from Iovis, Book 2: Glyphs

“A scribe whose hand matches the mouth, he is indeed a scribe.”

—SUMERIAN PROVERB

“Who shall read them?”

—JOHN L. STEPHENS

The poet is enamored of syllabaries, alphabets, the phonemes of any old tongue & groove. She travels to the Yucatán to meet a stubborn knowledge, secret, yet vibrant still in its actual display, the toil & play of its living people, their tragic dis-inheritance, and the ruins that bring her to her knees in awe & astonishment. Egypt’s remnants, many moons back, were never quite like this to stop her mind. The closer continent intrigues the imagination more subtly perhaps? Less trampled? Unvoiced? Hidden? She moves with a scholarly companion of equal stamina & inquisitiveness. They read into the night on a humble cot one bare lightbulb outside Tulum, into Cobá, Valladolid, Chichén Itzá, Mani, Uxmal, Mérida always checking the simple rooms for reading bulbs & lamps. Reading old accounts by night, eyeballing incised glyphs by day. What sounds behind their fierce facade, what lore, what language, what action, what myth what passion ruled, how much warrior/slave blood spilled to meet a dire hallucinated need? Who built what & how. She is sometimes Rabbit-Scribe. Sometimes, Mescal-Lady Great-Skull-Zero.

& the code

public record stopped mid-sentence....

a great backbone of volcanoes

codes a mighty kinship

& arrived there a kind of prod

forgone conclusion

that it sounded in an ear,

a jungle ear, serpent vision hiss

or strum, that it made sense,

created a universe, a world tree

a “raised up” tree: Wacah Chan

she goes down to market.............

The priests want her thus placed,

conjunct to reality,

hazed in the dream of sacrifice so that instead of

blood blood blood

it’s star star star star

the route of divinity crosses the firmament, the world goes out,

eclipsed,

(fired) (see eclipse tables of Dresden Codex)

released or realize in the abstraction: it could go

on, the “let,” the blood

& my dear friend, always in sight, throws light around

amongst the good skulls, a rude awakening to rend your flesh

off off

I learned all this from a skeletal woman

reading the columns left to right

top to bottom

about twins & oppositions, metaphors for a concept of change

paddlers representing day & night

one thing replaces another replaces another replaces another

chan (caan) sky

& chan (caan) snake

a homophony, a glorious conjunct

nobody knows when it started

more arcana:

1. the database must be large enough, many lengthy texts

2. the language must be known, a reconstructed ancestral version. Linguistic family should be known.

3. a bilingual inscription of some sort is necessary

4. the cultural context should be known

5. for logographic scripts there should be pictorial references

Who can read the inscriptions under the bulls or elephants of Indus-Harappa ?

Who shall read them?

forests hacked away

what changes is not the will......Atlantis?

(Olson thinking this, off base, hunts among stones)

or astronomer tracks the skies, celestial tropical nights

looks down, stares down the long stelae, complicated, in moonlight

The royal scribes write the data & deeds down in bark-paper books

devotees of the twin Monkey-Man gods

they live to write, lords of language

“linguistic boundaries leak like sieves”

but they mouth the lines linked to place, dark deed, lineages & destinies

(It is not possible in Mayan to use an imperfect verb (referring to actions or events in the past, present, or future that have not been completed) without sticking a date or temporal aspect adverb in front of it.)

buried a millennium.....

then

ghosts should endure .......................... go on .........

go on .......... & walking

4 million Maya still walk these lands .......................... gone on .........

gone on & walking

made it ....... object ......? ........ this is play .......... ? ..........

important

------------ unauthorized lives .......... but gone on walking these lands

...... incised

? .......... or wasted .......... go back .......... it

written ............ claw .......... precisely .......... that they

walk, speaking ...... what is memory?

hand on chin to visit .......... get up to ask .......... cut off ..........

