espuelas
Las rodajas y los sables,
Y sus cascos y sus cotas
Y sus barbados semblantes,
Y el relinchar en el patio,
No amedrentaron al Zaque.
Quesada intenta abrazarlo;
Nunca lo ha tocado nadie.
Los nobles y guardias gritan
Ante ese inaudito ultraje.
Crece el tumulto. Y entonces
Antón de Olalla, el semblante
Adusto, y de brazo fuerte
Al Zaque agarra. Salvaje
Gritería oyose... Todo
Por libertarlo fue en balde,
Y a un aposento contiguo
Fue entre arcabuces y sables.

Esforzados en la guerra,
Y ante el peligro tenaces,
Y con la muerte ceñuda
En desafío constante,
Pero siempre sed de oro
En sus almas, insaciable,
Al Templo del Sol, a Iraca,
Parten jinetes e infantes.

Más oro... más esmeraldas..
Ayer contra los alfanges
Agarenos y un ochavo
Como premio en los combates.
Ahora... esmeraldas y oro...
¿Quién podría creer antes
Que pedigüeños de antaño
Llegaran a ser magnates?

El templo de Sugamuxi! . . .
Allá en el fondo del valle,
Va apareciendo imponente:
El más rico y el más grande
De toda la raza muisca,
Templo de gruesos pilares,
Y de muros recamados
De petos de oro, en que el arte
De orfebres chibchas, serpientes,
Ranas, ciervos, tigres y aves
Grabó; donde el Gran Pontífice
Al sol le rinde homenaje,
Todo cubierto de blanco
Mientras aroma de gaque
Sube de los pebeteros
Al son de mayas cantares
Que por tradición se guardan
En un extraño lenguaje
-Tal vez el que habló Bochica
En muy remotas edades-
-Cantares que entonan vírgenes
Trenzando rítmico baile,
Ante enorme sol de oro
Que ciega por fulgurante.

Llegaron todos al frente
Del templo, al caer la tarde.
Mañana, dijo Quesada
Será nuestro día grande...
¡A dormir y a soñar todos!
Y que Fray Domingo alabe
Al cielo, que aquí nos manda,
Entre peligros y afanes,
Para enseñar a estos indios
Que el amontonar caudales,
Habiendo en el mundo pobre,
Es pecado imperdonable.

Y en tanto que todos duermen,
Dos soldados deslizándose
Entre las sombras penetran
Al templo. De seca y frágil
Paja, llevan dos hachones
Encendidos; fulgurantes
Radian las paredes. Oro,
Más oro y gemas vivaces;
Todo parece en las sombras
Como una aurora que arde.

De las manos de uno de ellos
Un hachón al suelo cae,
Porque ante tanta riqueza
Helada siente la sangre.
Se incendia el tapiz de esparto,
El fuego al santuario invade,
Rápido salta a los muros
Y a cortinas y a pilares;
Aprisa los dos soldados
Entre el fuego ruta se abren
Y entre el fuego, Sugamuxi
Es llamarada radiante.

Quesada y su tropa sueñan;
El paraíso se abre
En su soñar. Esmeraldas
Y oro ven, en manantiales
Que corren y corren. Oro,
Y esmeraldas en sus márgenes;
Selvas con gemas por hojas,
Y frutas de oro en los árboles...

La voz de incendio de pronto
Oyen. Aterrados salen.
Gran resplandor cubre el cielo;
De humo tromba formidable
Asciende. Los indios lanzan
Alaridos por las calles.

Y Quesada, en tanto, mira
Las llamas, mudo y exánime,
Cual si el infierno en la tierra
Hubiera abierto sus fauces.

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?

... to my Hello Poetry friends...

This is my third post of
Loving thanks.

Perhaps in time i will come back...

Svere G Holter
Poetic T
mark cleavenger
Impeccable Space
Sjr1000
Mayas
Pamela Rae
Marguerite

I'm in much physical and mental and emotional pain right now.  Please pray for me... and another prayer for my parents and another special someone

THANKS FOR ALL YOU SHARED WITH ME... YOU WILL BE MISSED.

Love
Catherine

More tributes...

I just could not leave out, forget
People I haven't mentioned yet
There are more than just a few
This site is HUGE! What can I do?

I want to include VIPs today
The first is Arlo Disarray!
I like this poet, I feel led
To mention Better Days Ahead!

Cecil Miller... his work is fine
Sverre G Holter's poems unwind
The smart *** rabbi can talk a line
Impeccable Space
Can blow your mind!

Here's a poet who i prize
That is WendyStarry Eyes
Alex Rubio, terrin leigh
I want to mention them TODAY!

Nicole Ashley, Mayas TOO!
Leo Kendrick, I like you
Danzel's writes about Greek myths
Wordvango has got a gift...

And here's to a poetfriend
Kenneth Irving MacPherson!
If I could do all this again
To EVERYONE my love I'd send!


♥ Catherine
aka SoulSurvivor

SORCERER 3
            We’ll break our seal and thus unpen
            Two breeds of vision we may show:

SORCERER 1
            The first of these, and you might know
            Your fate, engraven by your star-
            Which fortune gods permit or bar.

SORCERER 2
            But why disturb your dreamy sleeps
            To know your death-date daily creeps?

SORCERER 3
            It finds us all, and- though you hate it-
            Since what must be, shall be, await it.

SORCERER 1
            The second brand of prophecy
            Is not what will, but what may be.

SORCERER 2
            Yet what might not? Our lord can see
            These “what-if” figments well as we:
            Might not strange soldiers from the waves
            Rise forth to claim our sires for slaves,
            As, for their footstool, bows our liege,
            Exempt from their street-sweeping siege?

