What History Repeats
The river is still, deep black water,
Running through caverns of Mayan hell,
Stories made here too horrible and ancient to tell.
Surrounded by a forest tunnel
She dreams of going beyond her mountain world,
She dreams of things to come that are beautiful,
beyond the human race
Beyond the sun’s godlike face
Beyond the moon whose shadows show
the magic of the mountains and jungles below.
the jaguar god once gave his laws
with lethal silver claws,
unsheathed blades for teeth
metallic shell with skin beneath
People from somewhere, a foreign word she learned to hate
she knows it’s her condemned people’s fate
to realize nothing, to understand too late.
In her city
The men have fought each other and died
The lowlands in over harvested forest have dried,
The children once hungry now disappeared,
The voices of old women silenced by what they feared
Until only she is left, fertile and full of broken anticipation,
Her lover, her brothers and sisters, her father and mother, all Mayan.
Gone, one by one, until bereft like a shell, she stands silhouetted
one last time
In what should have been her most splendid prime.
Raising her arms to Hunab Ku, the god of gods,
Raising her arms to greet the sun,
From the tallest building on the tallest mountain,
Bursting forth, like a black jaguar wishing for wings,
She sings to Quetzalcoatl, god of wind, as she falls,
disappearing into the jungle far below,
joining legends of shadowy beings and naked bone
from a civilization once great, now gone.
Sweet Charlie, Long Gone
The sea…
The foam kissed my bare feet as I ran…
In my memory, I play always at the edge
And laugh as I hold my sundress down in the wind
And laugh as I hold wet cloth away from bare skin…
Once as the sound of a melancholy violin
drifted from a bungalow at dusk
it nailed me in place;
So sad, it seemed to bleed onto the sunset colored sand,
riding atop the steady tumble of waves.
and yes, the music was in the foam that licked my toes
and yes, I thought the man morose
to play such a sad song
when the world of the ocean was at his feet as well as mine…
I found out later he was as handsome close
As he was mesmerizing from afar
and quite charming.
I thought I would never find anyone else so worldly
Never anyone so refined…
as he gracefully played his aged violin,
As he carefully played me.
I played the innocent,
played the piano,
played him.
I remember thinking we played well together; our music, our games…
So shameless and debonair,
sweet Charlie, long gone.
Shades of Blue
With my ragged grief alive,
In Burton blue moonlight,
I fall,
Sullen and wounded
Beneath your weight,
And weep inside silently,
Interested not at all in your soul or mine.
A picture forms behind my eyes,
Pulled from tedious rusted mind full of memories.
Vanilla candles burn
dripping white rivulets
onto cold, mauve veined marble.
The sky flies by our white gauze curtains
in gentle shades of blue,
And I smile at the memory of you.
Today the sky is gray.
In the stunted sunlight
You are a wild and wonderful beast
Standing beneath the storm
In a pool of lust too strong to curb or deny.
You are a silhouette of power
With shimmering lion’s aura,
Encircling black mane
All disheveled,
Male and proud.
Your guitar filled with shades of blue.