Love wasn’t cruel then, woman
     didn’t exist yet, it was just
     Adam and a pool running in
     a garden, a river he took
     to bed laughing, drinking in his
     reflection, as if god confused
     myths, that before losing a rib,
     Adam was himself Narcissus.

Paradise had no walls then, no
     angels installed with flaming swords
     to ward off exiles, an island
     called to its shores what denial
     of this world labeled Eden, its
     only secret its existence,
     fools not knowing if being led
     by heart or mind brought its being.

Incense weeps ignorance of its
     evenings, remembering only
     the first man sent to deflower
     himself in the thickness of his
     own sweet fragrance, fists like spiders
     curling in retreat from each death
     he had them both perform on his
     person, a purely formed prison.

Fleeing his predestination,
     Adam greeted love at the gates
     unlocked by solitude and his
     wilderness imagination,
     burdensome beasts of lecherous
     thoughts moving a feast to table,
     affronting a mind designed to
     dig in only when god advised.

By blistering instinct, not his
     creator-administrator’s,
     nor by the upper-management
     of this sphere nine layers beneath
     æther, Adam sinned that sin no
     one again until Onan would,
     that good laying on of hands which
     begets from holy wood fire’s kiss.