Ruin Came in a Trap (American Puritan)

Today's blog title is the name of a poem I wrote a long time ago. Like in 1993. The first part of the title is an anagram for the second part of the title, the part in parentheses. When I wrote the poem, I wasn't thinking about the Middle East, of bombs bombarding Baghdad, of the dissolution of Babylon. But I like that the poem is prescient this way. I feel good when I'm prescient. Or else, I feel scared.

In my opinion, anyone who supported this current war of George Bush's in the Middle East before it started, and anyone who supports it now, is stupid. Not paying attention to anything but his or her own butt. Anyone who supports this war is not thinking critically. Too much "Dancing with the Stars." Too much "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?"

I'll never forget when my dear friend F. outlined the idea for "Who Wants to Be a Millioniare?" for me, before the show existed. F. was developing shows for ABC (nee Buena Vista), and this was one of the shows in development. It was 1991. I listened to her, aghast at what she was describing. Then I told her "it sounds ridiculous. I wouldn't watch it."

As it turns out, this was the beginning of my career as the "negative psychology prognosticator" for F.'s shows in development. If I hated the sound of them, they were sure to be hits.


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Ruin Came in a Trap (American Puritan)

In the beginning, a trick of light: the serpent
coiled around a branch. Eat me,
he whispered, and you shall live forever.

Eve ate, and in her eating, Hunger grew
a womb. She swooned toward Adam, bathing nearby
admiring his symmetrical reflection. Stunned,

he growled, What are you doing here?
With stuttering hands, she offered the apricot,
half-bitten, golden, red veins sweeping outward

from a wooden heart. Though she desired the demon
commanding the garden, she spoke so that breath
could gentle itself, bore this breath deeply; gave air

a body – infant, girl, woman. Kin lived, fought, died,
leaving Eve empty, never sated, never still.

Life is so long.

You, whores of Babylon,
with diseased tongues—thrush-coated, black and blue,
stippled with sores, loving what they lick,

happily wagging and prehensile -- vomit disorder
into our hearts, so that we will remember
the stones beneath Babel and the forgotten ladder.

1993