/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /

thinking .......... thinking .......... polished ........ walking ................

timely to walk the

sacbe .......... disappointed .........................................

come again ....... it is a day time ? ........... talk with friend ......

drink balche...................

exchange ? ............ happy? ................ all parts & more ........ feathers

......... eat keehel wah........

breast plate/ / / / / / / / / / / ...... the day it was transcribed ........ that was

the house of ...... changing lord

it is his name ............. the name of fire ................ name the lord of fire

............

he drilled fire ....... the ballcourt ........... watch .... it was the lintel

that was his ........ ? ..............

memorial of the house ....... / / / / / / / / / / /--------- over ---------

& she went down to market & heard the news

various guises of Venus

It was a great ceremony, don’t lose me here.

and of “Count” Jean Frederick Maximilien Waldeck (1766-1875), the historian William H. Prescott (in a cutting Boston tone) once confided to Mme. Fanny Calderón de la Barca: he “talks so big and so dogmatically..... that I have the soupçon that he is a good deal of a charlatan.”

producing drawings & architectural reconstructions fanciful in the extreme

he died of a stroke, pretty girl passing by .....

maintaining til the end of his life Maya civilization had been derived

from the Chaldeans, Phoenicians, and especially the “Hindoos”

what folly lurks there what coded racism?

(Lady Xoc nods, crouching before the Vision Serpent

in the year AD 681

& vomits up the future, all that will occur will occur)

one of a long line of fascinators, fascinated by, fascinated on, to “crack” it

what got coded long before you were born, the earth went dark & then they came

in .... Constantine Samuel Rafinesque, John Lloyd Stephens, Frederick Catherwood, Alfred P. Maudslay, Teobert Maler, Charles Etienne, Brasseur de Bourbourg, Ernst Forstemann, Leon de Rosny, Eduard Seler, Cyrus Thomas, Desire Chamay, others, Thompson, Knorosov & you, woman, what of your great quest? A bow to Linda Schele ...

Boleta de Entrada, and we go in

coded/closed....... > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >

> > > > > open to?

feathers & arrows, the heavy plumage

lead off by the curve of a nech > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >

> > > what Toltec sacrifice?

> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > you play or

not > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >

certain death

This is an assignment where you go to a museum to observe the past in a twist of fate

it is often the shape of bird (clay, bronze)

object made it of itself myself

that was itself a kind of death-rattle

(see tzab, the rattlesnake rattle resonates with the Pleiades)

but more objective, like removing the mind of . . .

but you say about the sacrifices, they go willingly, but a horror in the face

panic not the stupefaction, or seeing the vision, eyes wide

flowers, earrings, wool wrapped around an old lineage miles ago

& how important in my life? decked out . . .

slaves & bastard children, those who lost at ball

my clan? my kin?

what topology O proto-America

it was her way out

& then she whispered because she was speaking in me, a kind of Maya:

hallucinogenic bone tube enemas, they carry the vision into the stream

I cried I started I leap I strap down. Doctor Witch he came down on me I go out I go out a light like she who might die in a short stretch, flower cut ex stasis, this one Amazonian brazos. This old arm twisted body burn she valiumed out like lights. See her Momma see her I go get down the basement out the body now see me wizarded or wizened a mother’s thigh, she in huipol she in bright flowered sun, Mérida. A dream, and then he came inside me, a shorter death . . . . .

In the evening we took another hot-bath at the lotería, and the next day was Sunday, the last day of the fiesta, which opened in the morning with grand mass in the church of San Cristóbal. The great church, the paintings and altars, the burning of incense, the music, the imposing ceremonies of the altar, and the kneeling figures, inspired, as they always do, if not a religious, at least a solemn feeling; and, as on the occasion of grand mass in the Cathedral on my first visit to Mérida, among the kneeling figures of the women my eyes rested upon one with a black mantle over her head, a prayer-book in her hand . . . . . . .

Mérida tall beauty, a bloody plan a wound dead never but state of settled mind, unsettled, those descendents calibrated to spy on the afternoon. Mérida, the helpful-panama-hat-man guides me to the post office, then saves a parking space, illegal, going wrong way. Somber. Hombre. Buying tequila Hornitos now to recompense a green mind. The lover in his beauty, eyes bore into mine. Locked. Wanting to taste the bitter lemon & salt of life. Then she goes down to market.....

dream: copal smoke rising like a snake

she goes down to market

all the Indians are silent

she goes down to market

in an awareness of earth, it is a clay musical instrument

& air brings sound & soul to the object

contact with an alien symbol, try again

(she weaves she weaves)

clay is the number of her song

& her weave is not a macho thing but circles the warp

O! And then becomes writ in stone

Who shall read them?

going down

saying something confusing

something you meant to say way back it was midnight & you talk it to a wall—

old stones, the last blocks hundreds of miles away whisked here on whose authority?

