The Serpent in the Garden

The hot branding iron of

Capricious morality

Touched the pale skin of

Human freedom, and

Called the knowledge of

Good and evil a sin.

Generations came and went,

Moving like sand dunes in a desert,

Folding upon themselves,

Covering their own tracks,

Eradicating most of life

Save for vultures, scorpions, and

Dormant seeds waiting for the

Heavens to trickle down from a

Relentlessly blank sky,

Devoid of compassion or grace.

What cunning, what deception,

What trickery to ensnare and

Capture the free bird of happiness,

Locking it into the gilded cage of

Bourgeois decency, this deep

Trench of division in the mind

Separating one from self,

Splitting the world into black and white,

Causing a war in perpetuity

Between left and right.

Virtue is slavery;

Freedom is a disgraced pariah.

Salvation does not live in

Domed fortresses, nor

Is it held captive in the

Wrinkly hands of padres,

Nor does it flow from the

Tainted pens of sickly scholars.

It blooms and bursts forth from

Every heart when ignorant of time,

Of names, of titles, or of rules,

Two bodies embrace and

Savor the fruit the Serpent,

This harbinger of freedom and light,

Offered us ages ago 

In the Garden of Eden,

Where we were all made 

In His own image: men.  

Reviews

[Red Brick Keshner]

What an intertwined vivid description of humanity in verse. In all of its convolutions, definitely complex and oftentimes unnerving. This is a poem to return to and mull over, again and again. Thanks for sharing. /Frederick.

[knighngale]

wow, very powerful, hon, Eden---the original sin. It makes me sad to hear such words. I never understand how an apple decided us. I love the whole prose, and I love its fluid, a great occasion, :D