ONE
Adam and Eve were born of flesh,
and woke from sleep, when God addressed
them both.
"Here is the world - unsoiled, unstained
(The sheet of the sea hides her breast and her veins.)
The time is uncertain; the end is ordained
and when it is finished, begin it again."

They saw God, saw
Lucifer, saw the tree:
felt oppressed. The world
was young but the book had
been opened. All stories conclude
in words and in gestures, wild and crude.
(They left heaven, fled to
the ambergris ocean, the
silk hills.)

TWO
Mad, they went to Egypt, built
Cairo in the delta where
her legs met, Thebes where
her eyes beat on the cataract
made cities on
her body on
credit, faith, and lust.
Until the groaning hungry ibis
and the famine drove them out.

THREE
From Egypt to Rome,
Adam to Caesar,
In Pliny's manuscript, Adam said:
"Here is Rome
a senate in your sympathy
an orphanage in your heart.
Come to his flat avenue, can't you
feel how far I've walked, on every flagstone?
Witness beaten sandals, frayed thongs;
feel your posture sag? I want to rest,
and I want you to help. I sat on the banks
of the Tiber; has Rome washed into my lap?
The streets are the furrows of my skin.

She said:
"I like a fire at my fingertips, not
bellowed to me under the floor."
Rome fell to that barbarian.

PAX ROMANA
God reminded them again.
Adam said:
"The knowledge is good, but it isn't a cure
for an Eden that seems so unlike the brochure."
He pulled back the skin of earth, and found,
a beating heart beneath the ground.
He knew, for once, the world would die.

IV
They went to ***** London, unhappy with
the lot of Rome. Amid the stench of a filthy Thames,
his blood ran with offal, with hate,
leached from the baiting pit, and she
did, too, in the ugly city,
from Knightsbridge to the sea.
They fought like monsters, fought a curse
that God foresaw, and they rehearsed.
An ugly city, from Knightsbridge to the sea,
and full of bitter folk.

V
Such is the end, a world
embalmed in salt and sand,
the leaves burned away; no cities
only orphaned tenderness under
ruined arches and aquaducts, wishing ill
but wanting that world returned,
and crying, yes, but knowing still,
their end was near; for all they yearned.

We have read this story cover to cover;
let Eve close the book, and pray in her sleep while
Adam dusts his hands,
and God begins anew.

In the hanging kitchen, the smell-
cut cayenned sausage, ejective tomato slices
the whole thing in the back of the throat, inflamed.
Olive oil. Vinegar. Billie talks about her "girl
friend." She lives in Mayfair. (Almost pretty;
don't look too long.)

At times I feel sick.

American man he
strikes the figure of a half-God
broad-shouldered, burned
he does Not exist, John Henry
split his bust long ago and we
are huddled small boys imperfect
in the dust of his legacy.

Our fathers stood from dinner tables kissed
wives were kissed by children one last sip of old
wines and walked into the night looking
for burned-up lamps, the memories of mountains.
Ate stone. Drank mist.
(A thirst for adventure is close to your heart.)
Fell into the grit, the failure, fell
into everything.
(Little else has taste once the spice of life is on your tongue.)

I have nothing but my understanding.
I want to be swaddled, paralytically blind, shamelessly loved.
Or to go out in the wicker
world, there to find whatever our best
died looking for, tigers or ruins or
a life after adventure.

it's morning, you know
we could
paint a still life with our impotent fingers
or cook eggs with every
spice in the drawer
we could
dig holes in the front yard,
bury treasures in front of
button-down commuters get
smashingly drunk forget
where we put them dig
them up and be convincingly surprised.

we could pretend our hands are
****** hands our
eyes new canvases and record
like **** Rembrandts
the embarassing details
we could make a creek of
pillows from one
side of the house to another
roll the entire length of it naked and
end up tangled in each other when they
run out

There is a whole day ahead of us, a whole world ahead of us -
a world of misery separated from us by
firecracker smoke, by cannonsmoke.

We have the house to ourselves
we could duct tape cardboard to the
exterior and pretend its one big
refrigerator box we could
jettison old ball mice and fat computer monitors
into the driveway *****
a campfire in the living room and
imagine that we have rebelled against something
fittingly awful, the modern world scowling at
our rusticity we could
make a tincan telephone that connects the entire
cul-de-sac and dress up smart and
sell it as charmingly as Ma Bell door-to-door

But our refined brains think two things:
*** again, handcuffed to maturity, or sleep.
What a world. What a longing.
What our age must suggest.
What an excuse: your starched reputation.
What courage could come from your bleached conscience.
How lovely to be trapped.

I've said before that what matters is
never the size ofyour ink budget,
the fact that you can run thirty minutes
at a stretch on a featureless track or your
special attachment to decorative BIC lighters
but a kind of mute complexity
that turns suspended spirals
in the water of your soul

I want you to be at times a tempest
and at others a trade wind, staid and insistent.
I want you to lock eyes with stars through the ceiling.
I want to see a look in you that says they have returned it.
I want to see your eyes recede into a place
no reassurance can reach, eidetic and dense.

Send your mind to hell by mail
but come back when the post goes out
put your cheek at the root of my neck
and tell me that it's getting late,
and aren't you tired?

Down the lawn's decrescendo,
on the curb, a blocky Mercedes,
older than sound. I pull behind it, drop my things
like kick drums to the ground. The door
opens: a chorus of
can I help, what can I take?
And the quarter-rests of a fight
interrupted. The whole affair like
a sore wrist.

He has a violinist's chin, soft but
pallid, pocked, from losing
a battle with teenage skin, and
here is the ochre noise of his voice
a can on rocks; my father's was a stone in
a guitar.

So this is the new arrangement.
A leitmotif that trails at her heel, that tears at
every quiet measure; the whole hall
hears her uneasy with the next note.
This is no melody, I know,
but it is the new arrangement.

When she is old and failed,
her conductor's elbow fallen mutely to her side,
what will she think of
the first song she ever made?