Trouble in Paradise (Poem)

The following poem consists entirely of tweets I contributed during the TweetSpeakPoetry.com poetry jam on Tuesday evening, January 19, on Twitter. Generally, the lines appear as I tweeted them; some words or phrases from some lines have been combined with others or pulled out to form their own lines, and punctuation and capitalization have been added throughout. To see how all 21 contributors' tweets, including my own, were combined by our word-knitter Glynn Young into a poem called "Adam and Eve by the Narrow Lake", go here. Another series of three, also edited by Glynn, is here. The final piece from the evening, Poems in Conversation", is here.

Trouble in Paradise  

I

Eve, flowing hair so gold, so soft,

would sit amidst grass

at water’s edge, gazing,

mostly wondering.

Hoping to read the clouds

another morning,

she looked to sun for solace,

bent an ear to hear the music.

Showy birds in boughs

did turn the landscape red.

Sky so bright as tin

did distort for her

his heart beat.

Adam, going nowhere,

read the signs well:

Love be dead

where roses pale.

Looking for such bright fruit

Eve denied,

Adam, as he dared,

wandered

to satisfy his quaking hunger.

His heart beat not

for her.

II

Hope rises

another morning.

She of wounded heart

still could not give up;

once more she bid

to see him,

once more did greet him.

Eve, hair flowing,

bid Adam come closer

one final good night.

Urged back, moving toward

and then against,

Adam realized his great mistake.

Her heart that once held hope,

now shards, cleft,

did turn to ice,

forming black as her feeling.

III

Hope falls.

A heart beat

heard not

by one not loved

loses meaning.

Eve does fight with words,

for words,

to get word out:

‘Tis the end

Like a whisper

never heard.

IV

A freight of words

weighs down

meaning

when heart is broke.

Eve would prefer

poems and prayers.

Fragments of words

sound as tin,

distort her reasoning,

leaving her no good words

on which to fall

back in love.

V

Signs of loss:

the ashy fragment of a wasp’s nest

bird’s wing, torn

roses pale

black leaves

the landscape red

the sky black.

VI

Eve (as usual),

she thought of Adam,

how he left her

like a whisper never heard,

how he left her

crumbs

ashes

dust.

VII

Lips twisting, curling,

jawbone held tight,

Eve hath no need to be poetic.

Words make haste from mouth,

do twist the tongue at times,

sometimes shame.

Every black note

she hit did resound.

VIII

Having known a thousand ways

round him,

she makes her point

a new night’s play

at water’s edge.

In her tall blue Chinese jar

she put elixir

for nights long, for nights dark,

mixed cloves and thyme and

sticks of cinnamon

with rose petals

eggshells so delicate

bird’s wing torn

the ashy fragment of a wasp’s nest

bad memories.

IX

By evening

silver fish do send up a clue:

Love be dead

as she herself might be.

X

Those who witnessed

saw how Adam

turned his back,

and back against the wind,

never heard.

She began to sing:

A song it was

of wanting,

of Adam,

another morning,

love grown cold,

crumbs

ashes

dust.

Copyright © 2010 Maureen E. Doallas. All Rights Reserved.