Feeding The Plumed Serpent

Feeding The Plumed Serpent

The day after our wedding with the moon

in the piercing sun of a blood drinking god

we rode back through dust on the rocking bus

shy dark children patting, taking my yellow hair

for lizard feathers. They turned off Madonna and

you sang their songs. They laughed your laugh

each one the child we'd never have.  

We went back to the slum hotel and locked the door

while the drunks hurricaned up and down the halls;

we the same up and down the walls, the stairs, the

fretted sheets, up one belly and down the other

till we were drunk as they could never be

and saw the things no seer ever could say.

When your body moved on mine in neon glare

it was the black shadow and white light

of that pyramid of skulls and jaguar’s caves

where amaranthine sacrifice filled

death’s new toybox, blood for lubricant
easing the clockwork bones,

throats craned toward the copper knife, 
your dark eyes swimming with night

carving into timeblurred petroglyphs  
my life upon their lids, feathered cries
vapor murmured out in velvet visions,

spinning down down

into the solstice of light and dark.

In the cold morning we drank atole hot and sweet

with all the vanilla thickness of my flesh

against your whipcord bones a steam

rising remembered in each sip.

Your thin musician’s hands held the cup

in mimic of the circling of my breasts

stroked to purrs and sweat on the hard bed.

Oh, having me for breakfast was

the richest meal you ever bought

and paid for with
each drop of the god’s owned blood

until time came

to put the toys away.

January 2012

Note: This is a carnal companion piece to a much older poem of mine,

At Teotihuacan, posted here



Posted for   OpenLinkNight   at dVerse Poets Pub

Feathered serpent head at Teotihuacan via wikipedia

Atole is a thick drink made with milk and masa, flavored with sugar, vanilla or chocolate,cinnamon or other spices, usually served hot. 
 
 The Plumed, or Feathered Serpent is Quetzalcoatl, a deity whose first worship is seen at Teotihuacan, pictured above, in the first century BC or first century AD, later spreading across Mesoamerica. He is variously, a harvest god of fertility, a creation god, god of books and inventor of the calender, a wind god associated with the planet Venus, and the god of the Aztec priesthood who brought visions to shamans. There is archaeological evidence of human sacrifice at the Pyramid of the Moon and elsewhere at Teotihuacan as the top picture shows, but it should be noted that Mesoamerican culture believed the universe was sustained by a great ongoing sacrifice and that the highest form of repayment to the gods was human life.

Header Image: Detail of one of the burials found in the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent in Teotihuacan,dated around 200 AD. by ~s shepherd (schizoform) on flick'r  via wikimedia commons  Footer Image: View along the Avenue of the Dead to the Pyramid of the Sun, taken from the Pyramid of the Moon,by Jackhynes via wikimedia commons (yes those tiny ant-like shapes are people--the pyramids  are huge, but set in such a vast open area it's hard to tell the scale.)