Dreams

Obsidian’s Edge 5

Obsidian’s Edge 5

9:00 am
Mescal and Memory

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1

Frail old men
huddled under hand-woven blankets
sipping their morning mescal:
each face
a note book seamed with memories.

Crab apples
hastening to autumnal crispness,
their wrinkled faces,
their minds ready to tramp
the snow of today’s blank page.

Unwieldy limbs
bursting back to bloom,
flower by unyielding flower,
they squat in the square
beneath blossoming trees.

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2

Códice
characters lifted from the pages
of their pre-Columbian chronicles
and Mickey-Moused on modern walls:

Ocho Venado
framed on a restaurant menu,
Cuáthemoc
recalled on a hunded peso bill.

Cuáthemoc
has forgotten how to walk
on the burned, broken feet
that Cortés held to the fire.

Ocho Venado,
a king in his own right,
bows and bobs to tourists
in the restaurant that bears his name.

3

Colibri,
an errant, feathered knight,
whirs his wings and charges
at the sun’s twin windmills:
sun-dog ear-rings
tethered to a golden flower.

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4

Sweet flutter-by of yesterday’s butterfly:
Mescal
fragments the memory
holding it bitter between tooth and tongue.

Obsidian’s Edge 4

8:00 am
Up and about

  1

Last night,
a cataract of flame
flowed down
the cathedral wall.

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A black wooden bull
danced in the square,
sparks struck fire
from his horse-hide hair.

A red speck on my shirt
burned through to my skin.

Today
a heart of fire
burns in an iron barrel:
who will be chosen
for the daily sacrifice?

2

A sharp blue guillotine
poised between buildings:
the morning sky.

Scorched circles,
open mouths:
wide-open butterfly eyes
burn holes in the crowd’s
dark cloud of a face.

A street musician
stands in the shade
beneath the arches
playing a marimba.

The sun tip-toes
a sombre danse macabre
across bamboo keys.

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Sunlit bubbles float
dreams across the square.

 

Obsidian’s Edge 3

7:00 am
Breakfast

1

Yesterday,
I sacrificed a chicken.

Unborn,
it lay within its calcium cocoon,
dormant,
a volcano sleeping deep beneath thick snow.

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Tap, tap, tap,
the silver spoon bounced
off the hairless shell:
a sudden crack,
a spurt of orange blood.

Today,
I tap with my silver hammer
on the grateful grapefruit’s paper skull.

Silence.
No movement
within the honeyed
comb of pith and cell.

2

High in the church tower,
a hammer blow falls on an echoing anvil:
the cracked bell lurches into life.

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 Rooster crows his thick rich cocoa rico:
blackened torsos of fire-roasted beans.

3

Squeezed orange, racked by the inquisition,
its pale yellow robe spent and exhausted;
wasted disc of a worn-out, decadent moon.

4

  Naturaleza muerta:
the orange expires on the table.

Still sticky its carcass,
its life blood is a sacrifice:
thick, rich, golden liquid,
as fierce and sweet as
sunshine on a branch.

5

   Tabled motion:
my hand reaches out.
Arthritic fingers clasp,
but cannot hold
the golden glass.

6

The tequila’s wrinkled worm
tickles my fancy.

Grasshoppers
fried in garlic
no longer make me squirm.

7

Two Tigers
rage in my head.

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They crave mescal
at this hour of the day.

Obsidian’s Edge 2

6:30 am
Early morning mass:
San Pedro

1

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A single sunbeam descends.
Sharp blade of a heliocentric sword,
it shatters the chapel’s dark:
fragments of light
stained with glazed colors.

A pallid lily truncated
by the dawn’s pearly light,
the young widow
kneels in prayer.

Her head wears a halo.
Her pilgrim palm
presses into the granite
forcing cold stone
into warm fingers.

Flesh clutches
the statue’s marble hand:
a maze of human veins
— petrus / piedra —
this church now a rock.

2

Outside the church,
a boy pierces his lips
with a cruel spine of cactus.

The witch doctor
catches the warm blood
in a shining bowl
and blesses the  girl
who kneels before him.

On her head she carries
a basket filled with flowers
and heavy stones.
He sprinkles it
with blood.

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She will carry
this basket on her head
until the evening shadows
finally weigh
and she lays her burden
down.

3

Cobbles clatter beneath walking feet:

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when the stones grow tongues,
will they speak the languages
in which we dream?

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Earthing Earthling

Earthing Earthling
(for ProofofLife)

“Get out and about,” she told me.
Take off your socks and shoes.
Walk barefoot on the earth and grass:
twin pleasures, you can choose.”

I took two canes, one in each hand,
and left the house to walk the land.

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In the garden I took off my shoes
to walk barefoot on the lawn;
when grass sprang up between my toes
I was instantly reborn.

I stood in the shade of the crab apple tree
and let leaf and flower spill over me.

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Sunlight took away my frown
and freckled a smile on my face.
I was blessed again with hope and light;
earth and grass filled me with grace

When white blossoms filtered down
they gifted me a flowery crown.

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I stooped to reach my shoes
and carried them home in my hand,
maintaining as long as I could
my contact with this magic land.

 

 

Dreams

Dreams are important in Oaxacan mythology.

Do we create them ourselves?

Or do they come to us as celestial messages?

Can they exist without us?

Or do we form a symbiotic relationship.,
each dependent on the other?

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Eight Deer or Tiger Claw / Ocho Venado or Garra de Tigre is a Mixtec Hero; 

his name is composed of two parts: 

(1) day name (ie the name of the day on which he was born) Eight Deer and 

(2) nickname Tiger Claw. 


His symbol in the códices is a small circle with a comma like a tiger claw.

Nuttall is the twentieth century editor of the Zouche Nuttall Codex 

in which Eight Deer’s history of conquest is recounted.

Nine Wind / Nueve Viento is another Mixtec Hero 

and the founding father of the race, according to some códices.

Dreams

Once I stole the nose from a sacred statue;
today I watch it cross the square attached to a face.
Eight Deer walks past with a fanfare of conches:
you can tell him by his donut with its little tail.

A shadow moves as zopilote wings his way across the square.
I caught him once on a midnight bus;
he begged me to fold his wings and let him sleep forever.

A gringa called Nuttall sells tins of watery soap.
Her children fill my days with enchantments:
bubbles born from a magic ring.

Eight Deer, eight years old, sets out on his conquests.
Nine Wind births his people from a flint,
or was it the magic tree in Apoala?

The voices in my head slip slowly into silence.
Sometimes I think they have no need of me,
these dreams that come at midnight,
and knock at my window.

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