The nobility, the priesthood,
The common, the slaves
A life's journey fixed,
Elected for life or
Passed from father to son.
Omens, divinations,
Predictions, reading future
They were skilled mathematicians,
Historians, keepers of knowledge
Recorded details in codices.
Books of fig bark paper
Mayans wrote, kept count
Of Sun's path, tracked Venus
With surprising Accuracy,
Marked zenith twined with beliefs
Hard workers ate well,
Worshiped their many gods
In willing exuberance
Artisans, carvers,
Traded true, cities grew
Peaceful obsidian warriors
Extravagant kings and queens
Fell to their own intelligence
Wrath of gods unfurled red-carpet
For death and destruction
Nothing to eat, nothing to carve,
Nothing to record, nothing to trade,
Nothing to fight, none left to please god
Nothing to sacrifice, simply collapsed.
They weren't spared, would we be?
......The loss of Alexandria,
the burning of Ashburnham House,
the Grand Library of Baghdad
which the Mongolians tore down,
the countless Aztec codices
that the conquistadors all burned...
just thinking of the knowledge lost
sometimes can make my stomach churn.
Even Shakespeare claims a ‘lost play,’
this is not bound to antiquity,
Scott Joplin’s opera Guest of Honor
has been swallowed by history.
Even some tales by Hemmingway
disappeared in a lost suitcase,
happens still in our modern age,
a quite avoidable disgrace.
Only God knows just what we’ve lost,
and isn’t keen on sharing it,
what we still have is half the tale,
we’ve lost so much wisdom and wit.
It can fill a curious mind
with a sense of tired despair,
paper rots and the stone erodes
until it all just goes nowhere…
Perhaps, these days, the bits and bites
will keep all of our knowledge better,
after all, don’t the people say
the Internet is forever?
Isn’t it?
….on an unrelated note, I’m gonna go post this on every poetry forum I can find…
The modern world is an awe-choice saturation
Of stuffness and people,
A punguage,
An allcode,
The hash of all cyphers, nodes and codices
Ever scribed, wrote and written,
Bitten off, stolen or torn,
The mash of all knowledge,
The thrash of all oars televisual,
The splice of all strings
From one edge of time to the other,
The open oeuvre of everything,
An omnithought of toot,
The sum of all inflexions,
Ancient and phonetic,
Yet provisional,
A mighty metaforest pointing
To the centre
Of you know what.
With luck, someday they may find them--
gently brush back those decades
like lover's tears.
They will wash those glazed letters--
straighten cracked syllables – discern
those once fresh thoughts
fired fiercely in the furnaces of poetry.
Some may sense those losses--
savor sadness of so much
that now seems nothing.
In dreams we are always returning--
arching out, moving
like silent salmon muscling water
as we squirm for existence,
barely holding to lives
with empty moist fingers.
I walk over archeology
relics of ancient times
and I,
fall as Tlaloc dreams
with obsidian eyes
and pulls me in,
A High Priest
wields the dagger
as a virgin weeps
of manna, blood drips
as the sacrifice triples
the alliance fell
a Jaguar stalks
in maize lines, clay stones
inlaid with gold symbols
direct to Huitzilopochtli’s throne
in codices
the prickly pear
reads of eagles
swallowing snakes
bearing
the fruit of prophets
welling from sacred earth,
the muse crumbles
in the history of the Mayans
but a prophecy ever specks
with the tongue of Nahuatl
a vision of Machu Picchu
emerges
In.sane in the membrane of my brain
or sane in the insanity of this game...
Row row, I'm rowing, between synapses
I'm flowing, silent rivers I'm riding
like a train...
Rollercoaster rollin' faster, in a flash
synaptic laughter, as these neurons
remain.in the lane...
"Hey you and you two,
Me too? Yeah dude, her too..."
Synaps the chatter in my brain.
"Nervous sister? We're not kidding
it's a system living, listen, we're
the hear in the sphere of your sane.
Checkin' time in between and
between the membrane."
10 billion cortical pyramidals,
passing signals, giggles, riddles,
checking time against a rhyme
from the outer layer to middle.
~core.text you say codexes delay,
it's a logical process.ical, theoretical way
crazy spelling these a'daze.....Codices.
Breathe... and don't mess with our cortex
messages..."
Inner wind, blowing high, gears shift
moving this ride, hand wiggles the
scribbling scribe as I write.
Memories into the light, but who
in the train remains tonight.
As I look about with my candlelight,
in the night, there's One.
Am I in.Sane?
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