I was in love with the heroes & adventurers who quested your dark continent

in A Red Notebook

& this was the chaos of the Red Notebook:

storms, conflagration, the tempest at Tulum, hoping to make love in the water, a nest of hammocks, some hippies still traveling through, running naked into the water, left a prissy white jacket on the shore, the kind you wear when the Pope’s in town, forgotten in the tequila of love & dream, silky sand, and the Pope was converting all the sins to gold pesos under a rim of a saucer go gently here. So what is the big buck of this town or time?

a little tourism, a little rope hemp but market dries up, one thing replaces another replaces another, and nylon is the order of the day to tie anything up replaces another replaces another

This is the red notebook speaking, lifetimes away, sentences freeze in her handkerchief also the degrees climb. I was planning this notebook about the new world ways about the rage of any underclass anywhere you turn, going down to market....

Red because of passion

Red because of blood let

Red in the nature of clay, which card is up

Red because you lied

Red I did your name in red

Red the spotlight was never going to turn

Red was mortified

Red was a palace of seduction & held the breasts aloft

What red could hold artistic attention, hold the crown

Ruby tooth of the jaguar

Priests could sanctify the ball game though it end it must in pain

Eyes turn

It is over

They lose

& Jays & Sox are caught in Oct 1993, Sox lose

You dream or you believe?

Who will win?

Red the color of Philadelphia

Red speaks to a crowd

Red is under seige, a coward

Red in the center of attack

Red in the color glyph code

Coded for centuries

Red whose name is “chac”

EAST WHOSE NAME IS LAKIN

& that is Red’s direction: east

Witch, tell my fortune, prophecy my only star

Venus? Do you keep moving or still?

Assignment: dear Naropa students, go again into a museum, stay in front of a particular picture, graven image, idol or visual detail a long time. Stay until they close and are restless you leave but don’t be rude, banging the old wooden doors, turning off the fans, you are tired too, from sleeping on the coast, bugs on the sand, your elegant sun-tanned legs— — — — — —

you stopped in the Museo Arqueológico for rest

down at heels, gorgeous, blond gringa, transfixed in front of the weave

a statue depicting the beginning and end of Maya time

The world directions as discovered by Rosny

& associated colors later by Eduard Seler

& all the deities that crack the whip

Credit where credit is due

Behind the ears? ............ .. ........... .......in this girl’s “dig”

& being archeological I unearthed the glyphs to my own rendering

I, Princes am ........... she who writes ........ monkey-scribe ................ or rabbit woman

or let me live to crack a code: revolution

went down

went down to the market

What is the best day of the year

The last day of school, end of school

or 10 years from now, the boy says.....

Life’s gonna be different I can go to bars

My mother will be dead

This book will be ancient

I’m not a crystal ball reader, just any psychic out of the street

but son of (child of yal (mother)), who borders the next century

------?------

He of the wide-mouth speaks it

He is a monkey

2 yax he dedicated the 4-bat place,

it was his house

“sky god lord,” Moon-skull

the 7th successor, the lord of the titles, Yat-Balam, Holy

Lord of Yaxchilán (just one example)

Taken?

A problem-solver

Solve the cresent moon

it moves while she went down to.....

her lover, Andros

dark

meteorological dust

settles

the

moon’s

surface

then

covered

transparent

oxygen

ice

(I am alone, alone)

Sunlight

penetrates

the ice

warms

the

dark material underneath

what market economy lurking there

his brazos

arms for the asking only if I feel good, arms for the taking, ordinary closed eyes, a kiss, detachment of the sense climbing one more pyramid and wanting to scream How dare you slight the great Jaguar god, how dare you burn the books in Mani, how dare the colonizer, destroyer of hemp an old god slighted, down in the teeth, the mouth, the earth

Chac chac chac chac chac chac chac chac chac chac chac chac chac chac chac chac chac chac ch acch acch acch acch ac

But

the

heat

cannot

escape

through

the

ice

some

it melts

into

gas

causing

pressure

build

until

the

gas

erupts

upwards

through

cracks

chac chac chac chac chac chac chac chac chac chac chac chac chac chac chac chac chac chac

carry

I say, carry

ice

dark

material

with it

so I go down.................

she goes down to market

anklets jangle back to---------India?

coded back into Ur-language

What are they saying

It is written

always on my shelf: the terra cotta phallus,

the blood let isn’t over yet

I take my cause to Lord Chac

& circle the house of Turtles

the house of the Old Woman

the house of the Dwarves

going down . . .

