Poem & photo - © Jesús Montero
*********
All of a sudden,
I look at my life,
Through a stained-glass window.
Violets, pale blues
And whites,
With a tiny touch of crimson.
All of a sudden,
I look at my life,
With a fair amount of wisdom.
Truth, perspective,
And a rested heart,
The very new bricks of my Kingdom.
Poem & photo - © Jesús Montero
Portobello Road, 11.15 am - Caffè Nero
*******************
Blue sky in Portobello.
Sipping coffee at Caffè Nero.
Cheese and rocket across my table.
And lousy walkers spending dinero.
Puffy Clouds on the roof terraces.
And Cockney shouts in search of traders.
Sun and shades combined on faces.
Mix of cultures, looks and races.
I’d hardly been in the Kalahari Desert for forty-eight hours. My desert boots hadn’t, how could I put it, well they hadn’t quite started to feel the second skin they would eventually become. My bags, still unpacked, hadn’t started to collect the sands of Kuruman.
Sand, that even today, many months after my safe return to the comforts and vibrant jolt of London, I keep finding here and there, like in tiny little whispers.
It was then that the news reached us.
I had been looking forward to meeting her. Flower the meerkat. The star of the small screen. We’d just returned to base camp from a long day, one of the very many that were to come. We had been scouting locations to use in the film that we were about to start shooting for Animal Planet and Discovery Films. A film about a family of meerkats. The news came as a sudden blow. Flower the meerkat had just died. Bitten by a Cape cobra.
I remember that night’s sky so very vividly. Pink. Translucent and thundery around the edges. Typical Kalahari.
I don’t know what prompted me to write this poem. I had never written a poem about a queen, let alone a queen of meerkats. But I just had to. And I did…
“Queen of the Kalahari”
*********
Tiny little creature
We stand by you
Whilst
The overcast skies
Still weep.
Queen of the Kalahari,
Feisty Warrior Queen,
Let your spirit wander,
Deep,
In the valley of the Queen.
Along your regal path,
You’ve dealt
With
One and a thousand feats.
Always a survivor,
Never, never weak.
Queen of the Kalahari,
Feisty desert Queen,
Let your spirit wander,
Deep,
In the valley of the Queen.
Text & photos - © Jesús Montero
Written in twenty minutes of deep sorrow...
***********
I wanted sunshine
And we got the rain.
And when I met you
That night in London
Your smile told me something,
Reflected in a puddle of rain.
Was it the end of a journey?
Was it the end of an affair?
Was it me?
Was it you?
Was it the beginning of the end?
I wanted sunshine
But we got the rain.
And sometimes,
When it rains in London
I walk alone in Maiden Lane
And I search for your smile
But I can only find
Myself
Reflected in a puddle of rain.
I wanted sunshine,
Poem & photo - © Jesús Montero
GROUND ZERO + 27
My life blossoms
In front of my eyes.
Like the bloom
Of a thousand tiny flowers
That shout at me.
Like a new born Phoenix,
From behind the bars
Of white washed
Andalusian windows.
Walking down the Thames,
London
Touched by the morrow of Fall.
Walking down cobbled lanes,
My feet, tickled
By their wobbly care.
Walking down the southbank’s air,
The midday sun,
Summoned by the Tower’s bells.
Walking down the Thames,
London
Caressed by the morrow of Glare.
Poem & photo - © Jesús Montero
Let’s sail,
Truly suspended,
With the winds of cosmic bliss.
Let’s abandon,
Temporarily,
The imperfections of reality.
Let’s parade with peacocks, monkeys
On tops of elephants
Through eternity.
Let’s just sail
Through Monsoons and thunder
And re-emerge with our souls bejewelled.
Poem & Photo (detail of Moorish dome in Southern Spain)
© Jesús Montero
Text & photo - © Jesús Montero
GROUND ZERO + 12
Have you ever
Really wondered
How time
Changes her mind?
For present
Was once true future.
And future
Will
Become past.
"Omne regnum in seipsum divisum
desolabitur..."
In the run up to the Moctezuma exhibition which opens at the British Museum on the 24th of September and has me, eagerly awaiting (being a passionate lover of this subject matter) whichever new light - if at all any - the exhibition may shed on the turbulent relationship that brought together two characters that looked at and thought of one another as if coming from two very alien worlds, I can’t but start to think about the true complexity of this period of history.
The time when one of history’s - in my opinion - least acknowledged “naval” battles brought the still adolescent Mexica (Aztec) empire to a precocious end in the manner of a "Mexican Trafalgar".
An end that came about not just in the hands of a bunch of Spaniards, as is commonly believed, but as the result of a complex military alliance between Spaniards and Mexicans.
Yes, Mexicans.
We can start to spot the strategic superiority of Moctezuma’s nemesis, that of Hernán Cortés, in the Spaniard’s very own words.
When dealing with one of the many ambassadorial delegations that the Aztec ruler sent to greet, charm and meet Cortés in 1519 - that’s two years prior to the final fall of the Aztecs - the Spaniard's’ cocky confidence is suddenly boosted - in one of those historical eureka moments - by the realization that he was in the midst of an empire divided; an empire which he thought to be about to implode. An empire on the brink of a civil war.
Cortés writes to Charles V and spills the beans, telling the Spanish emperor that the Tlaxcalans - archenemies of Moctezuma and all the Aztecs - have warned him - many times - not to trust Moctezuma and his vassals. “When I saw - Cortés writes - the discord and animosity between these two peoples...it seemed to further my purpose considerably.”.
It must have been at that very precise moment that Cortés might have decided to follow in the footsteps of one of his heroes, none other than Julius Caesar and probably thought of one of Caesar’s classic mottos: “diuide et impera” - divide and conquer-.
The Spanish conquistador put pen to paper, turning to the beautifully illuminated pages of his book of hours, to the wisdom and refuge he always found in the Gospels.
He writes to his Spanish emperor: “I remember that one of the Gospels says ‘Omne regnum in seipsum divisum desolabitur".
“Every Kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation...”
And brought to desolation, indeed it was...
Text & photos of Aztec masks
© Jesús Montero
kind courtesy of the BM
Kuruman River Reserve, South Africa - © Jesús Montero
The rain that never was,
Filled your pinky skies.
Like cotton balls.
Suspended,
Up high,
Traslucent.
The rain that never was,
Retained
By a selfish sky.
Explosive,
Protective,
Ungiving.
The rain that never was,
Vanishing
In front of my eyes,
Never to caress
The velvety gleam,
Of the burning sand.
© Jesús Montero
Calleja de las Flores, Córdoba, Spain
photo & poem © Jesús Montero
Right in the heart
Of a well cobbled square,
A Mexican nun
Tends to the bell,
Under the watchful eye
Of green weeping ferns.
She opens the gate
And adjusts to the glare,
As the morning sun wakes,
The convent of St. Claire.
What bring you, fresh eggs?
What must you request?
For you knock
On our door
With a wish, which is fair.
Are you close to your dream?
Have you hit a dry patch?
For you know that St. Claire,
In her mind, will oft bear,
Many,
A Filmmaker’s prayer.
