Possession

POSESSION The astral priest saw that the time had come To finally invoke an Aztec god, He left his family and Friends behind To go to Tlaxcala on the day of the wind To call Quetzalcoatl with bone flute and drum. Then when Venus shone through a lens On a shattered stone ruin six hundred years old, He stood by high columns engraved With scenes from the lives of the gods, The moon glinting occultly on onyx and gold. His feathered cape and the jaguar mask He wore began moving all on their own, The eagle claws strapped to his wrist Shook with anger, with passion and pride. The Lady of the Serpent Skirts Howled in the bowels of limestone caves, And in the hall of Smoking Mirrors Tezcatlipoca took aim at the Sun. Double-headed feathered serpents Coiled about the calender stone, And even the pavement ‘pon which he stood Rang with the spells of ancient wizards. Then to his shock a crackle of lightning Leapt up his spine and burst in his brain, And then the hot fire assaulting his nerves Sent him convulsing with terror and joy. The god was demanding, he urged the priest To climb out of his skin and leap into flame, To cook his heart well as a meal for the gods, To break all his limits - surrender at once To waste not a second, but ride the tornado, To seize the anaconda and tame it with a glance, To penetrate flint with his fingers and eyes To enter volcanoes and dance on the boiling Magma within the Earth’s orange cleft, To be at once an atom and star, To see all Space as the ground of Being. And then to fall screaming into the Abyss. From somewhere out of the silence came drumming, The drumming of shamans invoking spirits, Guardian spirits of wolves and crows Gathering round to aid the priest. And then at last he knew whence the drumming, Just the rain pounding the roof of his skull. Lightning lit a fire And drifting off to sleep the flames revealed Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca Fought their way through thirteen hells. Their warriors, the Eagle and the Jaguar knights, Exchanged obsidian butterflies. The feathers wafting in the wind Became the crimson clouds at dawn. A cool scented breeze caressed his neck, Raindrops gleamed on a spider’s web, Sunlight filled the turquoise sky.