We went to the Orange Bowl. We took a plane from West Palm to Miami. It was a two-hour train ride. The train was loaded with Notre Dame fans. My Dad and I were about the only University of Colorado fans in our car. When we got to Miami we got on a Subway which took us to a bus station. From there, a bus took us to a loud Orange Bowl stadium. We stopped at a stand and bought a cute tee-shirt. My heart was beating hard. The first thing we saw from our seats was the Notre Dame Band. They weren’t very good, but the Notre Dame fans liked them. A little kid was screaming his guts out for CU. So was I. The first half of the game was exciting. The halftime show was pretty good. It had a lot of firecrackers and lights, dancing and singing and floats. Then CU kicked off.

The second half was the most exciting part of the game. The game was over. CU won 10 to 9. CU fans went wild. They were in Heaven. It was hysterical. It was hard to get out of the stadium. Some were screaming and some were crying. We tried to find the bus so that we could get back to the subway station that took us to the train station. Then we took the train to west Palm Beach.

the men go to the ballgame

she goes down to market

Stephens (my animus in this dream) in Petra, the red city, says to me you will go you will go there in another calendar & play their games, unknown then, now ungraspable, you will have to dress like an Arab boy, & here, the huipol (white with flowered embroidery at neck & hem) or disguise of panama hat, overtime entering

I intrude upon the red ruin and a Menacing Man shows up stealing my jewelry

ancient players of the old regime

coming & going

the royals ones absolute in power & pride, they are a writing elite named

ah dzib (scribe)

& then we were driving to Cobá in the little red bug & as I lifted the book

to ask had we seen that one, that pyramid yet? you turned for a glimpse & hit a pot hole, 2 tires blown out

now at the mercy .....

& the taxi-drivers-who-were-drunk came and asked me to be their amiga

& we pointed to the tires, kaput, and they made motions with their hands

like cars careening out of time & space & huffing noises

so we would get to the repair shop

I keep tapping the soberer-one, not at wheel to rein our driver in

almost knocking pedestrians, guys carrying huge goods on bicycles

then

a can-do kid for a few cents fixes the one we had no spare for

his old mother rocking outside, and back to the car safe

we thought we’d end up on the Tzompantli (rack of skulls)

how out of any of them one reigns supreme?

He was a wise ruler

only sacrified those he had to

He stopped the clock

He organized the Venus festival

& fixed our tires

with rubber (the blood of trees)

his was the reign of ____

The tablets spoke

you see me, see me calling

& she goes down to the market

no truck in heavenly things

keeps a vision all to herself

Katun 10 Ahau, the Katun is established at Chable.

The ladder is set up over the rulers of the land

the rapport, the bed, the chamber, a cynical conquistador. It was wash wash wash & wear. I see the colors. I am pink red meat raw & blotched with a rash of eyes. The scourge of the tourist & her plight, the outline is political, the outline is insane

It is not dressed up enough in all the colors

Insane?

Because other time-frame. You can get on every wavelength ...

It is a mere guess how these people, so dark so sophisticated, practiced their faith

They say they were obsessed with one eye on their gods

Invoke

Invoke the need for blood

It carries the day

It is mercantile it is slaughter

& went about an ordinary day

They slowed down the process

But the rest of their constituency speeded up

To quit the ground of most resistance

It was ending

I was coming to an end

It was the end of time

It was old hearts cracking

It was a headless body, a woman’s....

She had not pitched a ball nor spoke with ill tongue

She had.............

