"motecuhzoma" poems
SORCERER 1
Fell prince, what can we say? Shall we
Wring fingers, gazing nervously
Into our black, obsidian mirror?
SORCERER 2
Or, in our water jugs, to peer,
Unbinding and retying twine,
In hope epiphanies shall shine?
SORCERER 3
Or shall we three, like puzzling mages,
Cast bright corn-kernels ‘cross the pages
Of scripture, wincing to descry
Some omen there?
SORCERER 1 Or shall we lie?
SORCERER 2
Were not your lethal gaze forbidden,
Our eyes from yours no longer hidden,
SORCERER 3
These mirrors unfilmed to windows-
SORCERER 1 Wink
We not, you might their contents drink.
They look at Motecuhzoma.
TLACAELEL
Bold, brass, and bungling open-sesames,
Whose saucy tongues shall spice my hangman’s stew,
You dare let sink your cataracted gaze
Upon the solar luminance of our king?
Who meets these eyes, beholds the face of death.
MOTECUHZOMA
Shackles shall seal their eyes. Clap them away.
My hopes were stillborn by these blind-man’s bluffs.
SORCERER 1
A grand charade shall come to pass,
As marching mysteries amass,
And urgently these lurkings gather.
SORCERER 2
If that is what your lord had rather
Hear from us, so be it, then.
SORCERER 3
We’ll break our seal and thus unpen
Two breeds of vision we may show:
Oct 23, 2016
Oct 23, 2016 at 1:02 PM UTC
MOTECUHZOMA
They say the first, inchoate age of man
Met its demise by monsters from the earth,
The second, brought extinct through violent winds,
The third by fire, the fourth by worldwide floods.
This fifth and final age, as we all know,
By earthquakes’ rampant motion shall dissolve.
And yet, who could foresee this cataclysm
Would find its epicenter in this room?
For now my oscillation shakes the realm,
My rattling teeth, my quivering, palsied hands,
The fearful quaking of my feeble knees,
So agitates the contents of the earth
To pitch its crust in spasms to a wrack,
And crack the planetary fundament.
Ach, what a bandied shuttlecock I’ve been!
But from henceforth, by heaven’s crowded hall,
I’ll shake my feeble fears, or rattle all. Exit.
Aug 11, 2017
Aug 11, 2017 at 3:49 PM UTC
TLACAELEL [to audience as spectators]
Hear ye! Of these five games, his majesty
The emperor has won the first two rounds,
And Hungry Prince has crowned the third and fourth.
Who takes this final set will clinch the match.
HUNGRY PRINCE [aside to Motecuhzoma]
Motecuhzoma, why not call it quits,
While thus we tilt in equilibrium,
So time may be arrested in his stride,
And nothing will be proven to your loss.
MOTECUHZOMA
Oh yes, well, well you should prevaricate,
Since you recoil, and your horoscope
Is but a bunk, evasive, spurious sham.
HUNGRY PRINCE
We used to sport like willful brothers once.
This pointless schism scathes me to the core.
MOTECUHZOMA
Play on! Your grace, equip him for the serve.
PRIEST OF TLALOC
Behold this little token of a ball-
Through this ordeal, symbolic of the sun
When- swallowed nightly by the earth’s dark mouth-
He spars with demons of the underworld,
To birth anew at dawn. So does this sphere,
Across the blood-bathed flagstones of this court.
Regard it so. The gods assort you both.
To one: bask in divine approval’s nod,
The other: dark ignominy. Engage!
He throws the ball to HUNGRY PRINCE. MOTECUHZOMA and HUNGRY PRINCE leave the stage separately.
TLACAELEL
A solid serve.
PRIEST OF TLALOC A capital return.
TLACAELEL
These salt-and-pepper gents belie their age.
Look how they swoop, like eagles bloody-beaked.
PRIEST OF TLALOC
Our monarch springs, a glistening dynamo.
TLACAELEL
And his contender sheds years as he runs.
Tell me, your eminence,
What are your sentiments on Hungry Prince?
PRIEST OF TLALOC
Though not a brilliant statesman, he remains
The most perceptive prophet of the earth,
With whom the gods must share their captain’s logs,
His auspices so rarely miss their mark.
TLACAELEL
You’d buy his soothsaying?
PRIEST OF TLALOC I'd say I would.
TLACAELEL
That’s to the heart of this imbroglio.
PRIEST OF TLALOC
What is the real dispute, then, of this duel?
