Maya Poems From Isla Mujeres

WALKING WITH IXCHEL

walking a windy path to the edge

Ixchel closes her eyes

to see if she might stumble

undeterred by darkness our moon goddess never falters

never misses a step

balances on tip-toes to the jagged rim before falling from raw cliffs into a fruity cocktail-colored sea

unlike staggering rum-soaked conquistadors walking the plank

claiming her temple island for spain

Ixchel was here first

who did these self-proclaimed conquerors think they were

stinking lice-ridden fools

macho madmen

Ixchel bathes in fragrant moonbeams

marvels at freshly squeezed orange sunrise

sprinkles rich sea salt on delicious dreams

warm lunar love lights her way home

to shelter

in bounteous Isla Mujeres existence

forever rich on land, sea and air

atoms to atoms

dust to dust

beyond the beyond

forever

walking with Ixchel

down our serpentine spiritual path

Maya Poems From Isla Mujeres

TEACHERS

dusk in an empty room

shadows the past, present and future

in Isla

who once watched the sea I see through these very windows?

mysterious strangers visiting our Lotus refuge

feeling the Maya drum beat

in the cool air

seekers savoring comfort

relishing the scene

without fear

who are these laughing spirits now sitting across a wooden table

on a rice mat

on a polished marble floor

on cushioned wooden chairs

two women sharing a bottle of Blood Red Syrah wine

Ixchel

La Santa Muerte

our teachers regaling Stephanie and me with ancient legends

cast on the coming moonlight

floating on silver water

so we better understand, see and feel

mind-bending magic on this island of women

Tie Them Liberals to the Tracks

I hear the train a comin’ rolling ’round the bend

And I ain’t seen trouble like this since I don’t know when.

Get ready, Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Hazleton and God knows how many dirty little coal patch towns in between. The Trump train’s a coming to a re-election rally near you.

Beer guzzling Johnny Cash fanatics, four-wheelers driving drunk the wrong way down the interstate, SWAT team cops, ex-cops, state cops, local yokel cops, constables, county sheriffs, Secret Service agents past and present, military veterans representing all branches of the service, active duty Marines, soldiers and a bedraggled assortment of mostly redneck American laborers, bartenders, unemployed roofers and other discriminated against white men are prepared to tie you libs to the track and roll over you like a runaway Steamtown locomotive.

To take back America, that’s why! To make America great again! To shoot before they see the whites of your eyes.

Hold your fire, men.

Did I say shoot?

That’s right, son.

These new American revolutionaries ain’t playing.

Even hot-wired on Wild Turkey and two-step dancing in new work boots these boys get teary-eyed expressing their love of God, guns and guts, willing to pay any price to save all three. Barbecue, beer and freedom go together better than any Tinkerbell trio of drag show performers at the human relations commission annual summer picnic.

The New Breed (which sounds like a fitting name for the armed citizen revolutionary guards Trump will assemble from sea to shining sea if he wins a glorious return to the White House) will pick up their machine guns, grenades, semi-automatic rifles, flame throwers, handguns, and deer hunting bows and arrows, take to their used SUVs and pickups to patrol the streets of our nation in one big paramilitary vendetta coming for societal spies, turncoats and informers.

The New Breed don’t need no more corrupt judges like that commie in that Manhattan courtroom. The New Breed will create new order in the court. No Ma’am, the jobs and the courtrooms and military and even the Justice Department now belong to Trump.

Trump! Trump! Trump!

Now we got rare, beef-fed, red-blooded All-American boys and girls leading armed and dangerous local militia battalions ready to round up any and all alphabet soup LGBTQRSTUVWXYZ gays, Black power militants and immigrants with skin darker than the suntan you get on your arm (heavily tattooed with a Marine bulldog, a Confederate flag and a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon) from driving truck with your elbow resting on the window and your white t-shirt sleeve rolled to the shoulder.

That Lee Greenwood song “Proud to be an American” is already the new unofficial national anthem. Georgia peach congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green is already the new First Lady because, unlike Melania, Marjorie stood by her man.

’Merica!

Love it or leave it!

Forget about Joe Biden’s prissy little Amtrak choo choo train scheduled to head from Scranton to New York so them sissies U.S. Sen. Bob Casey and Congressman Matt Cartwright can Christmas shop and see the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall.

Lock ‘em up!

Lock ‘em up!

But what if Trump’s locked up?

Don’t think for one stinking second you need patriotic special operations combat vets to free their leader from solitary confinement. Real Americans don’t need a Green Beret, SEAL team or DELTA death squad to blow the prison walls. Enough corrections officers who love Trump no doubt exist inside to sneak Trump out in a laundry truck and drive him directly to the Oval Office with a massive police, military and militia escort and throngs of supporters lining the soon-to-be crime free streets waving Trump flags along the route. This presidential procession will be better than any welcome home parade Vietnam vets didn’t get until it was too late.

But Trump was a draft dodger, wasn’t he?

Don’t you dare even think such subversive blasphemy.

