Best Conquistadores Poems

My family is everywhere like wild seeds sown
On the whim and bluster of a wind
Some left for Cuba before the revolution
Bring green stalks of sweet grass to sugar
And are still there, root sunken in the earth
Grafted branches without memory now
Or recognition of ancestral home,
Separated by...

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My father's abeng blew up my mother's womb
And I was chained there
Nine months in darkness drinking blood
Longing for my resurrection from the tomb
Longing to break the chains
Holding me before my birth to a carnal earth
Longing to stop him pounding
Pounding on the door of my bereft...

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My island slept for years in the care
Of Tainos, Caribs and Arawak
Their canoes on the sea breast bare
Dreaming of milk from manioc
The swamps unscarred, trees secure
Batos and songs rinsed in the azure.

Then came doom laden caravels came
Prancing with Conquistadores
Their swords to slaughter, then to shame
The...

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Now let us forget foreign captains
And Conquistadores myth
That colors the morning exuberantly
With exotics wars and phony fathers
Like a fine lady strolling along a rotten street
I have tasted lemon
And though I wince at my tongue's
Sharp reaction
I value the tart worthiness of vitamins
And the aroma of the...

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Aztec Empire

grandeur and splendor,
a great civilization -
conquistadores...

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   Mexico claims part of Texas as its own  
     Calls to invade the Lone Star State have lately grown

   Long-time Texans can hardly believe their ears
     This issue has been decided...

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All day long I read but cannot tell
Which would I bring back
Or what moor's good could they do now
Who did not prevent the coming of hell.
Back and forth, back and forth
And always back again
We go to history and find no gold
Like conquistadores, only pain.
I want...

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Villanelle : Who but Great Powers make World look like market place

Who but Great Powers make World look like market place
The crib courtyards of Russia China and US
Who reigns in the United States concerns all in space

Don’t tell the down-trodden rest they’re out of the...

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I left my class tonight full, exhausted.
Every joint aches and barely able to walk.
The trip to the car was barely mustered,
and I reflected a time on the talk.
I had completed a three-hour class
and felt as I had in a marathon.
I had left all that I...

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This sea's end on a misnamed shore
Is not the terminus of your sin
Nor my beginning in the dusky yore
But we can in false time begin
To ridirect the world from the whim
And caprice of self-lost to love
The best in us again. Trust is slim
Now, but surrender...

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That day before I crossed you
I saw the Thames
Where Wordsworth stood alone
To pour his heart upon the wave.
And I open mouthed wondered 
By the banks
Of endless history
For ever intransigent
On the Thames eternal transience.
And then I met you
After the bus
Had traveled miles beneath your tide
We looked...

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Mirror melted, and I enclosed in solid space of ice
Intersperse images, direlict of other's maiming vice.
Mimicry is not a benign deceit as you would think
Incontestable illusions brought my race to this brink
Cramped with penury and self mutilations. The image
Rinsed in the shadowy world of water,...

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How do I begin
The litany of my praise
Where so much is wrong
And we in the haze
Of material focus
See not the spirit dripping
Into soggy souls.
We see the goals
Extolled by what brings to ruin
Other blind places
While around me throng
Two point seven million
Disharmonous songs.
How do I begin
To enthrone...

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Jacksonville, at this hour, tell me
Do you miss me where the river flows
Through Florida's tangled history
Where the Mocama cotton grows

Do you see me driving early
To teach where the clansman name holds
Such reverence in history
For black children midst fear's bright folds

Do you see me sitting slowly
Where...

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I came to find again the fresh fountain
With footprints of Conquistadores framed
In mud: residue of a brick mountain
From behind which white anger once had flamed.
The missing fort was not all time displaced
But cougars dying without an escape
From your history. Wrapped in me and disgraced
I saw...

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