Poems About Adam, Eve, Lucifer, Eden and the Fall

Poems about Adam, Eve, Lucifer Eden by Michael R. Burch Then earth was heaven too, a perfect garden. Apples burgeoned and shone, unplucked on sagging boughs. What, then, would the children eat? Fruit indecently sweet, redolent as incense, with a tempting aroma... Outcasts by Michael R. Burch There was a rose, a prescient shade of crimson, the very color of blood, that bloomed in that garden. The most dazzling of all the Earth’s flowers, men have forgotten it now, with their fanciful tales of apples and serpents. Beasts with lips called the goreflower “Love.” The scribes have the story all wrong: four were there, four horrid dark creatures: chattering, bickering. Aduhm placed one red petal in Ehve’s matted hair; he was lost in her arms till dawn sullen and golden imperceptibly streaked the musk-fragrant air. Two flared nostrils quivered, two eyes remained open. Kahyn sought me that evening, his bloodless lips curled in a grimacelike smile. Sunken-cheeked, he approached me in the Caverns of Similitudes, eerie Barzakh. “We are outcasts, my brother!, God quickly deserts us.” As though his anguish conceived in insight’s first blush might not pale next to mine in Sheol’s gray realm. “Shining Creature!” he named me and called me divine as he lavished damp kisses upon my bright scales. “Help me find me one rare gift to put Love’s gift to shame.” “There is a dark rose with a bittersweet fragrance as pungent as cloves: only man knows its name. Clinging and cloying, it destroys all it touches...” “But red is Ehve’s preference; while Envy is green.” He was downcast a moment, a moment, a moment... “Ah, but red is the color of blood!” Disagreeable child, far too clever for his own good. Temptation by Michael R. Burch Jesus was always misunderstood... we have that, at least, in common. And it’s true that I found him, shriveled with hunger, shivering in the desert, skeletal, emaciate, not an ounce of fat to warm his bones once the bright sun set. And it’s true, I believe, that I offered him something to eat: a fig, perhaps, a pomegranate, or a peach. Hardly the great “temptation” of which I’m accused. He was a likeable chap, really, and we spent a pleasant hour discussing God: how hard He is to know, and impossible to please. I left him there, the pale supplicant, all skin and bone, at the mouth of his cave, imploring his “Master” on callused knees. Adam Lay Ybounden translation by Michael R. Burch Adam lay bound, bound in a bond; Four thousand winters, he thought, were not too long. And all was for an apple, an apple that he took, As clerics now find written in their book. But had the apple not been taken, or had it never been, We'd never have had our Lady, heaven's queen. So blesséd be the time the apple was taken thus; Therefore we sing, "God is gracious!" No One by Michael R. Burch No One hears the bells tonight; they tell him something isn’t right. But No One is not one to rush; he lies in grasses greenly lush as far away a startled thrush flees from horned owls in sinking flight. No One hears the cannon’s roar and muses that its voice means war comes knocking on men’s doors tonight. He sleeps outside in awed delight beneath the enigmatic stars and shivers in their cooling light. No One knows the world will end, that he’ll be lonely, without friend or foe to conquer. All will be once more, celestial harmony. He’ll miss men’s voices, now and then, but worlds can be remade again. Bikini by Michael R. Burch Undersea, by the shale and the coral forming, by the shell’s pale rose and the pearl’s white eye, through the sea’s green bed of lank seaweed worming like tangled hair where cold currents rise... something lurks where the riptides sigh, something old and pale and wise. Something old when the world was forming now lifts its beak, its snail-blind eye, and with tentacles about it squirming, it feels the cloud above it rise and shudders, settles with a sigh, knowing man’s demise draws nigh. Ceremony by Michael R. Burch Lost in the cavernous blue silence of spring, heavy-lidded and drowsy with slumber, I see the dark gnats leap; the black flies fling their slow, engorged bulks into the air above me. Shimmering hordes of blue-green bottleflies sing their monotonous laments; as I listen, they near with the strange droning hum of their murmurous wings. Though you said you would leave me, I prop you up here and brush back red ants from your fine, tangled hair, whispering, “I do!”...as the gaunt vultures stare. lust! by michael r. burch i was only a child in a world dark and wild seeking affection in eyes mild and in all my bright dreams sweet love shimmered, beguiled ... but the black-robed Priest who called me the least of all god’s creation then spoke for the Beast: He called my great passion a thing base, defiled! He condemned me to hell, the foul Ne’er-Do-Well, for the sake of the copper His Pig-Snout could smell in the purse of my mother, “the wh-re jezebel.” my sweet passions condemned by degenerate men? and she so devout she exclaimed, “yay, aye-men!”... together we learned why Religion is hell. Exile by Mirza Ghalib translation by Michael R. Burch We have often heard of Adam's banishment from Eden, but with far greater humiliation, I abandon your garden. Where We Dwell by Michael R. Burch Night within me. Never morning. Stars uncounted. Shadows forming. Wind arising where we dwell reaches Heaven, reeks of Hell. What Immense Silence by Michael R. Burch What immense silence comforts those who kneel here beneath these vaulted ceilings cavernous and vast? What luminescence stained by patchwork panels of bright glass illuminates drained faces as the crouching gargoyles leer? What brings them here? pale, tearful congregations, knowing all Hope is past, faithfully, year upon year? Or could they be right? Perhaps Love is, implausibly, near and I alone have not seen It... But, if so, still, I must ask: why is it God that they fear?