Three Ceremonies

I When dust began to settle it settled at the equator when Joel lost his twin brother across the world while we were playing with fire a clone of this young man was pummeled inside his vehicle I prayed by the pond the faces of my family welled up in me and Aya called my name my name is my father's name, his name is his father's, and his father's his beneath Vishnu's bounty of masculine water their faces grew aged and wise; when I drank her I saw her power, she sprinkled as on a gaping husk a promise of her potential into my eyes and from her churning metallic center a green healing which radiates beyond the atmosphere in seven directions came to concentrate inside our circle and be drummed out across the valley; Santiago shook my hand just before hers the night of the first ceremony now the piercing blue circle of her iris with my fingertip between her teeth pale dimples beneath my thumbs have both scattered me inside our damp palace of candlecast umbras, and called back my abandoned selves to inhabit and drive this vehicle deeper into the orange hearth where steel is struck; dank sloppy vegetal psychedelic molasses wretched into fifty buckets her cumquivering lungs inside the rib cage I'm clutching a stone for each colorful chakra in my imaginary soulfield; my arm whips up and up and up inside the womb of the earth from her center to my humming throat splattered with skin-dissolving eucalyptus there is no time and now I am being born for the ten-trillionth may your son always have the best water I belch up hot pineapple slugs you may trust me with your care, two ancient pupils say, this will be difficult, but you must do it now; a woman turns her face toward mine and shows me the desert from whence comes the bullet of silence Santi exhales into my frontal lobe claro mi hermano, he asks for broom, shovel, pitchfork, bucket, paper and bin, while from lowset stool I stare into a seven-slatted spiritworld fire animals elbowing past one another to escape from that furnace and enter our psyches talons on each of my shoulders, a comfort of rustling feathers, llevame; our fingers interlaced at 7 upon the duskdark maloka clockface & 13 dear grandmothers hiss and spit happily into our laps as it grows, he tells me, so I scrutinize each length of wood before letting it fall to its death this is my body, take it and burn it, sprinkle it on the coals take it to your head, take it to your heart, take it to your navel where you ate your mother's stomach contents where I gave you my hands and heal your waters so they may speak clearly to mine medicina de la tierra, the firekeeper says, good morning, good beard

II In the nights when the moon like silver lifts itself and illuminates the jungle and also the prairies the tremendously unwell woman who dodges glances and wheezes as a substitution for lunch collapses, scattering nearby backjacks and receives a kiss of life from the boss witch while the terminally shirtless blonde pseudochristian choch attempts to flee I hold his arms in mine and he holds my shoulders, breathing hotly through his nose you have no idea what i'm going to have to do if you won't let me go take a hot shower I convince him to take a seat against the stacked collection of firefeed blocking the stone path with my body I watch the shaman go to lie on his face in prayer and our team takes heavy steps in my direction, three women in cold moonlight it's too late, she's dead. she's dead; I wonder if she's really sure, but suddenly they're calling for the assistance of the men and I swing her in four movements with seven others backward from her position onto a blanket her ankle pops wetly and through one set of parted eyelids her stare is vacant we carry her past the attempted escapee who is now macaroni-noodled in the crazy bed a corpse passes behind him and he is none the wiser, and then she is in the bed of the pickup each man's face is a unique petrified chunk of confused worry carved by the single yellow bulb our red-feathered shaman finds her weak pulse and resumes compressions there are however other duties, as thirty-six other clients perceive a necessity to alleviate and without half of our faculties including the shaman's wife the swede replaces her making offerings to the seven directions in a sweatsuit and authentic uggs I am 50% firekeeper and 50% nothing fetching pinecones and leñas as prompted at the command, ordinar el fuego, she requests my assistance and we build the seven layered thing she lights the shroomlooking shaman-endorsed joint as we discuss the juicy solemn events & for three days of aftermath as though held over a blue flame I synthesize myself; put every rainbow-potent thing into a sleek vial and let me chug that at the altar before thirty candles, the sacrosanct intentions of this place to govern our journeys decays are y'all just passing a cig? I ask actually wanting some and he says no it's a joint with some dmt I stretch my hand toward that pale circle which is the first mirror & the wolves in the night sing to the great spirit ahoooooooooo

III

What are you doing, Nahuatl?

i am here in the womb entrance listening to swedish prayers

i am taking ayahuasca in a vibration of love, for Nahuatl passed by here

i am digressing to describe the ranch densely littered with strays and corn straw

for there is just as much reality in a sweaty unsleepable habitation bombarded

by yardlights and the vecinos' festivities del ano nuevo as there is

in an upscale Lima foodhall requiring proof of vaccination to enter

what are you doing?

being taunted by creatures whose noodle bodies dwell in the temazcal desert ceiling o god

passing a joint back and forth in the meeting maloka as the sun rises behind a mile of fog

as bats take victory laps in the gray blue thick of it rattling in the rafters

a cold wind of completion incites gooseflesh in we freewill workers

who once were ten and are ten once more

and over the precipice of freedom we tumble, she and I the victors;

where others found disillusionment or an internet homie we found healing sex and the preference of these

ceremony holders who welcomed us, and only us, to work medicined-up with hand and voice

so take thy balcony in cuenca for smoking thy weed, thy beach bungalo full of friends

thy first ridden wave and ceviches of everything that dies out of saltwater shall be yours for food;

the unknown meander of a continent begins with 1 sneaky swim in the hilton rooftop infinity pool

effervescent coffeeless mornings, limb lacing, face to smiling face

the lonely horse whose shadow now reaches toward me has been rejected by his inherited family

unhumid heat pulls drops of pisco from my temples where the head meets the ear

where inca priests came from a distance with their alpacas to speak with conviction

and now the owls of the sun dig all day toward their buried words

twelve manicured hooves pass a sideburn of blushing mangoes whose skin rashes your lips

my lips, how lips move when people speak, to say a man is courageous in his capacity to love

my apocalypse dreams tear the earth in half with gargantuan fingernails;

I fly among the asteroid wreckage because I choose it, like we all stayed for the fourth door

clenching our bums and coughing slime strings as the voices of singers haunted the dark

& how am I not to sing, how am I not to purge when I have everything to purge

how am I not to unite along my path with a golden equal becoming a being heretofore unperceived

how am I to die having seen it all when most of it goes far beyond the eyes

which open and close giving moments of reprieve to the world

so exhausted with the solicitation of being watched