Mr. President Trump was working undercover in a secret CIA classified mission so the North Vietnamese VC would think he was one of them so he could get close enough to Jane Fonda to hit on her Hollywood bones and singlehandedly capture the queen of the feminists by grabbing her by any damn body part he wanted. On his first day back in office Trump will sign a warrant for Fonda’s arrest even though she’s 86.

Lock her up!

Lock her up!

Hillary, too!

LOCKHERUPLOCKHERUP!!!!

WOOOOOOOOO!

WOOOOOOOOO!

You hear that?

The Trump train’s picking up speed!

It’s coming for that scrappy kid from Scranton!

Corn Pop can’t save you now, Joe Biden.

ALLLL ABOARD!!!!!!

Maya Poems From Isla Mujeres

MOONBEAMS

the man in the moon

pouts

with woeful eyes, mouth and nose

sadness

empty-headed

weak

poor lonely man in the moon

he knows not the true meaning of his glow

lunar luster shines from her

not him

ixchel sitting on a sharp moon sliver  

a swing in our heavenly garden

radiating moonbeams that bathe life on earth

controlling the tide

giving heart to our planet

ixchel feeling sorry for fools who credit any man

with saving the world

ixchel knows the future is female

ask your mother, she says

better yet, ask the night light of the cosmos

ask ixchel

Maya Poems From Isla Mujeres

NEXT TIME IN ISLA

if you sit quietly watching coconuts sleep on a sturdy roof of sticks, you might notice the simmering carribean sea in the distance

you might wonder what lies beyond the glistening smooth horizon

cuba

havana

an ice cream cone dripping on my tropical shirt decorated with lighthouses

where a laughing schoolgirl wearing a red bandana tied smartly around her neck lectured me in 1984 about how many languages she knew

asking if I spoke any of the tongues she commanded

I shook my head

no

spanish?

no.

italian?

no

german?

no

russian?

when we laughed she laughed loudest

forty years later my answer remains the same

no

i’m a coconut sleeping on the roof

no more

next time in isla

i’ll speak better spanish

next time in isla

i’ll order several fancy cocktails at the guru beach club bar instead of my sad, single margarita with lime and salt

next time in isla

my tongue will dance the jarana as I roll my r’s across the roof of my mouth  

i might even sing a love song

next time in isla

Maya Poems From Isla Mujeres

AWAKENING

alone in a leafy Lotus Beach Hotel refuge

vanilla buddha just sits

chock-full of paradise

slick black morning catbirds whistle

at cooey coy lovey dovies  

preening as ancient drums keep time

etching new psychic tattoos   

spreading nature’s portrait

an original face

looking back from the mirror at

drunken saints and sober sinners

ordering cold fresh fruit for breakfast by the beach

blackberry bliss

kiwi joy

strawberry paradise

banana split nirvana

sweet serenity in

a morning meal served in awakening heat

and humidity

on this hot and wondrous sweaty

moment to be alive

Maya Poems From Isla Mujeres

SPIKE

if you look closely enough you can see the black spiny-tailed iguana

she can see you, too

calling herself “espiga” she minds her own business

unless you bother her or her baby

then she bites

you can’t see the little one, though

calling herself “pica,” something that bites, she’s more daring

than her mother wants her to be

don’t bite unless you have to, her mother says

when you eat your flowers, fruit and eggs in the morning

chew with your mouth closed, she says

above all, be nice, mother says

it’s nice to be nice

don’t bite unless you have to

Maya Poems From Isla Mujeres

MOONBEAMS

lost and gone forever, tourists say

moon goddess Ixchel listens to their harsh lies

see her so tiny in this photo

sitting on a sliver of moon

reflecting on these Maya ruins

collapsed in decay

gray stone temple above the sea

where female spirits rise first each morning with orange sunshine

slumber late at night bathed in lemon moonbeams

more powerful than ever

Ixchel flings psychedelic rainbows across an azure sky

from Punta Sur

the highest point in holy Yucatán

on easternmost Mexican ground

respecting nature

demanding parity

wearing a crown of wriggling serpents

controlling dead souls in a crossbones skirt

carrying a overflowing water jug

our snake wisdom conjurer blesses the rain

curses with floods

protects pilgrims

condemns culprits

betray our astral empress  

at your own risk

better watch your bones

Maya Poems From Isla Mujeres

CONK

you can’t see us sitting on the red plastic chairs at Picus Cockteleria

because we left

the empty table

with no evidence of our presence

gone was her grilled conch pounded flat and tender

conk

conk

who’s there

conk

conk who?

conk anybody over the head who tries to steal a bite of her tasty sea snail

how do you say tikin xic I wanted to know

teek-en-sheek said the gold-toothed waiter

snapper?

grouper?

who cares?

yucatán tradition marinated in vibrant achiote paste made from crushed annatto seeds

giving it iconic bright orange-red hue

if only the smooth pink polished conch shell remained

I could join the two-piece house band

blow big notes like a maya warrior wearing an ancient feathered headdress

instead we danced in the sand on the way to the street

a table of four drunken women applauded when we walked by

conk

conk

who’s there

Feeding the Biden Beast

While starving youngsters in Gaza eat leaves President Joe Biden and VIP guests gobbled the best haute cuisine at Thursday night’s official state dinner to honor Kenya’s president. Set up in a pavilion on the South Lawn of the White House, the meal’s first course included Chilled Heirloom Tomato Soup, Sourdough Crisps and Arbequina Olive Oil.