TLACAELEL
You’d know their true contention?
PRIEST OF TLALOC Tell me.
TLACAELEL So . . .
Oct 12, 2016
Oct 12, 2016 at 3:11 PM UTC
MOTECUHZOMA
I stand here, lords, a humbled man, to bow
Before divine arbitrament with you.
Tell me the damage of my botchery,
And do not let my title tie your tongue.
Unfold his ballot, and unveil my doom.
TLACAELEL
Great Speaker of the state of Mexico,
It is my solemn duty to report
That, by the power vested to my role
In this most sacred trial by tournament,
Your bounty due unto this king shall be . . .
[Opens the second wager.]
Three turkey ***** of prime and grade-A stock.
MOTECUHZOMA
You staked your kingdom on three gobbling birds?
Why did you shy to wager higher, man?
HUNGRY PRINCE
My father always warned me, never bet
For more than what you know you might receive.
MOTECUHZOMA
But- grinning simpleton- what will you do
With burlap sacks of poultry for a prize?
HUNGRY PRINCE
Why, I’ll farm out a new triumvirate.
The old one closed from lack of membership.
MOTECUHZOMA
Not hamstrung by a certain turkey’s qualms?
HUNGRY PRINCE
But poachered by the greater gobbler.
MOTECUHZOMA
So you shall never gain my kingdom now.
HUNGRY PRINCE
And you can never keep your kingdom now.
MOTECUHZOMA
That fails to follow. Who could rival me?
HUNGRY PRINCE
You’ll follow my allusion soon enough,
Once your own subjects fail to follow you.
MOTECUHZOMA
Fool! What I banked on was your fantasy.
HUNGRY PRINCE
Friend, what you staked on was my prophecy,
And what I prophesied, the gods confirm
By our ill-tilting trial in this field.
I have foretold your empire shall be lost,
And lost it shall be, to my heart’s dismay.
And therefore, farewell Mexico! Or else,
Farewell, Motecuhzoma. I’m afraid
One must be sacrificed to speed the other.
MOTECUHZOMA
Why know you not, straw man, I am the empire.
My doctrines are her laws; her braves, my brawn.
It is my veins her riches run through, sir,
And when she prays, it is my vows she breathes.
HUNGRY PRINCE
But when she suffers, you repose and dream,
And when she starves, her rumblings go unheard,
As you crack crab shells at the groaning board.
A pretty study, then, in symbiosis.
MOTECUHZOMA
Why bandy taunts with this malingerer?
Let’s penitently tender sacrifice,
And leave this dreamer to his reveries.
It seems such visions reign these days.
Oct 14, 2016
Oct 14, 2016 at 3:59 PM UTC
MOTECUHZOMA
Our priests have proven green and tenderfoot
By goggling at our late, ill auguries:
Dumbfounded, counselless, they scan their toes.
For this have I agreed to pawn my pride
In dabbling with questionable cures
By calling forth the aid of sorcerers.
PRIEST OF TLALOC
Dread lord, how might your grace with confidence
Place mercenary warlocks in your trust,
Who twist their gifts toward late-night banditry,
It’s said, to paralyze their shaky preys.
Tezcatlipoca, our capricious master,
Might cloud our muddy minds yet murkier
For slumping to such dubious helps as these
If they make mock of his peculiar knowings.
TLACAELEL
Don’t worry. If they cool your fevered fears
We’ll hail their hocus-pocus as white physic.
If not, then as black fiends in iron they’ll rot.
MOTECUHZOMA
Bring in these esoteric ministers.
A guard leads in three Sorcerers
You three obscure and dicing conjurers:
Have you beheld grim omens in the clouds,
Or prodigies upon the earth? You three,
Who fathom ‘neath earth’s black and gem-jammed caverns
To skim atop cold pools of stone-blind fish
And witness those who have not winked at day;
Who sink into the water’s murky deeps,
And loiter drowsily among the weeds,
Mustering fronds and nightshades for your charms.
PRIEST OF TLALOC
Have you encountered stray and mongreled men?
Or lightless nooks congeal as dead men’s shades?
Or midnight women, crablike, creep in broods?
Shall we be leveled flat by strange disease,
Or locusts, pirating their greedy shares?
From sudden deaths, from wars or wild beasts?
Shall rainstorms sink our rooftops down to jetties,
And Tlaloc drown us in a tide of bounty,
Or broil us in cruel sabbatical?
MOTECUHZOMA
You must not candy up **** truth for me.
