Thursday, July 31, 2008

Huixtocihuatl and the coyolli


she wore tiny golden bells,
the coyolli, round her
ankles so that when
she would hear them
sounding as she walked
she'd remember to hold
her head up to the sky and
smile for her son..give thanks
and ask the gods for blessings
for his safe return.

her son Metzli
was off planet, in the
war zone, yes, the war zone...
she used to shudder
when she thought of how young
he'd been when he'd first left home
to join the alliance's peace keeping force.
he was only seventeen then
and some thought he was already too
old, way past the age of leaving home
to carry out his duties for the alliance.
they believed he had been given special
treatment because he was the son
of an elder priest and Huixtocihuatl's only one.
Her husband has other wives and children but
their son is the first one, and was born special...

Metzli is also a priest, but
a warrior priest, that might be hard
to understand if you are not aware
of the Mexica culture, that used to be governed
solely by a warrior cult, now, all these millennia later,
it is headed by priests who seek the peace. Metzli had
to be given the necessary training to be able to
live in the hostile areas and venerate
all life at the same time,
to be a model of the new human.

a warrior priest does not intentionally kill,
only in self defense, and only in rare cases
after all other powers have been exhausted
to try and convince or subdue an adversary.
this has rarely happened in the years since the
blue children began to come into their own and
caused the fall of the last empire, with their
psychic powers.

the people living in the outworlds are those who fled
during the worst of the crisis, of the war and destruction
that followed as the empire sought to end the world instead
of allowing it to change. some of those who left earth
are still very damaged with the greed illness,
some are sympathizers with the old empire
and would like to have that old system back again.
but above all they are
life, beings whom we want
to co-exist peacefully with
and not harm.

she was told by her sisters not
to worry but rather to
imagine her son enveloped
in golden light - in a
protective egg of gold light -
gold like her bells...


© Odilia Galván Rodríguez, 2008





Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Rainmaking


they prayed
rain would not come.
he piled hardwood high and sat
when flame’s tongues rose licking his feet
rains came

when full
moon wears an aura
children sing frog songs
calling along with village gifts
cloudbursts

science
thinking man's god
masters mother nature
seeding clouds with silver dry ice
rainfalls

warm clouds
supercooled
fooled formations circling
hitting a cold spoon in skyspace
crying

burning
body’s smoke
signals ancestors sending
winds against rain shadows sipping
skywater

to implore the rain  venerate Chac
to implore the rain  venerate Tlaloc
to implore the rain
dance
dance
dance



© Odilia Galván Rodríguez, 2008

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Fleurs de sel


















accept this offering

of dried fish and birds

salted with bitter tears

I harvested.

your passing

did not turn grand

cities into crystallized seas

though your family still

feels the curse of another

disappeared before his time

but like the Mary Celeste

you’ve refused to go down.

we pour thin white lines

at the windows and doors

hoping to keep you at bay

some say it keeps you trapped inside 

with us the living

conjuring more of the same.

no there is no blame for pouring

salt into our wounds we accepted

that sentence from the womb

as part of us being born yours

we came out briny

as if direct from the ooze

moody to the blues

like those storms at sea

that brew up quick

lashing at the shores

with towering tongues

of brackish water



© Odilia Galvan Rodriguez, 2008

Blues 9




Monday, July 21, 2008

prescription: drugs

part of the web of
life series


before the shining
glass beads dangled and
called bright the colored cloth and
hammered iron pots strung up alongside our
white shells the sugar and flour and whiskey flowed
down the ancestors throats
now the plastic money and
shiny fast cars
and foods
computers and the
latest flat screens blinking loud
with their lies called the news
a prescription:
drugs to numb the senses
to keep a people defenseless
entertained mindless
while we are traded like pelts
the land raped and stripped
like our warrior's scalps stretched
a nick for someone's belt
our children bent and stooped
in fields
carved by cruel knives
clearing ancient trees
whose roots talked
and told the crops to grow
to cover up the crime of all time
sown in our people's blood that
flowed in rivers across the burnt land
fertilizing bitter the fruit
poisoned by greed but heeding
the call to survive we eat while
these people force feed us
their trinkets


©/Odilia Galvan Rodriguez, 2008