A sanctuary
To bridge our sentiments
About life and death
The sanctity
Of such intangible vestments
Placed in outstretched
Rubber-gloved hands
Life and death
Joined at their seams
By a table
An altar of hope
With worshippers
Scalpel in hand
Conducting my judicial summons
Guilty or innocent?
Life or death?
Do I see tomorrow morning?
Or my loved ones
Their diligent mourning?
As the feather
My soul
Is weighed
On those infernal scales
While my angel's face pales
As he berates, deliberates
Critical decisions
Then descend those sacred
Incisions
This bright wonder
That warms and frightens
Brings into being
That proverbial tunnel
That mechanical cacophony
Like rain upon my face
The worry mask
This light bulb
A prelude to the murmurs
To the choir of seraphim
All at once
I'm given a sacred task
My temperance
My decadence
My life
The pilgrimage
Must be praised each moment
Living each sixty seconds
Like a mantra
Torn
In haste
Out of a holy book
In the ER
I've given a look
As my pieces are scattered
At a more complete me
I've been set free
About the Creator
Daniel Power
I'd like to share a collection of my poetry that I've written and accumulated throughout the years that may date all the way back to my days in grade school. I hope you enjoy your time spent perusing and pondering my mental meanderings.
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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 Angeli3 days ago in Poets
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