Have you not heard our thirsting goddess cry,
And nightly croaking from the earth’s deep faults?
Oct 21, 2016
Oct 21, 2016 at 12:37 PM UTC
MOTECUHZOMA
There is a third chance-medley you omit:
The several forking paths of fortune’s walks.
Seeing a panther lurking on my left,
Would you not show your lord the right-hand path?
When looking back, we do not note that fork,
Yet fate allows some swing for the intrepid.
SORCERER 2
To cure these feline fears, don’t run
From either, or your jaunt is done.
But left and right will both hold good,
If you’re the panther in the wood.
SORCERER 1
Ah, brother, who are we to armor
Arguments against this charmer?
What use, to change into a cat
As we can? He can diplomat
His way through spells, and alchemize
Pure, golden truths from steely lies.
SORCERER 2
From impotence to abstinence,
Humility from arrogance,
Plunder into philanthropy,
And sadism to justice.
SORCERER 3 See?
No bird bones nor no wands are heeded,
Only no character is needed.
ALL SORCERERS
All hail the high and mighty mage,
The gazing stock of this flat age!
MOTECUHZOMA
Cart off to jail these jaunting cavaliers!
Let them chirp out their pert remarks through bridles,
And fix their flippant eyes on cold stone floors.
Sans voice, sans books, sans tricky hands, we’ll see
What muffled incantations might avail.
Guards exit with the Sorcerers.
PRIEST OF TLALOC
These were but three. More might more prophets know.
TLACAELEL
Well, these ones missed the mark.
MOTECUHZOMA I fear not so.
All exit.
Oct 29, 2016
Oct 29, 2016 at 12:57 PM UTC
CUITLAHUAC
It’s said Huitzilopochtli’s temple burns.
PRIEST OF TLALOC
It does so, to the sinking of my gut.
Great rains of sparks dripped on his chapel’s thatch,
Which torched our war god’s crematory pyre,
And lit the flabbergasted rabble’s face,
Their eyes and open mouths like perfect ‘O’s.
Afar, the old, old fire god, aloof,
And chortling at his native element,
Was in his shrine extinguished nonetheless
When shards of lightning from a cloudless sky
Forked up his walls. It seems the gods contend,
And waste their earthly halls as game-board chips.
CUITLAHUAC
Have you beheld the floods?
PRIEST OF TLALOC No. Floods? The floods?
CUITLAHUAC
The boundless lake that rounds our rafty town
Shrugged off her boiling banks, uncorked her wrath,
And, in a breaker to out-swell the sea,
Has drowned our residential waterfront.
House after house bobs in a flotsam fleet-
A drear, domestic archipelago.
PRIEST OF TLALOC
What does the emperor your brother say
Of these most inauspicious auguries?
CUITLAHUAC
It’s in the bag and in the box with him.
He closets up his fear in trumped-up shrugs.
And yet I can not blame his fickleness.
If judgment’s based on past experience,
How to interpret, then, such spectacles,
When what is weighed has never once before
Been seen or rumored in the known-of world?
PRIEST OF TLALOC
Lord Tlacaelel claims that Hungry Prince
Tonight held council with the emperor,
To state his gloss on these phenomena.
CUITLAHUAC
He stands on shaky ground. How did he fare?
PRIEST OF TLALOC
Like to a hummingbird trapped in a hive.
Motecuhzoma’s bellows rattled rafters.
He challenged him at dawn to the arena.
The sacred ball-game shall resolve their feud.
CUITLAHUAC
The stakes?
PRIEST OF TLALOC Unknown, but speculated high.
CUITLAHUAC
We’ll meet then in the morning at the court.
PRIEST OF TLALOC
Let’s get inside, lest Tlaloc should suspect
We dare the tempest-tosser to his worst. They exit.
Oct 11, 2016
Oct 11, 2016 at 12:38 PM UTC
TLACAELEL
The weeks since last we met found Hungry Prince
Of late locked in his tower, casting scrolls
Which chart the star-crossed charms of the occult.
And in the predawn darkness of his arts,
He broke through to a voice from the beyond
Which whispered that the throne of Mexico
Must soon come to be ruled by foreigners.
PRIEST OF TLALOC
And thus the emperor submits to trial,
And these, their wagers, are red herrings, then.
TLACAELEL
To spare us the demoralizing news.
The spirits’ hands will steer them to reveal
If this prognostication failed or not.
PRIEST OF TLALOC
The ***** in motion. Let the gods decide.