Famished kids in Gaza are eating weeds.

Biden, the First Lady and connected guests devoured a main course of Fruitwood-smoked Beef Short Ribs, Butter-poached Lobster, Citrus Butter and Baby Kale, (with) Sweet Corn Purée.

Emaciated toddlers in Gaza are gnawing cactus leaves.

Dessert for privileged Democrats included White Chocolate Basket, Banana Ganache, Raspberries, Peaches and Candied Lime Zest

So bold and dinner party proud were White House staffers they emailed the menu to members of the press all over the world – including still living native-born Palestinian journalists still surviving in that hellish Gaza wasteland. Yet, while Biden and guests wiped full lips with crisp clean napkins, Israeli soldiers in our American government-sponsored slaughter forced a million Palestinians to move for as often as the ninth time just to stay alive as Israeli bombs continued to fall.

“As of April 2024, some residents of Gaza are eating leaves, weeds, and cactus leaves to survive due to food scarcity and a lack of aid supplies,” according to a Save the Children report. “Mallow, a variety of green leaf, is a common part of many Gazans’ diets because it’s inexpensive. Some residents also forage for food left by rats and eat animal feed.”

“Families in Gaza are forced to forage for scraps of food left by rats and eating leaves out of desperation to survive,” said the Save the Children report. War and rapidly declining aid supplies leave all 1.1 million children in Gaza facing starvation, the report says.

A traumatized Palestinian woman told aid workers, “My husband told me people have resorted to eating bird and animal food and tree leaves out of desperation. He has been forced to scavenge for scraps of food; he recently found scraps in his sister’s house that had already been ruined by rats but washed them and ate them anyway because there is literally nothing else left to eat. He said he will not perish from bombs, but from scarcity of food.”

No Candied Lime Zest for you.

Israeli tourist beaches, seaside nightclubs and countless high-end restaurants, what Pini Shani, Israel’s Tourism’s Deputy Director-General and Head of Marketing Administration, calls “the land of milk and honey,” are open for business as usual. At the same time, starving Palestinians await basic food distribution to be unloaded at a new pier American troops recently finished building on a sandy stretch of bombed-out barren land. American money paid for the pier because Israel continues to block crucial humanitarian aid while continuing to decimate the Palestinian civilian population, including men, women and children.

An increasing number of moral people in the civilized world have no appetite for this genocide. Judges at the top United Nations court, the International Court of Justice, or World Court, ruled Friday that, among other war crimes, Israel is intentionally starving civilians, a deliberate government policy that directly contributed to murdering more than 35,000 men, women and children — more than 14,000 of whom are women, children and old people.

Here’s the deal says Biden. Speaking at a celebration of Jewish Heritage Month Monday in the Rose Garden at the White House, Biden said Israel’s military assault in Gaza in the wake of the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks “is not genocide.”

“We reject that,” he said, telling an audience of Jewish leaders and activists that Americans “stand with Israel,” according to The New York Times.

But what about Palestinian children with hollow eyes chewing leaves or trying to fill empty bellies with rat food?

Have they tried the Sourdough Crisps?

I can just hear Biden smacking his lips saying, “Man, we didn’t get Butter-poached Lobster like this when I was a kid growing up in Scranton.”

Ah, Scranton, Biden’s allegedly beloved birthplace in Northeastern Pennsylvania, a still demanding region where a recent economic report estimated almost 25 percent of households scrape and save to live on a family income of less than $25,000 a year — a stark fact you never hear from Scranton Mayor Paige Gephardt Cognetti, an official Biden booster and re-election campaign surrogate, or any other pampered elected Democrat such as my honorary Zionist neighbor U.S. Sen. Bob Casey or my congressman U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright.

You don’t have to get invited to an official White House state dinner to stuff yourself full of hypocrisy. If Cognetti, Casey and Cartwright keep sucking up to Biden and enabling his Gazan slaughter, though, their presence might very well be requested at the next state dinner — or at least lunch with Israeli lobbyists. If the White House does call, I urge our fallacious public servants to try the wine.

While Gazan youngsters scrounged for gutter water on Thursday night, White House servers poured Hartford Court Chardonnay “Four Hearts Vineyard” 2021, St. Innocent Pinot Noir “Shea Vineyard” 2019 and Iron Horse Classic Vintage Brut 2020.

Once you’ve been invited to sit at the king’s table, once you’ve feasted on Biden’s buffet of political opulence, how could any bourgeois bureaucratic gorger think of anything but using both bloodstained hands to grab more and more and more for himself or herself?

Political hustlers can’t help bellying up to the trough to satisfy their gastronomic greed for sustenance that feeds their self-absorbed aspirations. Government gluttons all, America’s publicly-funded enablers of Palestinian annihilation are to blame for human devastation, cultural decimation and the end of the world as Gaza knew it.

How about those bananas?

Or should I say Banana Ganache?