Feathered Serpent God Kukulkan

A bird with a hideous head,
Blood dripping down his beak,
Breathing but a wheezing murmur,
Can’t reach up to escape the bullets they hurl.
A thin spider line is drawn
That marks his path over water.
Smoke lingers after it has crossed.
Though there’s no sign to show it’s gone,
A rotting strand divides it from life.
I feel such a hopeless need
That he must bring me down.
But instead of stepping into water,
A twisted arm with the talons of a cicada
Writhes itself into a new shape.
Even as my heart pounds in fear,
It falls, and the nightmare
With a jerk, grips my throat and
Seizes my heart in a snarl.
There wasn’t time to turn and run,
Though instinct, nimbleness and bravery
Called for me to act. I cry out, “I am not here—”
Then the monster goes…into what?
Trying to avoid my cries that close the door.
He comes toward me, his strange evil face,
Glazed with a set of filth-stricken eyes,
The eyes of a hideous bug that dies.
Then, with a sinking, miserable cry, he says: “Woe. Woe.”
I’m trying to stop my heart now,
Breathing out, “It’s nothing—”
But I know he’s trying to find me.

Trying to escape even as he insists:

“Be still for an instant.”
And suddenly,
I’m free. Now I can still the beating
That turns this pulsing doom into a stillness.
And suddenly, he’s gone. And he comes
The cold wet wind carries the corpse of my bird—
His beak dragging the carrion with it,
The rotten strands that he’d dug into skin
Blowing through from the ground.