TLACAELEL
Motecuhzoma falls! The ball is down! The ball is down!
PRIEST OF TLALOC
Dust rises, and our lord is lost to view!
TLACAELEL
Three in a row! Were we left hanging, then,
For torturers to **** by small and small?
MOTECUHZOMA and HUNGRY PRINCE reappear.
MOTECUHZOMA [aside]
I’ve lost then, but the full significance
Of that word “lost” I’ve yet begun to know.
Gods need not lie, and here we have their words.
Well, let it come. [to Tlacaelel] Unseal the wagers, lord,
And read before these noble witnesses
The stakes we trusted to you at the serve.
TLACAELEL
First, the abortive fee for Hungry Prince:
King of Texcoco, had this victory
Been won by his imperial majesty,
And you had failed, your forfeiture had been . . .
[Opens the first wager.]
The loss of all your lands, your courts, your throne,
And all, for your opponent’s acquisition,
Decoronation to a common man,
And forced prostration to this gentleman.
HUNGRY PRINCE
A staggering ransom! I must thank the gods,
Not for their championing me, but truth.
Oct 13, 2016
Oct 13, 2016 at 4:14 PM UTC
TEUHTLILLI
Then down to brass tacks: These wan wanderers
Indeed match those who skimmed our shores last year.
See- Here’s my schoolyard scribbling of their looks:
MOTECUHZOMA
What are these? Iron pipes on lumbering wheels?
TEUHTLILLI
A roaring, dragon-mouthed machine of war,
Whose entrails discharge hails of shooting stars.
When leveled at a mountain’s rocky crags,
The cliff face cracked, disgorging its rich veins,
Then, splintered into chips a knotted pine.
Their porters picked their teeth with the remains,
Like sullied spirits in a sulfurous haze.
MOTECUHZOMA
What is this shambling menagerie?
TEUHTLILLI
Some over-magnifying strain of hound,
Whose urine-yellow eyes flash sparks of flame,
And lolling tongues lob down to glut for blood.
MOTECUHZOMA
And these? Some hybrid hash of man and stag?
TEUHTLILLI
No, sire, but merely stilted, toothy does
That suffer men to play at pick-a-back.
Their plate-wide hooves dig wells at each impress,
And lofty eyes peep over the city walls.
MOTECUHZOMA
What is their destination?
TEUHTLILLI Here, my lord.
They’re full of inquiries, but send you gifts:
These chokers of green glass- Quite lovely things.
MOTECUHZOMA
What is the subject of their questions?
TEUHTLILLI You, my lord.
Jun 11, 2017
Jun 11, 2017 at 4:06 PM UTC
TLACAELEL
Two hundred years have we known only strife,
Kept innocent of peace, to fortify
Huitzilopochtli, our grand god of conquest,
Who hoists aloft our death-denying sun
And handsomely escorts him through the east.
Such toil demands the selfless sustenance
Of that most precious sacrifice, our hearts;
Small, hot, red gems- we grant them gratefully.
Our god need not stand waiting for affronts
Or hissing disrespect to rattle arms.
No, rather let us seek convenient markets
Where our Blue Prince of war, when whimsy strikes,
Might carve downed captives to refresh his plate
And tie his bib with dead men’s winding-sheets,
As if he strolled through cheap tortilla stalls,
And clutched our legions for his currency.
To this emporium shall we caravan,
Procuring crocks of blood and priceless hearts
By bartering to swap our solvent lives.
Oh, let it be Tlaxcala, gentlemen!
For if we pitch this depot to the north,
The taxing hike to those unconquered tribes
Should prove an inconvenience to our troops.
Besides, the tough and stringy flesh of those
Bare-bottomed grunts, rock-knocking savages,
Must strike our god as stale as sandal-leather.
Then let Tlaxcalans be his board of fare:
Moist cutlets, fresh and steaming from the range,
Shall furnish forth his sanguinary feasts.
We must not waste these others totally,
But make a handy pantry of this foe,
For war- alone undying- must endure.
CUITLAHUAC
Bravo. I’ll side with you to storehouse them,
So that we hamstring their free trafficking,
And thus declaw our sole belligerent.
TLACAELEL
I’m pleased your verdicts are adaptable.
HUNGRY PRINCE
Either to weaken or to waste this threat,
You’ll have my armies at your hand.
TLACAELEL That's nice.
MOTECUHZOMA
Now, Hungry Prince, let’s brace for weighty words. . .
