“The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate it.”
But what fruit it was!
I give woman
full credit for all the pleasures
of my life.
A special woman, any woman, all the women
all were water running down my mount
shaping and forming the bedrock of my being
cutting sharp deep rills that opened gaping chasms
churning into canyons wherein
beside the raging torrents were fertile fields
strew with cottonwoods and rows of maize
and sweet pink peas climbing trellises
abloom with confederate jasmine.
Before poems became impromptu lyrics
I wrote I was rock
an inchoate metamorphic crust
glittering quartz crystal yet unpolished
striated banded gneiss
formed by pressure and heat
worn by water and wind
to display an imperfect
glossy polished facet.
I do not believe my equivocation
I was and remain primordial slime
Ontogenesis delayed, deferred
now decrepit.
That puddle that I was
that god with a small “g”
Zoroaster come to be called Zarathustra
come to be called a Christ
come to be called sweet names in the night
that was I.
The slick polished facet was not burnished stone
but a skim of water on coarse rock reflecting
the brightening light of awakening female faces.
Countless faces moved by compliment
and tender care to semi-adulation
hosannas to the host
enraptured wisdom danced out with lithe limb
a thought of love written in a prophet’s cuneiform
read by willing eyes as a line in our wedding vow
all meaningless chatter to the slime beneath
the shining reflection of woman’s waking light.
gods, like gneiss, have no ears
pores open like mouths and drink in
the tide of passion’s words
swallowing the waxing flow
tasting the sanguine regeneration
and staining bright ruddy lips
with life’s crimson color
Who is the god here?
who entraps with limbic wraps
who offers plump fruit to share
perfumed vines and jeweled limbs
to snare the imagined divine?
Red is the womb’s color
Red like flowing magma
Red like the jack of hearts
Red like half the colors
of a roulette wheel
Red like rose petals
Red like rubies
Red like my lips on yours
Red like Boleyn’s hair
Red like Lenin’s wife
Red like an Abattoirs’ floor.
Rocks need no anchors
games of chance no winning odds
paper and scissors have no pay
in the pointless pregnant play.
Altars always bear a god’s cross
You have won, I have lost
I am drained of color
washed out without your dawning light
rouge fades to pink, then to ruddy white
gossamer folds of flesh turn to alabaster stone
All your laughter left is lilting echoes
careening off bleached bone.
The god becomes his temple
his women to innocence restored.
None of you ever left me
Still, all of you are gone
You could have owned Olympus
you chose the common one.