Obsidian’s Edge 11

1:00 PM
Water 1

1

Cupped hands cannot embrace you.

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Do you remember when the earth
was without form, and darkness lay
on the face of the deep?

You yearned then to be released,
to flow from the darkness,
to flower in the sunlight.

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2

Images and symbols:
flags flying within my skull.
The shrunken head pond
ringed like a bath tub;
fields scorched and dry.

The land’s parched throat
longing for liquid:
water, born free,
yet everywhere in chains.

This mirage of palm trees,
green, against burning sand.
This hot sun dragging
its blood red tongue
across a powder blue sky.

Panting for water, I lick my lips
like a great big thirsty dog.

3

Words begin with the “Let be!” of light —
and it divides from darkness.

Then comes the world,
the inner waters in which male
and female forms are borne;
when the waters break,
the life sustaining substance drains away,
throwing us from dark to light.

The mid-day sun rides the sky
rolling its dark ball-turret cherry:
blood red wine over and under
this double-barreled thunder cloud.

 

Obsidian’s Edge 10

12:15 pm
Mass In the Consolación

(Continued)

4

That young man
nailed to his wooden frame,
calling me by my name.

The boy on the cross has the wide open,
jeweled eyes of a flayed Mexican god,
living forever and never quite dead.

Black blood flows down his carved wooden face,
a river of coal dust waxed with carmine;
human hair, coffee colored skin,
the air heavy with burnt copal.

5

Trapped by the ring-master
in a never-ending series
of unforgiving circus acts,

my live-wire mind:
a pinball
bouncing within its triptych
from thought, to word, to deed.

6

Five hundred years of mixed tongues
whisper their multi-lingual
tale of a golden-haired god
walking out from ghost ships,
their illusory sails,
silhouetted in the sunrise.

Trapped beneath sultry snow,
the old god buried beneath the local volcano
belches his bitterness in lava and ash.

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Obsidian 9

12:00 noon
Mass in the Consolación

1
This is not a normal church.
The lady in front of me opens her blouse
and offers her breast to her youngest child
who sucks there, noisily, greedily.

The old man behind me
holds a roll your own smoke
in the palm of his hand
and closes his eyes in ecstasy
as he draws in the marijuana,
holding it between tongue and teeth.

2

Three dogs, tongues lolling, discover
the bitch in heat who came here for sanctuary.
They chase her up and down the aisle
as the high priest doggedly murmurs
the blessings that uplift faithful hearts.

I have heard these words before.
Bored acolytes pass the anointing oil,
present the sacred wine.
Flowers and candles adorn the altar.

When the old man kneels for communion,
night breath lies whisky thick
on the high priest’s tongue.

3

I drowse during the sermon:
sacred words, secret worlds
open like oysters;
a laying on of hands;
footsteps leading nowhere .

Seculae seculorum:
that hard, crisp sound,
white and sharp,
like the inside of an apple
when strong teeth
penetrate the outer skin.

Candle flames caress the unwary,
bringing an artificial peace.

Yellow light marches across the altar.
The room warms up with song.
Wide open staring eyes.

That young man
nailed to his wooden frame,
calling me by my name.

 

Obsidian’s Edge 8

11:00 am
Mist, Mystery, and Magic
Baños de Oaxaca

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1

The steam soaks everything.
Fundy on a foggy day is not this dark.

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2

A face looms through the mist
A hand taps me on the shoulder.

The masseur points me
to the next room:
he is a brown man, totally naked …
… he takes a step back,
startled by my whiteness.

The masseur gestures.
I strip off my shorts
and lie on the marble slab.

Incense caresses my brain
with its subtle invasion.

3

The massage  begins.
Slow karate chops:
the heartbreak
in my muscles
begins to break down.

The masseur hums as he moves.
He drives each note home
with pounding fingertips.

I am the piano.
He is the maestro,
rippling the keyboard
with manipulative fingers.

Beethoven’s storm scene
in the Pastoral Symphony
must feel like this
in the Liszt transcription.

The music accelerates.
I am swept away:
a rudderless ship
on a sea of wild sound.

4

My abandoned flesh
releases itself to cauterizing
currents of earth and air.

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My spirit overflows.
Eyes closed, drowsing,
my grey sea of grief
transmutes into
a river of gold.

Obsidian’s Edge 7

Room in my Mind
10:30 am

1

My latest  alebrije
wags his tail and flicks
forked lightning
from the forge of his mouth.

His ancient mocking spirit
slowly emerges
from the trickster wood.

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2

Made from scrap metal
by the man down the road
who recycles old scraps,
Don Quixote sits on the reinforced
toecap of a workman’s old boot.

Two spent sparking plugs
join to form his body.
His presence lectures me
on the ages of gold and silver
long since past.

“We exist,” he says,
“in an age of recycling.”

3

Shadows double
themselves in the mirror:
recycled lines of shade
carve the shower’s glass.

Wary of shade and flame
I stand in a dust-
laden beam of sunlight.

Motes in my mind:
flesh and blood chessmen
play their game,
dark squares and light.

4

My neighbour has six cats,
two children, and a tulipán tree.

I bought her youngest daughter
chocolate, and she showed me
how to play a simple game of cards.
But the pack was different
with the three
ranking above the queen and jack.

I throw away my threes and lose the game.
She laughs at me and calls me tonto.
She is ten.

5

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Nochebuena,
single and double petals,
crimson and cream;
cempasúchiles,
flowers of the dead,
guide their footsteps
leading my lost ones back to me.

6

I think of milk bottles placed on a concrete step.
When I go out in the morning, sparrows have pecked
the silver tops to get at the cream.

Memories: once open doors
now slowly close.

Keys no longer turn in the locks.
Sleep gathers in forgotten rooms,
falling like dust on silken flowers.

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My mind drifts in and out
between sun and clouds.

 

Obsidian’s Edge 6

10:00 am
Dark is her Shop

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1

I buy two liters of white mescal,
cheap and rough,
without the second brewing:
fire water, not smooth.

Two liters:
she sells them in
an old Coke bottle
she’ll seal with cellophane,
and a rubber band.

Six worms I buy.
Bedraggled fighters
dragging smoky trails
as they plummet
through a yellow sea.

2

In the shop next door
I buy poinsettias.
When I get home,
I put them in a vase
and watch them watching me.

Red poinsettias:
bloodstains scratching
a white-washed wall.

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Misshapen gems
in a ceramic prison,
their beauty
breaks me down:
decimated words,
worlds
born from mescal.

3

The eyes I see
are not eyes
because I see them:
they are eyes because

… twin brown ovals …

they watch me
as they float in a liquid mirror
within the upraised glass.

4

Outside,
beyond the balcony,
sun blood melts
like sealing wax.

The bougainvillea
strains sharp stains
through a lonesome
slice of sunlight
giving birth to
flamboyán and tulipán.

5

My lemon tree
leans over to listen.
Glistening pearls of dew
embellish its morning throat.
Christmas decorations
these postage stamp songbirds
thronging each twitching branch.

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Butterflies,
winged flakes of archaic paint,
flutter from temple walls
leaving them barren and bare.

Church towers,
strong when terra firma shakes,
quiver insubstantial.

Mescal melts the morning:
a quiver of shimmering air.

 

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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