Oct 6, 2016
Oct 6, 2016 at 12:23 PM UTC
HUNGRY PRINCE
It is the year One-Reed, and on this date
Lord Quetzalcoatl, from this earthly throne,
Long, long ago departed for the East,
And on One-Reed it’s known he will return.
PRIEST OF TLALOC
One-Reed: It is a fatal year for kings.
Our scriptures teach that when a murderous streak
Finds black Tezcatlipoca, lord of chaos,
On year One-Crocodile, he hunts our elders,
One-Jaguar or One-Deer, he claims our children.
But if he strikes on ominous One-Reed,
Death swoops for princes.
MOTECUHZOMA On that jolly note,
I open business for this syndicate,
Myself presiding. All may find their seats.
Now Tlacaelel, venerable friend,
What progress on the state’s scholastic front?
When last we met, the annals of our past
Were deemed due for aesthetic overhaul.
TLACAELEL
Lords, as you know, our eldest histories
Have painted base and barbarous accounts
Of our bewildered, wandering origins
As meek and muddy natives, which- though true-
Do not keep pace with our notorious present.
Those earth-born tracts have all been commandeered
And each one cast to char in heaping bonfires.
Ah, what a purifying blaze that was!
The inks of black and reds were rarefied
To sheets of flame and wells of fluid coals.
Now is our culture cleansed of heresies!
So far from mourning that scholastic loss,
The rabble whooped, and, singing rowdy reels,
Made merry at that bedtime barbecue.
And now, to re-devise those lowly annals,
I move that we enlist our liveliest dreamers
To craft extravagant and stately archives
And claim the pedigree that we deserve.
For what are histories but wrangling theses,
Or dogma, but the darlings of a moment?
So on this same authentic evidence,
Let’s breed imaginary ancestors-
Or ***** their deeds out- with a flourished pen.
Oct 4, 2016
Oct 4, 2016 at 12:22 PM UTC
MOTECUHZOMA
It is their chief that most perplexes me.
Send him my greeting, and convey to him
The gifts I have equipped for your encounter:
A turquoise serpent mask, a pearl-decked shield
With feathered fringe as gossamer as foam,
I’ll send the rain god’s legendary headdress
Of quetzal feathers, green as sprouting grass,
Fine, snail-shell collars, dainty golden bells,
A saffron helmet chased with dazzling stars,
Sandals obsidian-black- What riches more,
I have not breath in this old chest to list.
TEUHTLILLI
By your good will, I might unfold for him
The vestments which are worn by several gods:
Tezcatlipoca’s mirror, and Tlaloc’s jades,
Huitzilopochtli’s gilded helm, and such.
If he reach straight for the regalia
Of Quetzalcoatl- Well, who need say more?
MOTECUHZOMA
A thoughtful move. And, if not gods themselves,
They yet may be our wandering ancestors.
See if their speaker is the picture of
A homeward-bound, long-absent patriarch.
Especially take note if he admits,
Or claims, he is your rightful king. What more?
TEUHTLILLI
Should I purvey a spread of birds and game,
And mark how fluently he dines or not?
If he is from our far-flung lineage,
He ought to be familiar with our fare.
MOTECUHZOMA
Do so. But if, by chance, he shuns your board,
And does not hanker for such bill of fare,
But rumbles with a yen for human flesh,
Why, then allow yourself to be consumed.
I will ensure the welfare of your wife,
And guide your children.
TEUHTLILLI As you wish, my lord. Exit.
Jul 16, 2017
Jul 16, 2017 at 1:24 PM UTC
TLACAELEL
My lord, your wives entreat you to carouse,
And tend a show of juggling acrobats.
MOTECUHZOMA
When work is done. Recall those sorcerers. Exit Servant.
Till concrete facts come in, abstractions must suffice.
Enter a Servant.
SERVANT
Your majesty, a humble fisherman
Brings news pertaining to these prodigies.
MOTECUHZOMA
Admit him. [Exit Servant.] Lord, when peons paint my way!
Enter the Fisherman and Servant. *He trails his hand
on the ground toward him, and kisses his ***** fingertips.*
FISHERMAN
O master, ruler, lord, great gentleman,
If witless lips which kiss the unswept earth
Be fit to thus accost an emperor,
Regard me, if it please your majesty.
TLACAELEL
Speak, boy. Sublime Motecuhzoma hears.
