A Kiss On the Lips
A kiss on the lips,
my lover,
is all I wanted,
when the lights
got low and
time got short;
a kiss on the lips,
my lover,
is all it took;
tremulous and abrupt,
one brief touch
though we knew
it meant everything.
A kiss on the lips,
our beginning passionate undertaking,
our ultimate conjugation
false to the core, mere mortal heat,
yet we kept at it,
searching for openings, stabbing
beneath the frailty of flesh,
stumbling on the path
leading to something
that would last
and away from everything
that seemed dead, seeking
our heart's ease, our salvation
ours and ours alone;
in the end,
did we find it?
The sudden splendor of discovery
of that strong heart beating
at the center of the world
and not our hearts only.
The gods see all,
sitting easy, colossal,
on their soft couches
high above the clouds
and we hunker down here
below and hope
for benisons that never come;
in their all-seeing eyes,
big and bright
as sky-scraping searchlights,
we are rank mites, ants, bugs,
picayune colonists stirring
in the undergrowth,
minutely moving
in the disorder of things;
nothing at all to them,
insignificant, an illusion
in their immortal vision
or a deliberate inclusion,
a diversion on a lazy afternoon
in the empyrean.
We know nothing of that.
We are creatures
of the earth, tied down
to its terrain, hills and dales,
mountains and valleys,
the lakes, the rivers, the watery wastes
covering its unblinking orb,
but even at the bottom
of a well the frogs see
the same blue sky we do,
see from their holes in the ground
for a long moment or two
the passing sun's bright rays
lawn mowing through the day,
which is our day too.
There's life all the way through
this daisy of a world
up, down and all around,
vital, striving and binding us all
and a kiss on the lips, my lover,
endorses more than us;
refresh yourself at this sealing
of us and remember
no matter how hard we try
to separate and sanctify
our sacrifice and love,
building a fortress for two,
no matter what we do,
we are never alone,
never on the outside
in this design of life,
in this world of forms
forever intertwined.
The Wolf on the Fold
One sunny afternoon,
those poor black souls
say, oh shoot, and burn
Goldberg's emporium
to the ground,
barren ground now,
on which a few
sometime embers smolder,
over which a few old crones
on a sunny day
pick among the remains.
The light that falls on them,
on all of it, this shoddy urban burn-out,
is the light that fell on
Sinai, Ararat, Zion,
Cairo, Mecca, Aksum,
the wells, the hills, the desert,
on those chosen ones
and their chosen enemies,
cut from the same cloth,
who roamed in the waste;
those long shadows moving
on the ground, on the walls,
painting the land red with blood,
belong to those who
darken the same old story.
We will see this destruction
again and again, the sun's eye
picking it out, brightening it,
the settlers hardly surviving,
the arrogant riders
coming over the plains
some quiet afternoon,
bent to the same task,
wiping it all out anew,
this futile disputed ground
over which many and then
few come and go.
Make Eve the Apple
Make Eve the apple;
don't need the snake,
the Prince of Darkness
on location
in the garden of Eden,
his wily persuasion
reeking of sour error
in the midst of
the flowery abundance
of this made-to-order paradise.
Make Eve the apple;
what better metaphor
for the base of knowledge
than Eve's solid backside,
Johnsonian bottom
of good sense.
Eve the apple,
subject and object
beyond some formal
role of human and fabled
female weakness.
Do away with it;
simplify;
let Eve be
blossom and fruit,
created out of the logos
like everything else
in this force-fed abode,
like the new-grown grass,
like lonely Adam
walking and looking,
like the birds and the bees,
but let her be more than
an ornament in this garden
sown by the hand of God.
No need to conjure up
an adversary, a rival power
to thwart the Creator's
desire to leave
Adam and Eve
well enough alone,
not bent to His purpose,
living on and on,
witless and happy;
an immortal race
indentured to his will
was never His intent.
No time like the present,
predestined and determinate,
a mayfly day that lasts forever
and that this idea
was too selfish
for this ravenous burgeoning world,
immortality better reserved
for the Godhead
was a fact God knew,
knowing all, foreseeing all
when he planted
two sacred trees
and turned His eye
on lonely Adam
already asking
and from his rib
made Eve, a helpmate
to bring no disaster
but an awakening,
a change from spotless
timeless dull existence.
The divine tree of knowledge
set like a spider in
this hothouse conservatory,
its web immense unseen
in its trembling splendor;
caught and held already
by her own desire,
did Eve even hesitate
before tasting this fruit?
Knowingly forgoing
the boredom, the perfection,
the tedious forever
of that set-about sanctuary?
They ate of the tree
and learned knowing
and face to face,
intimate part by part
knew each other.
On with the fig leaves
and out they go,
looking back
to the setting sun
and the angel's sword blade
every which way a lighthouse
turning sharp warning light.
Out they went
and soon found
Lady Husbandry's
a cold hard mistress;
days of sweat,
day after day
paying off the old score.
So make Eve the apple
do away with the need to know,
do away with knowledge itself,
the unnecessary snake
to dance attendance
and display his wasted skill;
when Eve came
and came again
in sweet congress,
the tree of life,
the easy careless paradise
were lost forever;
Eve alone carried the seed
and the burden of
God's creation;
always, always to be
the apple of His eye,
the brave masterpiece,
the ever unfolding sequence
of His eternal beginning.