Daughters Never Grown (Florida. Spring 2007.)

There are only plants today. The mosquitoes were blown away early. Love bugs hold each other in hiding. Dragonflies think themselves into sticks. Even the ants are gone. A lone chameleon bobs on the mango tree, tapping out a prophecy in morse code.

The birds of paradise are fluttering, flapping furiously to keep watch. Their shocking reds and oranges fly like flares heralding the coming of the wind. The grass is shivering, even though it is already May. Frangipani leaves begin to poke their heads out of stiff branches. They are still not convinced the time has come. They expected to be welcomed with showers and lightning — a thunderous cry to expose themselves. But they know they have been waiting too long. The angel’s trumpets have been calling, sending long fluted noted which start green and fresh and explode in screeching upside-down pink. The sounds coax the palms to dance, a primitive hallucination of a trance, a dance to tempt the clouds. Australian pines cry out as they sway, painfully praising the wind that moves them. The bougainvilleas are silent.

The mother mango listens and alone is still. She is weighted by the pregnancy of dozens of offspring, ready to feed. Her tiny flowers quiver and the beat of the shaman lizard plays on. Clouds move more quickly, as if gathering round to hear. The wind becomes more forceful, swaying the mangoes lasciviously. The angel’s trumpets begin to wail; the frangipanis gawk unashamed; the palms quicken to a frenzied dance; birds of paradise hold tightly to their stalks; Australian pines scream “halleluiahs” to the wind.

And just as suddenly it ends. A small patch of silent azure breaks over the tree, baptizing and cooling her. The chameleon hugs the trunk, exhausted by the omens. And slowly, as if gravity is lazy, thousands of white mango flowers drift to the ground. Floating like snow, winking like stars, swirling like Sufis. Hundreds of daughters never grown. Millions of mouths never fed.

Moon on a Lamppost (Florida. Spring 2002.)

We

bathed

in amber

last night

getting stuck

with mosquitoes

under an orange sheen

which made things

not illuminated, but

notdark.

So, surrounded

by a personal 11 pm we sat

under a lampshade of  notdark

and tried to get our feelings

out.

Even sitting back to back,

empty bookends, we held orange

light between us

a sinister glow.

I could see that nothing hid beneath its gleam,

no beady-eyed monsters lurked

in the harvest colored bushes,

but I could also see only shapes,

as if my eyes were taking silent hours

to adjust to the light on Crescent Road.

That tiny orange                              kept me from being

moon on a lamppost                     scared and kept me from seeing

you.

The Decomposition of Eden (Florida. Spring 2003.)


The Decomposition of Eden

 

 

       I want to show you this place, behind banyans and honey-suckle.  Backed into a mess of uncharacteristically sultry vinestreesgrassleaves, its wide open mouth gapes, screaming at us to enter and laughing with our delight at the same time.  It is submerged further than friendly waving palms, because it knows that everyone will settle for that idea of tropical. But not us.  As we kick through the grassy blades, mosquitoes splash out of the ground like water, as if we were full-grown children, splashing through puddles of winged humidity.  But we are not children, and our intentions are not innocent.  The fertility of decay seeps into our nostrils and seems to fill our heads with life.  Crooked vines and banyan roots hang down on all sides of us, lightning striking the ground.  The light is just right now, at dusk, to stab the canopy with a flaming sword of sunshine, orange and opening, pricking a gurgle of water.  The river runs past us, the father of the Euphrates, and you are surprised it is there, in hushed hiding.  You notice the fruit immediately, a flurry of fructifying vegetation.  Mangoes, oranges, papayas, and star fruit stretch out, seemingly seeping nectar just for us.  We eat: they are not forbidden.