FISHERMAN
I come from Hellwood, at your southern shores,
Where this week past, upon a beetling bluff,
I glimpsed a buoyant, surging reef of hills
With twining towers carousing on the waves,
That seemed a transport for intruding rarities:
A fear which whisperings in the wind confirmed.
TLACAELEL
Ho, ** **
Was this the Spirit speaking, or the spirits?
Some extra mushrooms in your salad, sir?
FISHERMAN
Discard me if I lie! Hail, lords! All hail!
TLACAELEL
All hail and sleet and snow, and all things cold.
And chill reception from this wintry prince,
For I suspect you seek remuneration.
Nov 27, 2016
Nov 27, 2016 at 4:09 PM UTC
MOTECUHZOMA
I tried to bear up to necessity,
To steel self-conquest through my fears, and thus,
In stoic resolution, greet my fate.
But then this temperance, to the common eye,
Seemed but a fatalistic resignation,
A shrug, a sigh that what shall be shall be,
In abdication to a fancied doom.
So then I heap my irons in the fire
To undertake all means I can devise,
And now that versatile defense is seen
As paranoia, and hysteria,
The fickle indecision of a fool,
Who- like a pup between two bowls of food-
Would waver till the flyblown point grew stale.
And they are right, these forward serfs are right:
I am a knock-knee, and a juggler!
Who could foresee the vortex of my mind
Should be the whirlpool that would drain the sea?
Jul 30, 2017
Jul 30, 2017 at 2:06 PM UTC
MOTECUHZOMA
Ah, Tlacaelel, ghost limb of my father,
Who was a lord when I but governed dolls,
The foremost man once more at our grave council.
TLACAELEL
Those at life’s twilight like to rise at dawn.
Good day, Motecuhzoma, emperor
Of all the notable of known-of realms.
Enter CUITLAHUAC
MOTECUHZOMA
And here’s Cuitlahuac in his finest weeds,
With darkened circles under bloodshot eyes.
Well, little brother, you’re a paradox-
My junior for a senior senator!
CUITLAHUAC
Those two short years that separated us
Must have profoundly aged and seasoned you,
You point them out so often. But go on.
Motecuhzoma, happy new year, sir.
TLACAELEL
Good boy, Cuitlahuac. Stick it to the bully!
CUITLAHUAC
Lord Tlacaelel, you’ve out-fathered Father,
And middle age must curtsy to your years.
Enter a Priest of Tlaloc. Others trickle in, as many as may be.
MOTECUHZOMA
High priest of Tlaloc, come. How fares our god
Of fruitful springs and thunderstorm today?
PRIEST OF TLALOC
He banquets with your captive warriors’ souls,
And incense fumes his rosy breakfast, sire.
TLACAELEL
Your grace, you know the judgment we have reached
Regarding Hungry prince?
PRIEST OF TLALOC I have been briefed.
But here Texcoco’s king himself arrives.
Enter HUNGRY PRINCE.
MOTECUHZOMA
Well, Hungry Prince! Co-sovereign of Texcoco,
Comrade-in-arms, my true facsimile,
Who’s shared the ruling of our empire, welcome.
HUNGRY PRINCE
Hail, grand triumvir and my counterpart,
A bright new year, you lords of Mexico.
Our best regards from my side of the lake!
And yet, it is a Triple Alliance we lead.
Where’s brave Tlacopan’s king, our third accomplice?
MOTECUHZOMA
That languid chief seemed spent and in decline,
And, sadly, has been ordered back to bed;
Our trident’s but a single spear today.
But welcome all, and may we welcome here
The first day of a new, uncharted year.
PRIEST OF TLALOC
A New Year’s Day, which- due to the complex
And interlocking gears of calendars-
Comes only every fifty-second year.
Oct 3, 2016
Oct 3, 2016 at 11:52 PM UTC
MOTECUHZOMA
Now, Hungry Prince, let’s brace for weighty words.
You know that since our founding fathers’ reign
Our kingdoms have been linked like tilting twins,
Sharing the fruits and frowns of war alike,
Two striding shanks, each foot outreaching each,
My Mexicans, the eagles of this island,
Across the lake, your leopards of Texcoco,
Dainty Tlacopan third and least of all.
CUITLAHUAC
But, since the death of wise Hungry Coyote-
Your father- one alone has hitched the wind,
One arm engirdling our fractious state,
Which on one mighty truncheon hops her way.
MOTECUHZOMA
Our Triple Alliance therefore is dissolved.
Now must this galled umbilical be clipped,
Tlacopan liquidated for our bullion,
And you to trudge your solitary trail,
With gods’ best blessings for your bond and bail.
