First there was you
Then you became two and the second was me
You set me free in your Eden—
Almost free.
Free to lounge around
On your Astroturf laden ground
Under your tanning booth roof
And 50 watt stars;
Free to bask for days
In your cancerous rays
And snap, not ask, do no task,
For the head of a baby seal
Brought atop a silver caviar platter
With a side of veal;
Free to, from 100’s of trees
Grown by your own hand
Sown by some watering can rain
And shone on by a hydroponic sun
Sample 100’s of fruits
Excluding apples.

For that fruit forbidden
I was given a fruit of my groin
Made for me, from me,
From not just sweat and blood
But flesh and bone:
A rib taken to break down my cage
So I wouldn’t be alone.
From me you made her
And as I became two, we became three
Eve was the third;
You said three’s company
But we were your herd.
She was the Eve of the rest of my life
Given by you to be my wife,
But since she didn’t give herself to me
And I didn’t take her freely,
She was no more than a promise
Of sorrowful tomorrows
Every false night
When you turned down the lights
And threw us together
In the high hopes we’d make a blue sky
She said we should wait another day
Before I had my way.

She, like me, was free of sin, virgin
But full of temptation’s elation
So the snake that spewed poison from its throat
Was naught but a scapegoat:
She was already bit, and I insane
We already had venom running in our veins
Before she spied the apple of her eye.
When she reached her farthest and the apple fell
She uncovered gravity’s spell:
That what goes up must come down
And thereby engendered all man’s future frowns.
When she came to me and confessed
I ran to see that the apple
Had not fallen far from the tree
And said, “Forgive me, Father,
For I am blessed.”
It was bitten as a voice from the skies was bidden:
“How do you like them apples?
Are they worth mankind’s damnation?”
I replied,
“I laid the foundation for our salvation.
You cannot fix what is not broken.”
But even as my words were spoken
We were dumped in a landfill
Overflowing with burnt out discarded stars
Piled on stacks of dirty silver dishes
And filled with the skeletons
Of our entrées in Eden.

As you deserted us,
We three became two, and us two joined as one
Under a harsh foreign sun
As the tree of wisdom taught us
To know one another fully.
She was finally my present
And our severed string was tied
As Eve died and became Ever.
As her emaciated belly grew
We raced to make a golden avenue
To a new kind of Eden,
But the golden bricks were just yellow sticks
Fool’s gold sold at a princely price
And on our yellow brick road no song or dance
No rhythmic spasms of limbs or jaws
Could be followed to our Oz.

We named our twin kids Can’t and Unable
For all that we did before they were birthed,
So we bore our first two children
Into a kill or be killed world of thirst
Where the black tux and hearse
Came on the backs of the crib and bib
And took the bearded boys
Before their birthday’s toys.

But the third time’s the charm,
And we will let no harm come
To our final son,
So we lay bricks and concrete
Race against the tick-tocking beat
Of the cosmic clock you wound
When we were outward bound.
Sometimes at close of day
When you turn down the lights
We kneel and pray,
Stick our blistered hands together
To thank you and apologize
Or curse and wish for you to die.
Spare the sermonizing:
We will not return to your Eden
Though someday I may
Make this landfill into one
For my next and final son
And all his sons and brothers
Of which you will forever be the mother.

On bad days we pray:
How do you like chucking your kids in the land of Nod?
Making a masterpiece that’s flawed?
Teaching all we know and you do not?
Being an atheist’s god?
On good days we pray:
Exodus always follows Genesis
But someday Revelations will come
To all of us.
I do not know which prayer to say yesterday, today, or tomorrow.