I want to show you this place, which is not without its threats.  As the light begins to dim, the vines begin to slither.  They reach for us while we look the other way and hiss at us when we turn around to catch them.  They crisscross, making spun spider webs of foliage, and we have to be careful not to walk into them.  This can only be accomplished by finding a verdant seat.  There are no thistles or thorns, nothing to prickle our feet and grip our clothes, but we do not notice this absence.  We shed the coats of skins we have been wearing for so long. The bugs gather round, hesitating, spying, folding into flurries.  The mosquitoes attach themselves to your skin, and I realize I am jealous of the way they are clinging to you.  The trees swell, transformed and concealed by the checkerboard gleam descending on their branches and leaves.  It is difficult to tell in this glow which of the flowers are honeysuckle and which are angel’s trumpets.  It’s a risky mistake  to make, but the honeysuckle is tempting.

I want to show you this place where it seems like we could be alone.  It is a room of suspended banyan root walls and a tent covering of leaves.   The thick of tree trunks closes like an envelope, keeping people from reading us.  We cannot see anyone through these walls and ceilings, so no one can see us, we reason.  The horseflies come close to spy on us, coming out slowly from behind leaves and up from resting places in untouched grass.  They flood in quietly, undulating, making sure we do not hear them before continuing closer to our breathing bubble.  They tiptoed the whole way, I am sure.  We did not notice them.  To sit inside, our heads and shoulders framed by these viney gums, is to understand how our ancestors could think that they had found a place even God could not see them.  His many eyes, kaleidoscoped like the flies’, can’t be felt by tingling flesh, like the eyes of humans.  We pull blankets of leaves over our nakedness anyway.  It has become habit, by now, to cover up and blaming fingers protrude oppositely from each of us when we have a stab at the reasons for it.

I wanted to show you this place to end the arguments and it happens soon enough.  It does not take much time until we no longer realize that we are naked, and ashamed blamed digits fall to our sides.   It has become too moderate for the mosquitoes, and they give up for the night, following the sun’s example.  The grass cools the bruises on our heels and we become snake-like and god-like at once.  More snake-like looking, squirming in earth with our belly doomed to the dirt.  But we are close enough that our ribs melt together, every other rib of yours falling between two ribs of mine, and like that, we sleep.

I want to show you this place, where we can fall asleep rib to rib, where we are fooled into believing that horseflies and God cannot see us, where the honeysuckle and angel’s trumpets get muddled, and where deterioration is the formula to renew life.

Dry Flies (Thailand. Summer 2011.)

Dry Flies

Ten eyes blink
in an unfamiliar brightness.
You both almost remember
seeing this sun before.
Some time before the darkness,
before you slept with roots and grubs,
before your premature burials,
before the prime number
of years spent waiting.

The temperature is right.
It’s your four minutes, the soil urges.
Take it. Take it.

Seventeen years this moment has
grown and molted, hid and sighed,
waited and waited to sing.

It’s not time to store for winter.
It’s time to leave empty selves behind,
clinging to bark and dust.
It’s time to shed golden skins.

Vines pause their swaying,
mangoes hold their breath,
leaf corpses don’t even rustle.
The dog day is silent.

It’s loud at first, furious and brave,
drunk with the newness of light.
It’s not a matter of legs or violins.
Bodies resound as ribs rub together.

The song becomes a whisper
as you near each other,
gentler, like a snake in the leaves.
It’s no longer for coaxing,
no longer for the eyes of the trees.

Branches are split.

Later, much later,
buttressed trees will burst with children,
nymphs will rain from their twiggy fingers,
speckled-dust life and the promise of song
will fall to a summery, shimmery floor.

But now, it’s not time to store for winter.

Creative Commons love to http://www.flickr.com/photos/pennstatelive/ for the photo of “Cicadas” etching by Marilyn McPheron.

Childhood Landscape (Florida. Winter 2012.)

The landscape holds the deafening density of memory.  The needles of each slash pine burst with the recollection of some childhood experience just on the edge of my mind.  Each oak limb twists in the shape of a person long forgotten, whose name I would only recall if someone reminded me.    It’s as if the trees and Florida air are storing the memories for me.  They are my Giver, coddling reminiscences in case some day I might want them.  I’ve seen them all before.  Every sabal palm, every old oak, every casaurina.  I’ve left pieces of myself in the sap of each tree.  They whisper a promise to hold it, to free me, to lighten my load.  It is only in this way that I am able to travel.  In leaving behind the teenage worries and prepubescent fears, there is room for Thai macaques and Czech bridges.  But they are not lost.  The Spanish moss dangles with the whispers of elementary school friends.  Mistletoe glistens with stolen first kisses.  Pepper trees play melodies I know I’ve heard before.  Even the formations of clouds seem to materialize into shapes that I’ve seen, in the same sunset, over twenty years ago.