HUNGRY PRINCE [aside]
Oh, let my heart freeze up at this cold news,
For if this tongue should blab the ****** thoughts
These staunchless chambers seal inside my chest,
The tyrant should extract this swollen fruit,
And make my skull the drinking cup of God.
Thus should I truly mirror this prodigy-
A heartless sap, who’s plainly lost his head.
TLACAELEL
Hungry Prince,
Take aim at only what is possible,
For you and I alike both know the fancy
Of human justice only enters where
The pressure of necessity is equal,
And that the stout and rivalrous exact
All that they can, the weak grant what they must.
Of gods we do believe, of men we know,
That by a natural proclivity,
Wherever they can wield the whip, they will.
This primal rule was not drawn up by us,
Nor were we first to heed its nascent call.
The trail’s long blazed, and we do but inherit
This trait, and shall bequeath it to all time,
Content to know that you and all mankind,
If once enfranchised vast as we are now,
Would do as we now do.
Exit all but Motecuhzoma and Hungry Prince.
HUNGRY PRINCE Thus it must be,
Since thus you have declared it for a rule.
And though this outlook seems the sophistry
Of inharmonious and immoderate minds,
Who will say ‘no’ when you have said ‘it’s so?’
MOTECUHZOMA
Do not return, when taxmen come to call,
And whine that I require too much of you,
Since now you nod assent to my decree.
You know the fortune of capricious war:
Today for you, tomorrow it’s for me. Exit.
HUNGRY PRINCE
Then revel it, old ruffian, while you may.
Tomorrow’s but a fitful sleep away. Exit.
Oct 7, 2016
Oct 7, 2016 at 11:55 AM UTC
MOTECUHZOMA
My torch that does not smoke, your will be done.
We’ll, with a clean-slate log, draft dignity.
Yet what events may come to canonize?
The wider our domain has stretched her range,
The weaker our elastic hold becomes,
As one half of our empire is employed
With forceps to extract the other half.
Our reign superimposes all the earth
From the volcanic groves of Mayaland
Up to the shifting wastelands of the North.
But there is one last nest of brigandry,
A murky pocket glowering in the east:
That vile Tlaxcala, left to roam at large,
And, as a single bed flea spoils my sleep,
So does this fractious county drain my humor.
Brother- What pesticide must flush these flies?
CUITLAHUAC
We have the force to raze those traitors down,
And what we might attempt, our might must crown.
Our fertile empire rounds their toxic realm
As healthy flesh imprisons cancerous rot;
If eagles nursed a stranger’s egg to find
Their warm embrace has thawed a rattling asp.
We once did stalk Tlaxcalans for our sport,
And prize their trophied hides like ten-point bucks.
But these stray pups have hardened to coyotes,
On crouching haunches, like a nightmare, hunched
Upon a flowerlike land that should support
A million civilized and happy men.
Their population’s health should be no more
Than called for by an enterprising nation
For water-drawers and hewers of our wood.
Let’s pinch this pest we coddle at our breast,
And clip these hatchlings’ wings while in the nest.
MOTECUHZOMA
So should we compromise our Mexico,
By thus unpopulating her of men.
What says our loving minister of war?
Speak, Tlacaelel, and pronounce their doom.
Oct 5, 2016
Oct 5, 2016 at 12:25 PM UTC
MOTECUHZOMA
Unpack your thoughts. Be free and frank with me.
Pretend yourself my junior cabinetman,
For my own court is often at a loss.
What vague agenda does this fleet announce?
TEUHTLILLI
They masquerade as peaceful legates sent
To haggle wares and flaunt their god, no more.
MOTECUHZOMA
Ridiculous!
TEUHTLILLI My sentiments as well.
MOTECUHZOMA
Then what’s your own misgivings of their aim?
Don’t gild the pill for me. Who are these men?
TEUHTLILLI
I’d bank they’re vigorous, new, cruel foes,
Now swiftly winging from the Eastern Sea
To spoil, maraud, shed sheathes and buccaneer.
We’ve Mayan authority to warrant this,
Hence their determination for the fray.
MOTECUHZOMA
But I have poor rapport with Mayaland.
What do my coastal subjects make of this?
TEUHTLILLI
They call them minor, maverick deities,
As yet unknown, yet fancied devilish.
MOTECUHZOMA
And what if they will prove, as prophesied,
Our long-lost rulers coming home?