SORCERER 3
            And yet, might not our lord disband
            Such aliens, overcreep our land,
            And rig mean regions to his suit,
            The mumbling Mayas render mute,
            The frostbit northern climes to claim,
            And sway the fitful gods to frame
            His portrait in a constellation?
            What fate might not recast his nation?

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.

Eventually
The End's gonna come inevitably.

So,
your mayas can't insult me
I'm untouchable
Your lies & screams won't affect me
                                       won't touch me
For I am dwelling in abstraction
I am hidden in atomic world
I'm it and it's me

CORTÉS
            How now? What’s the debate?

AGUILAR                                              The­ Inquisition:
            It’s linked itself with tethers to our church,
            Like two, aloof, reluctant mountaineers.
            I fear, when that unholy office trips,
            And plummets in the popular regard,
            Its drop down estimation’s precipice
            Will pull down our religion in its tow.

OLMEDO
            We cavil, boys, as if there were two Spains.

CORTÉS
            One good, one evil?

OLMEDO                              Not so simple. Yet,
            One, global-bent, one isolationist,
            One liberal, one counter to reform,
            One, eyeing Greece, one stirring with the Moors,
            Who, like the fatal twins of Oedipus,
            Will not consent to reign in tandem more,
            But rather wound each other mortally.
            In Europe, there’s a word in currency:
            Renaissance- It is not a Spanish word,
            And there’s a reason.

CORTÉS                                And it is?

OLMEDO                                               Some flaw
            In Spain’s own character that’s culpable-
            Catholic fanaticism, feverish pride,
            Or warped deliriums of vanity.
            We thought we were the new elect of God,
            Mistook our patriotic egoism
            For fealty to the church. Hence, our divorce
            And isolation from the rest of Europe.

CORTÉS
            No, it’s not Spain, not Catholics, nor our race,
            But frailties of the human constitution,
            Which frequently reverse the gains achieved
            By previous generations, in the name
            Of progress, culture, and civility.                          Trumpet is heard.
            A parley sounds! See what those Mayas want.

Time is a face that lies still on the water
Zellfain's light burst the barrier clouds
From mayas pool grew there a sapling
Zelmaya the tree of life where we began
The essence of two
coiled in blood and bone
Leaf  sap wind and stone*
The light of sun on darkened ground
In this tree a balance found
*That is why we live and die
Love and cry
Laugh and sigh
All within zelmaya's eye

imagine this
you awoke to the chirping of mayas,
to the crowing of your neighbor’s chickens,
to the sound of vehicles jolting by the holes

you felt the amber light of sun,
kissing your cheeks
while it exposed the spiders forming
cobwebs on the corners of your room

what a pleasant day, wasn’t it?
to see children by the street
playing patintero
while you watered the bougainvilleas
your mother loved better than you

then you remembered it was Saturday again
and a friend’s mother would come,
selling a basket of bananacues

you quickly grabbed a copy of Jessica Zafra
from your bookshelf with a collection
of novels that you bought
from pickpocketing your father

you marched your way
down to your living area
through the stairs filled
with potted pothos and jade plants
your mother treated like little kids

today must be beautiful. you thought.
so you checked your phone,
hoping for an invitation to a beach.
because why not?
with this sky reminiscent of turquoise,
your skin yearned for the sun

instead of an invitation,
a forwarded message
popped in your screen:
the fourth murderr of the month.

a man shot dead in broad daylight
along the diversion road
in a barrio next to yours.

the spot turned red
as the blood of the man streamed
like a draining river.
people circled the murdered
as if it was news to them.
reality was, it had become a norm

gunshot after gunshot.
you heard them like bad songs on a stereo
and how could you turn it off? stop it?
you had no idea

you see, waking up
in this beautiful island is a bliss.
you get to watch the cinematic view
of a horizon where the sky kisses the sea,
while you stand firm on the pristine shores,
listening to the gentle rustle of palm trees

yet it was only a facade

on this island, where shores shimmer
like jewelry and lush greenery
abounds in beauty,
lies a darker truth

while the murdered men sleep
in agony of injustice,
the culprits loiter in this island,
smoking, plotting the next fire

i sometimes drift into
memories of love

          illegible conciousness

oh Venus
my sweet *****
you're never easy
always mutilating
those archives of the heart
with their inky Rorschach's
and blood drop tears
that needle eyes
like burning hell
bare and bent
in a dazzling labor
of marshy dahlia lips

       cleaver teeth to tear

the world spins
synoptic nightmares
beyond critiques paradox
in quarries of
****** sacrifice
dead goats
and karmas black militant columns
baring a thousand scourges
in condemnation
of Mayas colossal shadows

       i depend on her

docile bodies
rise from immortal beds
covered in drapes
over slattern harams   
in hallucinatory temples
that make me pause
jinxed
and fall from myself
into your moist
timeless root
of dreams

       dust through my fingers

odalisques move
in binding layers
****** and shuddering
concubines in mills of lust
that smear
chiaroscuros-laden shades

      a blood stained door marked no exit

i speak
unspeakable tenderness
to the sacred Goddess
displacing the steep lead pit of sighs
and saturating gravity
towards crystal fountain showers
heavenward
in the religion of no religion

      Gods your daddy

i move
trigger - coiled
past retinas intake
from the sacral
through the crown

      om shanti om

am i not
this spume-brained monkey
both primal and sacred
vibrating arcane chants
in windowed clouds Samadhi
and clinging breathless breath

      what ever you think the opposite is true

am i not this atheist
drinking from her
slippery cup
where miracles leap
plump and smiling
as she holds my head
into her weeping ache

       i am red  with love

are we not all
the ineffable one
among the multitudes

      one hand clapping

what use is obedience
to lore and dogma
or whether the
God that burns in you
believes in God at all

      people who believe in God have no faith