The Space Between Myths (Florida. May 2004.)

The Space Between Myths

 

            This is the English translation of a Coptic text that was first found in 1954.   I estimate that the codex dates back to the third century of the common era, during the formative years of Christianity.  This can be surmised because of the dating of papyrus used in the cover of the text.  The dates on this papyrus lead right up until 250 C.E., suggesting that this was the time that the codex was bound.  It was buried shortly thereafter, though by whom and why are questions which remain unanswered.  The original codex was found in Egypt, buried by itself in a cave.  I postulate that the text was buried because it was forbidden by the authorities of the day.  Yet someone must have believed that the work should be preserved, and hid it in a sealed jar, to be uncovered at a later date.

Though the text was constructed in the third century, it is apparent that the thoughts contained therein are much older.  The ideas contained in the manuscript seem to be those of an early Christian sect which revered Norea, a daughter of Eve. Though the text was not whole, I managed to fill in many of the gaps using context clues.  I have given the text the title The Space Between Myths and Realities, a phrase from the text itself because the codex seemed not to contain a title. The codex itself is probably also a translation, first from Aramaic to Greek and then from Greek into the Coptic text which we now have.

Actually, we no longer have the Coptic manuscript itself.  It is fortunate that I copied it when I did, since a short while later, the papyrus pages were swept away.  On a particularly blustery day, the papyrus was picked up by a burst of wind coming through my office window and carried off; the original manuscript was completely lost.  This was not the only setback to the translation of The Space Between Myths and Relaties, since the wind picked me up as well, making me fall out of the window as I was trying to save the manuscript.  I spent weeks in the hospital before my work on the text could begin again.  I must admit to many hours agonizing over the delay in the completion of my work with this text.  This work in particular drew me in and compelled me to translate its words to make them available to a much larger audience.

Though the codex was lost, we do have the original Coptic words, which I copied diligently in the weeks before the gusty catastrophe, and therefore, I can offer you the following English translation, the long-awaited fruit of a lost text.

– April, 2004

My brothers chant tales in my ear as I sleep at night and I wake remembering vague details, a slow, persistent hum in my mind, reminding me to feel ashamed that I am her daughter. sssser-pent-sssser-pent-sssser-pent-sssserpent  It is unclear if I am the serpent, or if it is my mother, or another entity all together.  More clear is the call to repent, whatever role the serpent, my mother and I have played, all parties remotely connected to the story are summoned by these nightly hymns to atone for their sins, for the sins of the world.

It was a turbulent time.

It was the night of menstruation ritual when the chants began.  I first heard them as my mother and I traveled toward the river.  It seemed as though the night was swollen with a deep whisper.   sssser-pent-sssser-pent-sssser-pent-sssserpent  It did not grow louder, but it was somehow more intense.  The words became sharper, the pronunciation more pronounced.  My mother, having my hand in her own, dragged me swiftly behind her, running wildly and seeming frightened, though she always looked like that, the heads of Leviathan seeming to twist madly at the ends of her locks.  Our feet splashed in muddled puddles as we ran, sending the spit of the ground upon our calves, anointing us up our thighs.

My mother stopped at the river which sprang out of the trees. The father of the Euphrates had tiny waves which were illuminated by moonlight, casting deep slithers of green on the face of the river.  The waves became scales reflecting moon reflecting sun burning.  I ran a bit past her, my ankles dancing in the stream of water, my hand still in hers.  The river hissed whispers of watery histories.  Shadows, I noticed now, drew trees on the damp ground, fuzzily, forcing interpretations of their interpretations.  They were far from trees.  The chants continued.  I wondered if my mother heard them.

