Conquistadores Poems | Examples

A Narrative Sure to Resonate with Those Who Stand for Justice

   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 for many years 

   But on Christmas night, Mexican gangs
     roamed Texan border towns, seeking Texans to hang

   They killed 2,000, then raped some more
     took others hostage, about twelve score

   Joe B., furious, ordered an all-out assault
     He'd show those Mexicans who was at fault

   Not so fast, progressive Democrats said
     There was 'context' to the border assault, and the 2,000 dead

   In fact, the Mexicans were the unlucky victims of systemic racism
     not to mention decades of oppression and neo-colonialism

   Since the 1850's the Mexicans had suffered, the Left said
     'Twas a heinous crime for 'Genocide Joe' to kill them dead

   So, Joe B. caved, and gave the 'conquistadores' their reward
     Over their new border inside Texas, all their 'amigos' poured...

American Odyssey

I watch you go quiet in mid-chatter.
You look up and inward,
your eyes deep-set and native,
I glimpse you,
not as that Irish girl brought up in the projects
but as an American legend, a promise
so very few have discovered or kept.

Only here does the land
grow mystics that can bake bread
and also hammer rivets.
The old wild ones who have learned to read,
taught by the earth and sky.

You belong to the outcast and tribe-less,
the indigenous who planted their own
deep seeds.
Those who innately knew
how to take a wild journey
barefoot or shod,
long before the conquistadores
drove their pigs before them
chopping up this continent
into cuts of meat for their God to eat.

A buzzard flaps slowly away,
suddenly you smile.
''I'll make dumplings tonight" you say,
"just like my Polish grandma used to make em."

We calmly carry on
walking into the blue distance,
Behind us,
Lewis and Clark struggle to keep up.

When I Grow Up

When I grow up I want to be a conquistador
Seven is adamant always
Once they fall in love with a career,
that is it.

What is that? I asked.
You know, she said coyly. You had them back in the day.
Not in my day. We had no conquistadores 
in my covered wagon.

Teaching High

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 am in a mass
back there in the class and I had truly won
their hearts and minds by truth-telling them
of Aztecs and conquistadores, Buddhist 
monks on great voyages, ancient times when
there was romance, intrigue and a long line 
of compelling moments were woven last night
into a history that was done right.

Villanelle: Who But Great Powers Make World Look Like Market Place

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 race
Even sinking island states may hope for prowess
Who but Great Powers make World look like market place

Lebens raum’s an excuse for Conquistadores
Spices for regal banquets stolen art pieces
Who reigns in the United States concerns all in space

A hundred years of wars deprives Man of grace
Leaders thrive on gullible populace nonetheless
Who but Great Powers make World look like market place

The more the whine the more the fish-market brag place
What counts is the clout each Big Brother promises
Who reigns in the United States concerns all in space

What makes a nation great if not the populace
Can any man then replace what’s good in US
Who but Great Powers make World look like market place
Who reigns in the United States concerns all in space

© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2016

Aztec Empire

Aztec Empire

grandeur and splendor,
a great civilization -
conquistadores

On Cash For Gold

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 to call Elijah,
Or Jeremiah,
But not again poor Columbus
Stranded on a beach in his humanity
Not again the Inquisition's chain
Or Cortez insanity.
Cash for gold, cash for gold, cash for gold
Young boys in abbreviated trousers cry
And I could not tell the difference
Between the hunger and the plunder
Lost, lost everyone
And no Carmel to halt the blunder.

The Explorers

We are new colonists and we embrace 
A hostile and unforgiving land. Lay 
Claim to clay covered gold by grace 
And the callous palms of tired hands, 
But the weary lesson lidded, did not 
Stay night's strife and eyes' sands. 
We poor Don Quixotes have no Camelot. 
\We left Paradise, the fruit still sweet 
Like a piper's note upon our giddy eyes, 
And edged our sugar hungry teeth 
On gaudy claims the harsh day denies 
Reversing us who came our fortunes to reverse 
On windmills and the roulette of dreams 
We had the upside down of the Midas curse. 
Poor Samsons, we, in the litter of our schemes. 
\I see land beyond forty acres ungiven 
But I see no mules except for us 
Who for fabled EL Dorado has striven 
Conquistadores mired in the plight of dust 
Our feathers are pluckt by the Atlantic storm 
And I, here serches the spectra of Job 
Amidst this new thing without border or norm 
That consumes us like locust on a withering globe.

