Eye and Eve Deceived

I was Eve deceived,
inside the tunnel
snaking;
free from tree to tree,
astride the tide
and shackled to her
shame,
my root epiphany -
I was Eve deceived,
my blood ran to the sea,
I was ten then three
streams and tides, crucified.
In my enthusiasm, I,
burst forth, a tunnel-maker.

Am I to be trusted, as a master with a pen?
The last light's, night rite, sole generation?
Am I to be trusted, where so many more leaflets
petaled in bloom the first lies;
dark Gennesara, in her shadowed lap
the sun's rise.

Am I the Sun, burning this vessel,
boiling the ocean for ten moons?
What was I borne through,
what storming lung gave way,
what cosmic cough, what dust?
When I was emptiness of breath?
What was I borrowed from,
what well went tower high,
what deep and ancient well
went erupting tower high.

Chant is the rhythm of the dance,
the dance is the way to
stamp through life, to
shared bounty, shared suffering,
striking back the sting its due.

Walked With Fire, Had No Name:
Red ochre, but a name,
Shélomaya, sound of song,
before spoken love,
displaced her play -
she was angry
with the way he died,
but had no more to say
than this.
He frowned, and failed,
and threw the World aside,
he died alone. He died alone,
without his bride, ever-flowering.

She was at ease,
comforting the darkness,
the child of gloom, usurpation,
and inheritress of life.
She was at ease without a name.
He walked the dark, unopposed.
He died to loneliness, delivered
from the rot-strewn lawn.
He lay not on moss,
but in a broad green bed.
He lay not on moss,
but in a blesséd lie.

She, a deathless being,
he, a carven log, inscribed,
a storied robe retelling
the way of pathless black –
from the stars, to the water,
to the garden, grove,
and back –
among stars, where night began.
Silver stars where thought began.

Sometime in the night
he died, and knew dark.
But first, he woke,
and looked down at his feet.
And there he saw she, and there he named She.
He raised a red-bone,
one side against many,
and slew the counterfeit man – Eve;
with a beast’s jaw, the jaw of his beast,
a monstrous spade of living stone,
throwing barley to the sand,
he commanded the pale seeds, grow.

He destroyed she,
at the foot of the tree,
He found her sleeping with his fruit,
his one, her three, now his all three.
If he had seen his face,
his soul would have lost its glue.
O! the blood would have run,
and his heart lost all its glue.

She did not wake.
Many moons fell beneath the sea,
he walked with blistering thoughts,
one nothing beneath the canopy
of the first fire-radiant One,
one side burned against the many.
He did not find her,
she fled with his fruit
hidden beneath her leaves –
while she ran, she lived,
one side divorced from many.
She did, she carried in her lung,
The diaspora of man.
She burned his books – all three –
she haunted his countryside, his back;
his yard was a gallow-hall,
walled with serpents standing tall,
by day he hung his children,
by day he clove his trees.
Hollow, they seemed, no spirits set free.
No blood, no evident muse;

Freedom was a dream,
once lapped, fallen lulled to sleep –
said conscience to desire,
weighing the fruit of famine plenty.
Only once am I rid of you,
and then am forced to rape the rib,
world of one eye ripped in two,
two raped from one, fire-hided plain:

a star blinks, a weed breaks the till,
and divides its sorrow from the field;
chaff and seed, and master’s yield,
our being against division, a shield -
only once was I rid of you,
and then it was too late.
Once we had begotten two,
our mutual fire, our fate -
clad with names,
two similar shames,
calling them naked,
me and you.