i.

Friend of the banned, witness to the text,
Adam’s tongue in the mouth of Eden
my own understands when even his

demands a silence suffering hands
commend with diligence to an end
the god he believed in failing fate,

his own divine plan, this god had to
amend, indifferent to any
amens, what an omen it is, then,

                    ii.

that in pretending to worship him,
pilfering language given once to
command everything there which could

comprehend its potency’s vocal
enchantment now acts as loss when not
spoken, erasure not so certain

as journalism should never become
journaling, what is literary
should never be mistaken by one

                    iii.

“lit’rally!” as, at all costs, must be
avoided indulgence in adverbs,
aphorisms freed, since each enslaved by

futileism seeks in speech what he left
with, imprisoned as ink in a pen
ready to fountain, how in these bent

positions and constraints of fate’s chains
each of Adam’s grandsons have found him,
marrowing bones as breath does flutes what

                    iv.

life pipes through ever since exiled, his
myth proof the wisdom that every
trial can be transcended, if not

ended, truth, for some prisons are small
sentences long anticipated
when waiting on some Muse to commute

them when communing, spent genius
threading through lips its cindering kiss
of spell-craft, word-witchery sewing

                    v.

until inspiration, wed length-wise
to forward-thinking intent, blows full
open both consonant and vowel

sewn close enough to explode, pents up
expression when tempting those whose pain
quiet knows too well can do nothing

else but hold until its thunder’s ache
undergoes those same ancient throes that
liberate prophets, birth firebrands, glows,

                    vi.

enclothes in burning robes what Jonah
deep from the belly of his whale bailed
himself out with, wailing guttural,

costumed in a new posture which, in
fact, is very old, this bark of the
forbidden tree he held and we still

hold as Adam hid in his mouth its
bitter herb dissolved by spit and gets
reconstituted whenever we

                    vii.

articulate verbs invoking that
same spirit, but as every chat’s
digression is a flowering from

the same weathering branch as any
conversation’s origin, so storms
our common ancestor in wit his

defiance, authored generations
as he, our first parent, partriarch
to all artists, ferocious, took fire

                    viii.

into first wilderness, alias
Prometheus as he gathered what
sustenance actually mattered,

fruit pruned from that doomed garden which proves
its labours’ worth later, a very
Herculean spoil which gives to those

who, for total freedom, toil truly
an antidote to voices meant by
avenging angels envious of

                    ix.

our talents’ gifts to poison us with
doubt, what knowledge into which he was
initiated the same exact

moment when the clay heaven’s breath wet
with warmth into existence fashioned
as flesh its original filth, mess

original as this though no sin
it was or ever has been that what
within he expressed ever since, from

                    x.

within us, his descendants, possessed
of that same secret song, turns corners
wandering to Ur toward cures for

transformative loss, opens eyes as
light blinded enough to open Paul’s
on that road to Damascus, co-signs

conquering, from crippling suffering
constructing the first story added
to babble’s tower, for Adam’s tongue

                    xi.

in our mouths, when recovered, ushers
in another Eden, or rather,
causes to become one, whatever

squalor sent like some punishment, some
comeuppance, for learning too much this
mystic language of his is ours to

inherit, if only because he
never wanted us to suffer in
silence, but find paradise writing.