Stomach gurgling as
coin mountain grows, no relief
for poor piggybank.
About the Creator
R.C. Taylor
I write to invoke, to process, to honor, to resurrect, and—sometimes—to grieve but, above all, I write to be free.
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A Flower Song
Apparently the Aztecs, Toltecs, Chichimecs and other Mexica were crazy about poetry. Despite the book-burning, slaughter, and epidemics that characterized the early stages of the Spanish conquest of the empires of Mexico, some hundreds of poems from the height of their tradition come down to us in Classical Nahuatl, preserved by Nahua and Spanish scholars of the 16th century. One of the most famous poets, Nezahualcoyotl, was a sage-king who opposed the cult of human sacrifice associated with Tezcatlipoca, God of the Smoking Mirror, and favored Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent. Flowers and feathers were the favorite offering of the Plumed Serpent. Moreover, flowers and feathers are a metaphor for poetry. Individual words, scattered petals, the down of tropical birds. The temples of blood sacrifice could be transformed into temples of flower and song. A sublimated offering to the Heart of Earth and the Heart of Sky encapsulated in the Classical Nahuatl kenning for poetry: in xōchitl in cuīcatl, meaning, "the flower and the song." The following poem is part of a longer work, and is in a state of flux, so take the waters as they flow:
By Rob Angeli5 days ago in Poets
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