Lexicon Lessons

Words have shallow meanings
Skimmed from the alien pool
Where aliens keep spitt of tongue
These borrowed syllables are not of my tongue
The taste was chewed from them long ago
So yearning to recover my voice
In words ancient as Methusalah
And sacred before thee conquistadores came
Must soak them in old images
That structure sentences a new way
Using punctuation like the end of a line
To make thee broken all the sense
And yet come to a meaning continuous
Where the punctuation pauses
If you are lazy, I do not think you shall enjoy me
I write from a double intellect
It is a political condition of my defect
Deep down and rumbling for attention

Mimicry Is Murder

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, watch it change
Yesterday's victim for the victimizer. I feel a strange

Intertwining of silhouettes, a sinister string, a damage
Suspiciosly hard to explain in the colonizer's world

My usefulfulness replaced by my uselessness, the shell
Upstaged, left in sand's silence for shimmering of pearl
Rude those conquistadores settling in the benign hell
Dangerous not to them who make us unreal in the real
Essence of fire, and by sly ambiguities cruelly conceal
Racial meanings, except where minstrelsy glimpse desire.

Florida

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 the Caribbean full landscape
Wilting in the salt of mossy lakes. I
Saw men like cougars unwilling to die.

I found the seasons changed into bright cold
And the evening sun the only sure gold
Above slithering gangrene of jagged sea
I found birds strumming on the fret of glee
But nowhere could I find the thing I sought
Beyond the migrant men in a dream caught.

Father

Father, your ship keeps me waiting here, my eyes
Peeling horizon for mast or sail
Where the frigates fly, and seagull, wind slanting, cries
I walk the sands silent shadows pale
Hungering for a deck to stand 
Beside you, and be like you, a man.

Father, in the lonely nights bereft of inheritance, I
Hear you singing songs that wrecked
My desires to grant you authencity, when you deify
The armored foot upon my neck
Conquistadores prowess and sly
I could not love the cold ambuity.

Father, I undersatnd them all today, our mix origin
Straddled loyalty that divides us
Yet though we have been classified in our skin
Not easily removed like mere rust
And for this we are bridges again
New planks to walk away from pain.

Father, this moment on the silent moonlit gaze of sand
I miss you beyond meaning here
A boy, like a ship too, needs his rudder in your hand
Need support negotiating his fear
Need to hear your footsteps walk
In the room, where I stand a stalk.

Deconstruction

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 can prove
More worth than paper documents
And words that never stand so
To mean exactly all desire's intents
Leaving you in thin chiaroscuro

So let us not praise Columbus still
Nor Sea dogs' conquistadores
Mentality, I like Wilberforce's bill
But we new Crispus and Torrez
Were not impotent dole getters, since
We fired sugarcane and barracks
And by death and waste also convinced
The Great House to retire its racks
Since we salt of the earth accept it
That our coming was no accident
But from the convenant to pave and grit
A redemption for gentiles and truant.

The Island

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 Ave Marias slutted by whores
Whose blazing balls of canons denied
The sufficient death of the crucified.

My island was the Mary Magdalene held
For ransome in the frying lust
For gold, the continental wars spelled
A trembling virginity in the dust
A lost of idyllic grace, where bloody men
Sowed the evil inherited again and again.

From Spanish to French, Spanish to British
How callous is all history
A spectre publishing the marginal brutish
Shrivelled glory of identity.
And still my Mary, her alabastor box a gift
This tropic wonder, this lignum vitae of thrift

From empty tomb to broken hearted disciple
Evanglizes the Mahoe dawn
Over the Blue Mountain where peace ripple
On the motto, still the fawn
In the forest brings the stag to court
This island stands ready to file a good report.

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