TEUHTLILLI Perhaps.
Jul 15, 2017
Jul 15, 2017 at 2:13 PM UTC
MOTECUHZOMA
My lowly hoop of servile sycophants
Arise to stands of judges, triple-tiered,
Grave, gyral, escalating arbiters,
Who shake their damnatory, hooded heads
At me- Their blotch, their convict, and their prey,
Caught in their spotlight of interrogation,
To twitch and quiver in disclosure’s sight.
And now, what plan can salvage my appeal?
Jul 23, 2017
Jul 23, 2017 at 7:34 PM UTC
MOTECUHZOMA
If, past this moment, you persist in lies,
Know I shall bury you beneath my halls,
Pull down your house till sludge seeps through the planks,
And wipe your family name from off the earth,
Yea, to the unborn fragments in the womb.
Now, wouldn’t you recant this little fib?
FISHERMAN
Forgive me lord, but what I tell is truth.
TLACAELEL
Most like it is.
MOTECUHZOMA Then know, you brave, bold slave,
These spectral archipelagos you saw,
Were giantlike canoes, with alien crew.
He gestures to a servant, who produces a trunk.
One year ago, the waves cast up this trunk
Of jewels, foreign frocks, and silver swords:
Most like, the precious jetsam of this launch.
FISHERMAN
May my aviso aid your eminence.
MOTECUHZOMA
One see him nobly boarded in our suites.
Exit Servant with the Fisherman.
Enter a Majordomo.
TLACAELEL
Well, watch, where are your hocus-pocus wards?
MAJORDOMO My lord, command that I be cut to pieces or whatever you wish, for you should know that when I reached the cell, there was no one there. I had my best sentries there, trustworthy men I’ve known for years, but none of them heard the sorcerers escape.
TLACAELEL
Then how, pray tell me, have they flown the coop?
MAJORDOMO
Perhaps they flapped away.
TLACAELEL What, gallows-meat?
MAJORDOMO They can sprinkle themselves with fern-spores, and
shimmer into invisibility.
TLACAELEL
Buzz, buzz! These twice-told tales upend my trust.
Rope’s end-
MOTECUHZOMA No. Suffer him.
TLACAELEL As you see fit.
MOTECUHZOMA
Some say such wizards take wing every night,
And soar unto the fringes of the earth.
TLACAELEL
His majesty’s broad magnanimity
Has spared you this time, turnkey, but repair.
Not all wards will be such skilled hide-and-seeks.
MOTECUHZOMA
Now: Torch the hovels of their families,
And witness if those new lighthouses’ beacons
Will call their wandering rooks home to re-roost.
Exit Majordomo.
TLACAELEL
And what of these vast dugouts?
MOTECUHZOMA Time will tell.
Our steward Teuhtlilli eastward creeps,
To see what tricks are offered from the deeps. They exit.
Nov 30, 2016
Nov 30, 2016 at 1:21 PM UTC
MOTECUHZOMA
The locusts swarm in ever tighter arcs,
And dizzy whisperings pollute the air.
The time was, in my long-lost halcyon days,
I hubbed the compass of this spiraled realm
Like to the turbine of a tempest’s eye,
The axis of a great panopticon,
Whose every vassal gaze was trained on me,
Arrested in a well-lit wheel of cribs.
The glaring of my ever-watchful eye
Flushed out all glint of scandal from my slaves.
I was the copy-text to check their conduct,
And all examples I would radiate
Reflected warmly from each ardent face.
But now this ring of watchers weighs on me.
Jul 22, 2017
Jul 22, 2017 at 12:45 PM UTC
TEUHTLILLI
My family looks for me. Why, then, do I,
Here in this hideous House of Serpents, wait?
A hellish bestiary of constrictors.
But now, behold where, from the grisly gate,
Our golden eagle lights like daybreak’s rays.
Enter MOTECUHZOMA.
MOTECUHZOMA
Well met, bright steward. Rise, and meet me, sir.
TEUHTLILLI
When might a mortal’s eye behold the sun?
MOTECUHZOMA
When, sir? Why, when he dwindles in the west,
When, blushing red and swollen full with care,
A man might ogle with unwinking eyes
Before his flickering orb of day winks out.
Look up, my scout. I wish your sights were high,
And eyed a brighter orbit for your liege.
TEUHTLILLI
I do, your majesty.
MOTECUHZOMA Come, your report.
Jun 3, 2017
Jun 3, 2017 at 1:49 PM UTC