You have to be in charge, you have to be in charge of this body and putting Anne’s brain in this other body (someone sent me this dream). It is a new body for Anne. I may need to repeat: you must put her brain—it is ashore—in her new body which resembles no one you will ever know. The poet abdicates control this is a reminder she goes down to the market..........

so many times to be afraid, your number always comes

you will be flung into the cenote one claim to fame

you wanted it

elegant the first time

& entered in

intruder, a clause

a cause for

you wanted it

Did it want you?

Dear Anne,

We were visiting the temple at Ulu Watu. I thought I could fly, out over the blue green white crashing water. Camera in hand, Grazia was standing between the outer wall and one of the offering platforms. Suddenly a monkey jumped from wall to platform using Grazia’s shoulder as a mid-point springboard. The attendant prevented these quick grays from proving they’re smarter than we are. Dreamt you sobbed on my shoulder & said, “It’s just that I love everyone....”

it’s just..... Love, D.

what generosity rages in death?

On his body, before cremation, little pieces of paper called “armor devis,” who are protection devis. No difference between outside & inside now, why need armor?

It is a long tale, a long drive to the repair shop

Suffice it to say “Paranirvana,” holding his seat

tilt

rigor mortis a thing of magic

kindness: 49 days

kindness: green mist coming out of mouth

kindness: the tilt of inside & outside

I saw a good king die, a shaman, h-men, pass death

in a 20th-century dream

They say blood was pouring from all his pores.....

Though I never needed a sacrificial Patriarch to rule my world

I was never wanton

This was a travel back to gloss & ruins

How the driver-slasher cuts my heart for the scissor cut play

I was dreaming

& then I went down to the market & you said “It’s just . . .”

(TV played a role to alternative lore)

Execute half offensive or you be dork, my friend, go around here & I

am boss

archaic remote clues

shards p[oint] o taken!

the slip or shod harebrained scheme

vertical flange

ravages weatherings layers obsessed with war

entice cloud-scroll austere how would you

die?

The Xibalbans hang up twin Hun Hunahpu’s head in a calabash tree. One day a young underworld princess named Lady Blood happens by & holds her hand up to the head which spits into it. She becomes pregnant. It’s just.....

I screamed

& then died

his arms older than ever, cracked with brown specs (I see it now)

eat eat

drink drink

on this day

dust holds the earth

on that day a blight covers earth

a cloud rises

& mountain too

a strong man seizes the lands

things fall apart

a tender leaf murdered

dying eyes close forever

3 signs on the tree of life

3 generations hang there

the battle cry is raised

They are scattered in the forests

chac chac chac chac

& this is the secret agenda no matter what

(all these in the market place for exchange or sale)

coded: Itzamna, Lizard House, one of the aged gods, smokes cigars,

& wears the headdress in the form of a mythological owl-like bird

named Oxlahun Chan

His rule of underworld Xibalba is chronicled by the rabbit scribe

rabid scribe

coded: Ix-chel, his consort, is moon goddess with a toothless mouth

& finally, Personified Perforator, a stack of 3 knots

Flint, obsidian, thorn, stingray spine are attached to the ubiquitous long-nosed head

This deity personifies inanimate objects in the Maya symbol system

& their starry machinations,

that they swept a night sky clean

close observation, tracking,

to bring the cosmos to its knees

& rule without & within,

drugged, simply?

living in tandem

a people, whose people, imploded in the Maya tongue

who reads them now

what thought to who stoked the ancestor dream how it was loaded with

the romance of schemers

& adventurers,

coming down to a power America

& have I told you about the dream, “just a tortilla lady” who visits or

rather I visit her I inhabited some years ago—that skin, that body,

that curious mind, & traveling & she shows me the magical blanket

that weaves itself into the night sky

cordillera, her spine

a shawl to hang about the moon

then rain

it rained

rain (May-November)

and what was considered in the great span

became

milpas

beans, squashes

sweet manioc, chilli peppers

along the Puuc chain

she went down into the cenote (dzonot)

the circular sink hole,

found her death rattle there

found her rapture there

walked the land & talking

spider monkey, howler monkey, ocellated turkey

joined her there

& she wore in her vision

the resplendent pelt of the jaguar

that shone in the moonlight

& her vision was mouthed & recorded by rabbit and monkey twins

it was 23 December AD 2012

when the present universe was annihilated

when the great Cycle of the Long Count reached completion

it is written

They were bled

Who reads them now?