Desert Truth and The Book of Tlakakili

A Meditative Story in Iambic Pentameter

By: Old Order Transtheist Quaker

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

This meditative story follows a Nahuatl speaking elder who lives in the 1970s Palo Verde Valley. We learn to listen to the wind, to hear more deeply of life. In the middle of this book is another complete book, The Book of Tlakakili, wisdom sayings passed down through generations. All in iambic pentameter poetry.

Here's the beginning:

PART ONE: Chapter One
1–10
The hammer swung, and struck the waiting skull.
The body crumpled softly to the ground.
A halo made of alkali arose,
The shimmer of the desert in its breath.
Tom Mendez stood and steadied both his hands,
Then gripped the kid’s hind legs and lifted them
Against the cottonwood’s rough, patient bark,
Where loops of baling wire hung from a limb.
He bound the hooves before the blood grew thick,
And took his knife to finish what he’d done.
11–20
He knelt beside the creature’s lowered head,
And whispered in the language of his past,
Amoeso eltoc toeso—soft and grave—
Your blood is our blood, he said through dusk.
The syllables were fragments from the tongue
His grandfather, old Tetaj, used to teach—
Half prayer, half breath, remembered now in part,
A seed that sprouted through his weathered grief.
He drew the blade and let the red life run,
Then wiped his hands upon the sandy earth.