Heading East of the Garden of Eden

A poem about loving, leaving, religion and the inconsiderate movements of a certain lovely lady.


Humankind! You give me the highest highs
in low mountain valleys, in creek-bed sleepyhollows
where I’ll light a campfire and cigarettes
and watch all the embers dissolve at once into the night
(and the Gitche Manitou knows, “there’s no shame in that.”)

I’m heading east of the beguiling garden
east of the promises I’ve promised not to make
to myself or anyone else
east of the potential to mistake sorry for please
because holy heaven’s gatekeeper knows I’m a fuck-up
but everyone is fucked up when the fat boils down, saying collectively,
“There’s no shame in that.”

It’s the springtime river-run glimmering of her lips
that makes this trip seem difficult
this trip I’ve begged from celestial flesh-colored Christs
God, to be torn so evenly
I’m cropped halfway between intimacy with celestial her
and intimacy with the road (and the splintering pickguard of my guitar)
The endless highway speaks to me,
“There’s no shame in that.”

Humankind! Far away from you, and in the hinterlands,
I can sit against rotted oak and appreciate your
idiosyncratic smiles and movements—
speaking specifically now of her
—but when the moments comes, and god! in this segue of sweater to skin
I find myself scraping bare, surrounded by a nicotine cloud,
and found wanting
Allah above! I’ve been weighed on the scales and found wanting
and the Tao Te Ching tells me
“There’s no shame in that.”

I’ll be heading east soon
wandering the lonely cobbled alleys of cities still clinging
to their colonial roots
the roots that shot through the ground and through hearts of men
the sacrifices now seemingly in vain
but when the tires leave rotted rubber against Spring’s morning pavement
nothing is in vain, as your epiphanic glimmering mind clings closely to mine
(I pray through thick clouds of incense to the misunderstood Buddha)
and Ganesha tells me personally

“There’s no shame in that.”