Tuesday Poem: previously published by Caprice in 1996

 Genesis (The Real Story)

In the beginning there was violence.

The two of them struggling for dominance.

His rage a black hole

sucking the two of them

out of time and back again,

Her defiance lacerating Him:

the sharp edges of a nebula skirting too close.

It takes two to tango,

my mother always said,

and it came from her knowledge of this:

The First Tango,

when the tension between Them

caused what scientists call 'The Big Bang';

what actually was the first and last separation.

She shook Him, you see.

Wake up you son of nothing!

So He tackled Her,

just to restrain Her, mind you,

but then She maneuvered 

and bit His celestial finger.

Suddenly, it was Wham!

A huge fist square to Her chest.

How dare you hit me in the breast!

You stinking Red Giant!

You White Dwarf!

She flung planets in His face

so He pushed Her hard until 

She thudded against this one,

knocking the wind out of her 

and all the fire too.

That's when She wept for emptiness,

the wounding of the two of them

stretched thin across eternity's indifference.

 She wept for loneliness, for having no one else,

and as She wept She tore at the planet's sides,

until there were great holes to fill with tears.

She wept for thousands of years.

You know the rest.

When the place came alive Her mood changed.

She began to try to find a way to love again,

for the two of them, some tangible alternative.

She kept messing around with water and dust, 

remaking Herself over and over in miniature,

until She got it right. And then She made Him 

as She wished Him to be, over and over 

until She got it right. She made their bodies 

fit together. She made them willing

to reach across the night.

She gave them more to work with, 

you might say, flawed though they were.

Let there be a light spawned out of darkness,

She said. And She saw that the light was good.

It was the outcome of a fight,

the end of a cosmic honeymoon,
a bubble that suddenly burst: Blake's 
mystical spheres torn apart.

Of course His story is altogether different.

He dreamed Himself moving 

over the face of the waters,

Gardener of the Firmament,

benign, and of course, betrayed

by the slither of woman's 

dissatisfaction, her hunger 

to know it all.