My mother smiled at me.  It was the first time I had ever seen her lips curl upwards.  Her face seemed pained by the unfamiliar pose, her mouth twisted as her cheeks reached for her forehead.  It soothed me.

My mother began walking further; the water swallowed her up to her waist and she beckoned me to follow. I floated on my back, resting in the bedsheets of water as she grasped my wrists, locking our arms together.  I watched the moon move, round in its cycle through the sky. I laid in the water for hours, I knew.  And nothing happened.  The chants had been replaced with the splashing of water; all else was silent.

My mother looked up at the sky.  The moon silhouetted her face and she opened her mouth, her head leaning back, and swallowed the moon whole.  It continued on its path straight into her mouth, as if this was its destination all along.  She closed her mouth and the night become dark.  Her eyes seemed illuminated and she looked tempestuous.

I began to bleed.

Though I dared not look, I pictured the pulpy matter flowing downstream, giving life to the river, thousands of tiny red snakes swimming from between my legs and swirling around rocks before they disappeared under the small waves of the river.

The sounds of my blood leaving my body were too much for me, and I made noises to cover them.  Familiar.  sssser-pent-sssser-pent-sssser-pent-sssser-pent.  Faster. ssser-pent-ssser-pent-sser-pent-sser-pent. Further.  ser-pent-ser-pent-ser-pent-ser-pent. Failure. er-pent-er-pent-re-pent-re-pent.

My mother let go of my hands.

My fertility turned the water to wine, deeply crimson, yet flowing more freely than blood alone.  I wondered about the moon, if it was letting go of eggs that night, for it had been swollen and seemed ready to burst.

The chants have filled my nights ever since.

But I have not been separated from my brothers.  Apart from their dark incantations, I have not been singled out.  We run and play together; although I am growing breasts, the ritual has not served to keep me isolated from the men.

It was not Cain whom I first became close to.  As far as anyone could tell he was my least favorite.  I never spoke to him.

But you already know this story.  You do not need to read these words. They are only signs which will direct you to the place in your mind where this story already sits.  There are infinite paths to get there, and these signs may be misleading, crumbling under the weight of time before becoming paths themselves.  They may lean crooked, pointing in ambiguous directions, so you may want to stop reading and find another, more direct, reliable way.  Or you could continue.

It is true they call me a virgin,[1] but you may be misled.  They may also call me a whore, though they would be further off.  Both concern my first conversation with Cain.

“You’re too close to the trees.”  Calling across a field one day when no one else was around.

“I happen to like them.”  I did not look in his direction, but continued on my path.

He detached himself from the tree he leaned on.  I did not lean on a tree.

“You are missing out.” The words were thrust angrily in my direction.

“Perhaps you are as well.” Mine pumped back, my head barely in his direction.

“You are like me.” Sharp.  I did not wince.  My legs quivered with tension.

“Mistaken again.” He did wince; I had pounded him.

“You are bold.” He prodded.  I could feel the grass begin to sweat dew.

“I know more.” Firmly; yet I bared more than I wished to.  His skin was hard to peel. Mine would be as well.

“You are not alone.” It was a caress.

We were locked.

Indeed, nothing was taken.  Through childbirth and old age.  So, it is true that I am a virgin.

            In later years words such as mine would turn an arc to ash.  That was the power of my voice.  It is hard to comprehend that the apple gave the ability to recognize, and not always understanding.  They called me Na’amah then.  You see that they did not understand; though they were able to see the truth and rejected that ability, opting to know lies.  That was the true fall.  They shrieked my name into air that swelled with the sound.  It soon burst, sending the residue of those screams into new places.  But I am now Norea, and I use the air for my own purposes, making it hum with my voice.  You have the ability to understand.

            Yes, I have heard the stories about my mother.  But you can only trust stories so far.  There is no way to judge how true they are, even when they begin to happen to you.

 

            It was the first time I had seen Samael.  But I knew immediately that the figure standing before me was it.  I had heard descriptions of it from my brothers.  It had a full mane of white, which grew almost as low as its sagging, wrinkled breasts.  In some ways, it had the look of a tortoise, which at any age seems old because of its redundant folds of skin. It was so pale as to be translucent and glowing.  I did not know if I should be afraid.

It stepped.  I stopped. It was not with its eyes that it saw.  Energy radiated from them; they took nothing in.  This was a form it took on for me, only so that I could see it. There was a certain awe evoked in this form, for though it looked disgusting, it shone even in the daylight.

Turn your head.

It stepped. I wept at the pleasurable cruelty of its image.  Again and it was closer.  I was rock, and shivering.

It began to speak… “Your mother came to us.”  Pricking my ears.

“You must render service to us, like your mother Eve; for I have been given dominion over you.”  My lower jaw forced itself upon my top teeth.

Its spell on my eyes broke.  “You are accursed.  I am not your descendant.  You do not know my mother.”

It jumped for me, springing; its breasts hung onto my own.

A scream broke out of my chest.  Samael was gone.

I am the virgin whom the forces did not defile.

“Who are you to be demanding the help of God?”  Its skin was simultaneously the whitest and the most natural looking skin I had ever seen.  It hovered above me, great golden wings of fabric and wood flapping at its back.

“Who are you?”  The response surprised even me, for far from supposing I would reply to it, I was mesmerized.  It looked strangely similar to the blind Samael, and yet it was beautiful, seemingly on fire.

“I am understanding.  I am knowledge.  I am apples.  I am olives.  I am a blazing shrub.  You already know me.  You did not need to call for my help.”

“Eleleth.”

“That is my name.”

My head lowered.

“Tell me about the genesis of that creature.”

It began.[2]

In the beginning, the shadow of wisdom created the world.  Wisdom alone can make no whole world.  It was an aborted fetus.  It could not breathe on its own, and wisdom only goes so far in inspiring life.  The world was abandoned.

A mold began to grow in the shadow of wisdom, surrounded by only darkness and water.  In the beginning, there was chaos.

The mold cried into the night, trying to prove that it alone existed.

But a voice answered, sweetly inspiring terror.  “Samael, you are blind.  Wisdom is incorruptible, and you only last as long as words.”

The mold still grew.  Grew a mane.  Grew a mind.  Grew a voice. Grew.

It was this voice that gave it power.  The mold molded the world with its words.  Its speech parted waters, holding them back.  Its tongue cut rivers and licked land upward into mountain ranges.  It uttered birds into being.  With only its voice, the mold brought Jealousy, Wrath, Pain, Bitterness, Suffering, Lust, and Lamentation into being; it now had offspring. The mold called it creation.

It was a universe made of shadows.  There was nothing that the mold did not touch.

A light fell from the sky.  A purple puddle nearby reflected images of God into the sky.  Samael saw.  It was more striking than anything the mold could have called into being.  Indeed, the image in the water was more powerful than the mold.

Naturally, the mold was entranced by the power.  As it watched, the image faded, leaving light on the ground and speckles light in the sky.  The world was no longer shadow.  The mold yearned to bask in the light of God again.

A plan grew from the mold.

“You understand what is happening?” Eleleth, in flames.

“Samael is born.  It constructed this world with its words.”

“It is not alone in this [power][3].”

It continued.

The mold formed a mound of clay with its voice, a heap which was in the image of  light in a puddle, a human.  This clay was male, bait for incorruptibility.  The man would fool God.  The mold intended to have God for itself, to lay hold of incorruptibility; to always soak in the greatness.

The mold breathed its breath into the nostrils of the clay, giving the man a soul, allowing movement.  The soil of the human became different than the soil of the earth, transformed, but only in its function

It would have been an unfortunate sight to us.  Knowing that humans were destined to be animated, the form of a human lying on the ground would have been disturbing.  But mold does not have foreknowledge, and this mold was proud of its workmanship.

Fortunately for us, the Wisdom of Life, Sophia Zoe, did know the fate of humankind, and took pity on the small man writhing on the earth.  Without this spirit, he could not stand.  Soul is not enough.  Sophia Zoe had anticipated the creation of man.  It was the will of God, and so she knew.

Sophia Zoe had created her own human, in the likeness of Incorruptibility.  The Spirit let a droplet of light fall from the sky, creating the body of the new human being, a body saturated with Spirit. It had waves in its form, which gently rose and fell as if they were the first melodies.  Droplets are androgynous, and the human still needed to attract the human of Samael.  Sophia Zoe sculpted femininity.  It took twelve months.

The first virgin had arrived.

Rain began to fall, tiny stars reflecting the chaos which Samael had tried to tame.  The rain burned red with the breath of seven-headed dragons contained in each drop.  A small trickle for all of eternity would soon loosen the binds holding the moisture from the land. Creation had only begun.

The humans landed plop in a garden,  a mess of uncharacteristically sultry vinestreesgrassleaves.  Crooked vines and banyan roots hung down on all sides of them, lightning striking the ground.  The light was just right then, at dusk, to stab the canopy with a flaming sword of sunshine, orange and opening, pricking a gurgle of water.

The first thing the breasted-human saw was herself.  In a puddle which mirrored the image of God, she gazed at the moving figure in the ripples.  The figure had a sharp jaw-line, and shoulders which blocked other sights from being echoed in the water.  She felt her own shoulders, which were round and pliable and pinched her full cheeks.  The reflection mimicked her movements, but reflections can only show so much.

A form like her reflection made the sound of earth against earth and caught the female’s attention.  She strolled closer.

“Arise, Adam,” she encouraged the dirt.  Her words became life.  The first creation was complete.

They were able to look each other in the eye.

“You shall be called Eve.  For it is you who have given me life.  It is you who is my mother.  It is you who have given birth.”

The forms had uttered their first words.  Both speeches which became truths.

But the next words Eve spoke were not her own.  She became filled with sounding, roars bellowing from her pores, eyes flooding with the water of her insides, palms radiating fiery rays, mouth opened as if her head were on hinges.  No mouth could open wide enough for these words:

“It is I who am the part of my mother;

And it is I who am the mother;

It is I who am the wife;

It is I who am the virgin;

It is I who am pregnant;

It is I who is the midwife;

It is I who am the one that comforts pain of travail;

It is my husband who bore me;

And it is I who am his mother,

And it is he who is my father and my lord.

Yet I have born a man as lord.”

Well, words of truth are few and far between and the space between myths and realities can easily be filled with speech.

Samael felt the love of his new creation float in a different direction.  Its aroma no longer found those feline nostrils, and with that perfume out of the mind of the mold, it recalled its original intention.

Samael had never captured Incorruptibility.  Instead, it had on its hands an unruly creature, who moved by his own accord and mingled with this spirit-endowed woman, who carried a resemblance of the face Samael was originally trying to have.

Samael craved her.

This female would do, Samael thought.

Embers trickled from the sky, singing the land to sleep.  As the earth slept, so did Adam, conceiving erased dreams and empty visions.

The mold crept toward the woman. The Spirit leapt from the woman.  She laughed.  A hysterical laugh, set free from her throat, expectorated.

The female body continued to run and the Spirit sunk her toes into the ground, grasping the soil with them.  With her arms and hair she grabbed hold on the sky and fixed her torso firmly.  Samael reached them just in time to see leaves and fruit explode from the Spirit’s skin.

Eve continued to run.  The mold surrounded her and came upon her body and into her mouth.  Samael defiled her speech, and she became the prophet to whom no one would listen.  Her breasts and the point beneath her belly became untrustworthy.  They began to grow in preparation.  The offspring of mold squirmed inside her.

Samael awoke Adam with his words.

“It is not good that you should be alone, Adam.  I have made for you a helper.”

Eve was brought in front of Adam, and after his cloudy fantasies, she was new and unfamiliar.

“I have formed her from your rib, so that you know she belongs to you.”

Adam was delighted.  His eyebrows migrated quickly up his forehead and his eyes widened.

“But you may have her only if you follow my command.”  Samael paused.  “From every tree in this garden shall you eat; yet — from the tree of recognizing good and evil do not eat, nor touch it; for the day you eat from it, with death you are going to die.”  The mold pointed toward the biggest tree, which stood in the middle of the garden.  It seemed to grasp heaven and it moved as other trees did not.

It was a fair trade.

A snake flowed up the trunk of the tree, which pulsated.  The tree and the snake melded so that they were both filled with the Spirit.  The serpent swayed towards her mission.

The subtlest creature did not have to wander far to find Eve.  The woman came toward the tree and was not alone.  The snake slid toward Eve, leaving ridges in sand.  She twisted up the woman’s leg, winding around the ankle, calf, and thigh before resting her head on Eve’s belly.

“What did Samael say to you?”  The fork of the creature’s tongue flicked.

“He said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it or you shall die.’ ”

Her diamond head crawled further up the swollen belly to Eve’s breasts.

The snake whispered.  “You will not die.  Samael knows that you will become like gods, understanding the difference between good and evil.  Indeed, the mold did not want you to surpass it in power.  You must eat.”

Already once having understanding, Eve ate.

She turned to Adam and handed him the fruit as well.  He ate.

The Spirit left the snake, which fell from Eve’s body, and returned to the tree.  God’s will be done.

Samael forced the humans away from the tree, condemning them to a life occupied with survival, leaving no room for understanding, though the ability had been won.

Eve, who soon became your mother, started to grow.  She was aware of the swelling of her body.  She put a stick between her legs and struck herself.  But Abel was still born.  Cain came next, so shortly after.  But you, Norea, and Seth, were not born of defilement.  This is why you have escaped Samael.

“So now you know.”

I left the flaming angel.

I found her near a tree.  It seemed she could not get enough of it.

“I know that you know.” She looked up at me.

It was the first time I ever heard my mother spoke.

“Would you make the same choice?”  I asked her.

“Yes.”

“But the stories they tell. . .”

“I knew the consequences.”  My mother’s eyes grew wide.  “Of course, I already knew.  I knew that eating the fruit would make the two of us unable to meld together, rib between rib and become one.  But becoming closer to God, Norea.  It would have been a fall to choose to be the only people who lived.  There is no understanding of God without sharing suffering.  The Archons did not realize it, but their punishment has made us able to know again.”

“I would have made the same decision.”  It was a soft flutter of my lips, a group of bubbles floating into the air and finally disappearing.

“It is just as well,” she told me.  “Better for you to be unlike your brothers.  I have had dreams of others like you and Seth.  Though they come from humankind, they are born without the mark of semen, without the sin of primality, conceived in pure life.  They will come from virgins and point their fingers to the moon of God. As with you.  They are our children.”

“What good is this fruit?  I do not understand the difference between good and evil.”  I played the devil’s advocate.

“You understand that there is none.”


[1] Translator’s note: The meaning of the word used here has no English equivalent.  It seems to signify purity, though, unlike the English word here, it also signifies activity.

[2] Translator’s Note: The Coptic manuscript here recounts the story of Adam and Eve.  Though the reader undoubtedly is already familiar with this well-known story, I will repeat it here for the sake of remaining true to the text.

[3] Translator’s Note:  The meaning of the word used here in the Coptic text is unknown.

Crew (Florida. May 2004.)

The boat lay sprawled on top of the water.  It floated on its back, legs and arms spread limply in all directions.  Each limb had a rower attached to it, up to his knees in swaying water.  I watched as small, listless waves tugged at the shorts of one rower, insisting he wade further from the shore.  They all waited for me to wade closer.  I hadn’t expected to get my feet wet, so my socks filled my upheld hands.

One by one, we slipped into the boat, as the others held it down on its back.  I was last.  We clumsily rocked and hit the oars, sending the hovering boat rocking.  We hesitantly strapped our feet into stationary shoes that did not fit.  We tried to find the right position in which to begin this new skill.  My seat slid back as I attempted to squirm myself into a more natural posture.

The water sloshed around us as we tried to maneuver the large arms and legs extending from the boat.  Four arms and four legs thrashed and splashed in the water, undaintily attempting to move in unison.  The waves sniggered at our irregular rhythm, beating against the boat in a unison we could not achieve.  My arm slapped another arm.

Above, sea gulls circled as if waiting for the thrashing-swimmer boat to drown.  Though it was in no other way obvious, we could see we had moved because the fog now hid the shore.  The sun had made its first appearance rising sleepily from the horizon.  We made all the noise that was on the bay that morning.  I looked to my oar and saw a pelican gliding across the water near us, his beak open in a mocking grin of our ungraceful endeavor.  The sun rose higher.

We tried to just sit still, to find a balance on the boat that could be maintained, but the boat writhed beneath our weight, and attempted to push us of its belly.  We held its arms and legs tighter.  My knuckles began turning white, just from embracing the rod of the oar.

We began again, after our unsatisfying balancing act.  Again the two sets of limbs entwined and were flung about, attempting a dignified dance, but looking misshapen instead.  We sucked in breath and held it intermittedly, trying for a rhythm with each other that seemed unfeasible.  I glared at the back of the rower in front of me.  He was off.

It happened suddenly, and caught us off guard.  The coxswain gasped.  We could not tell whose limbs were whose.

They moved together, slipping into the water and caressing it as it moved against it.

slip…and…slip…and…slip…and…

slip…and…slip…

We moved together, pressing with our thighs and sliding back and forth in unison, pushing against the limbs of the boat.  It glided beneath us.

slip…back…and…slip…back…and…

slip…back…and…

The boat created waves in perfectly timed wrinkles over the skin of the water.  It cooed at us now, the sniggering could no longer be heard.

slip…back…slosh…and…slip…back…slosh…and…slip.

The sun rose higher and warmed us, but the fog remained, confining our sight to our little patch of water.

We moved faster, all our motions in unison.  Large breaths escaped our lungs, chanting together.

slip back slosh blow slip back slosh blow slip back slosh

The shore came back into sight, and together our motions slows.  Our oars dipped into the water, cooling and slowing the boat.

We dragged the hull of the vessel back on shore, lifting together.  We held the boat as it was washed, not minding the water which found its way to our clothes.  Our steps moved in synchrony as we walked home.

It’s Easier to Date Moon Rocks (Florida. May 2004.)

It’s a strange sort of orbit

the moon takes around the earth,

mesmerized by the amount of light the planet can reflect,

the way it shifts and writhes and is still

learning to be comfortable in its skin,

while the moon is only black rock,

the same trapped-oxygen rock

for three and a half billion years.

 

 

The moon must be ashamed,

because it always maneuvers

itself in such a way

that one side can’t be seen from earth

and when the sun doesn’t hit

the moon just right,

it rotates, its violet rays

can’t be seen at all.

 

 

The Earth has atmospheric clothes

that do their best to keep

its elements stable and it feels

few drops of newness on its crust,

while the moon gets to bathe

in meteor showers, a constant

sprinkling of new elements and it is molded

by each particle of dust that passes.

 

 

It’s easier to date moon rocks.

Striving to be Struck (Prague. Fall 2005.)

I want to grab ahold of lightning, let it char my hands as it sends phosphorescent energy screamingstreaming from my mouth. I want to vomit the blue bolts, leaving spatters of electrical inspiration on sidewalks and toilet seats. I want to be forced to help ’em power you and me, to light lives with impulsive volts. I want to let it grab ahold of me, twisting spidery tentacles across breasts and back, lifting me with its weight. I want to hold your hand all the while, transporting flashes through you, giving life more real than Shelley’s nightmares.

Cambodia (Cambodia. Spring 2006.)

The clay of the path,the murky water of the rice fields and the skin of the people run a fertile red — not with the horrors of the past, but with the moonflux of the earth.  This land is pregnant. The thick water between rice stalks reflects the open possibility of the sky above.