Epitome of Adam Outside the Garden

It's what you do when you are twenty-nine,

burying yourself in sidewalk cracks,

         raising crops out of the soiled footprints

of the crowd.

He sat in his hand-me-down recliner,

       reading fairy tales out loud to his window, 

           comparing "Once upon a time. . ."

    with the melancholy that had nestled in the wrinkles

of the reflection staring back at him

When they wrote to the city of Chicago,

       they started it with "Dear Mistress"

and ended it with,

"It's time I put out this cigarette

Signed,

A Starlit Diner next to a Cornfield"

We found that diner

     two years ago, when all you could talk about was

learning how to grow old and how love is hell

   and we were in heaven. . .

     I found a collection of your voices

            mixed with a cheap coinage of that wasted night

inside the coat pocket I let you wear

She picked her favorite historical catastrophe,

      soaked it with a European rain, placed a bandage over it,

      lost her mind to an age-old question, and finally realized:

I can twirl this breeze between my fingers-

the same breeze that blew up her skirt last June,

a medley of blush spreading over her face,

all while whistling folk tales-

tales that she knew like every primrose step she took

on that fateful blue-sky day.

Tiger: "Darling, you were meant to play this part," he said as she laid there, naked and unassuming

Darling: She looked at him, honey-brown whisky fermenting in her eyes, "Easy, tiger"

And I found you at the top of Mt. Anywhere,

tending to the history of the world with just your breath, 

sounding like rain

I turned to a serpent on my shoulder, 

"Damn"