Quadrille Of The Poppies

 

 

 

 

 

Quadrille Of The Poppies

 

 

In Mexico

you wrote me word by word

into the book of your hips.

We traded salt naked

 

lip to lip; your 

listening kiss

heard the colors come

as poppies and geraniums stirred

 

rustling from my earth,

turning their dark faces

towards yours,

opening. 

 

 

February 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for dVerse Poets:
Quadrille #146: Salt

using words from

Shay's Word List #14

Pablo Neruda

 

where I am hosting for Shay this week

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Textile Bookbinding from The Netherlands, ca 1621  Fair Use 

Oriental Poppies, 1908, © Georgia O'Keefe    Fair Use

Broken

 

Broken

They were married by the moon

on the Pyramid of the Sun,

best man from the Society of Jaguars,

for bridesmaid a flower boy

who loved her yellow hair,

who thought he spoke English,

words lava reefs cooling

in the Pacific of his Español.

They walked, a sun-specked

collection of curiosities, laughing 

along the Avenue of the Dead,

asked the moon, the sun, the stars,

the snarl of the watching Jaguars

for a child

but none came. Broke,

they went back to the States.

He threw the I Ching; the marriage

was annulled. In the neon-long after,

she lost the feel of his deer's eye

startling wild in the dark, the dazzled

pink walls, azure doors, stone streets 

and jade palms of Mexico

where her heart was emptied

on the altar of the Sun.

~May 2016

posted for   real toads

Weekend Challenge

 You can read about the setting of this story, Teotihuacan, Mexico,   here.

Image; by Saiko: Terracotta figures from Teotihuacan in the Louvre, via wikimedia commons

Manipulated.

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.)

Calavera

Calavera

una ofrenda

Last night I dreamed I threw away a stone.

I saw your face as it once was, mi corazón.

I  cleaned my eyes with tears and looked again.

A jack o lantern skull without a scar,

dia de los muertos tatooed with a sugar pen

on una calavera de azúcar.

A bite of memory’s all,

sweet but very small

You talked como en tiempos pasados.

Ever lively wagged that old chewed string

you had for tongue, risueño.

What else to do but sing

una canción recordada?

Raul, mi amor perdido,

desaparecido.

A verse with no retort,

sweet but very short.

I left you there, el jefe, top of the stack

boss of the clay colored catacomb,

talking to the rifled coffins on the floor

muy cómodo in your new home

that goes forever back and back

to somewhere no one lives anymore.

To throw a stone to another world,

not bad for a white girl,
after all.

September 2011 

Quick and Dirty Process Notes/Translation:

"The word calavera, Spanish for "skull", can refer to a number of cultural phenomena associated with the Mexican celebration of the Day of the Dead[Dia de los Muertos] and the Roman Catholic holiday All Souls Day.

• calaveras de azúcar ("sugar skulls") are used to adorn altars and can be eaten.
• calaveras are poems, written for the Day of the Dead but intended to humorously criticize the living.
• calavera can refer to any artistic representations of skulls, such as the lithographs of José Guadalupe Posada." ~wikipedia

una ofrenda: offering left for the dead 

como los tiempos passados: like old times una canción recordada: a remembered song

perdido: lost   desaparecido: vanished    risueño:smiling, sunny

el jefe: boss   muy cómodo: quite comfortable

My command of Spanish is middling and informal so please correct me if you believe I've misused that most beautiful of languages anywhere here. 

For those interested, here is the canción recordada the narrator sings in the catacomb:

Image: Sad Skull Thinking(Calavera triste, pensando) 

by ~eloise~ on flick'r

 

 

At Teotihuacan

At Teotihuacan

Dipping in and out of sleep

like a duck grazing under ruffled water,

nodding back and forth

in the space between two worlds.

A line beneath two dots is the number seven;

a wall of stone skulls records the passing of years.

Down twining runs of brick the effluvium of a great city

circles outward and away.

Snakes and feathers

are beauty and eternity.

Circles are mountains, and

the serpent’s head may speak

when the fires burn again.

A square headed figure like a bench

holds in thick fingers

a bowl for the god to drink

a sip of blood.

Skulls ridiculous and grave,

skulls to make Hamlet think again,

skulls mounted on rods

for storage.
Skulls crushed and painstakingly reassembled

for our edification.

All empty bottles, bent cans,

rotting in the great temporal gutter.

The gods are not upright

but crouched like stumps,

fat half-melted beings immutable and complex,

full of killing detail and dangerous eyes.

One can offend them merely by living,

leaving only one recourse.

January, 1988

Teotihuacan "..is an enormous archaeological site in the Basin of Mexico, just 30 miles northeast of Mexico City, containing some of the largest pyramidal structures built in the pre-Columbian Americas. Apart from the pyramidal structures, Teotihuacan is also known for its large residential complexes, the Avenue of the Dead, and numerous colorful, well-preserved murals..The city is thought to have been established around 100 BC and...may have lasted until sometime between the 7th and 8th centuries AD. At its zenith, perhaps in the first half of the 1st millennium AD, Teotihuacan was the largest city in the pre-Columbian Americas. At this time it may have had more than 200,000 inhabitants, placing it among the largest cities of the world in this period..."~wikipedia

Header photo: Pyramid of the Moon at Teotihuacan, Mexico, 
By Gorgo  [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons