Free Verse. Faust and Eve sitting in a tree. Anyone seen my fig newtons?

::::::::

The brittle bones of ecstasy

in old age make me wonder

if I'm not wholly derivative

carnal knowledge wasted

on some devil who's just rolled over

away from Eve, who, smoking a ciggy

in the Eden moonlight by the sea,

perhaps wonders what she sees in me

an old barnacle with worn out sins

arrogance, presumption, limp pride

the original academic with tenure

with more and more to hide

or, do I project? Perhaps she's the shortcomer

with questions to answer for

using me for the summer's delight

to pash and ponder over Gallo wine

the abovely luminesences, her test results

and on that note I ask about the pill

and she says No and there's a chill

and the evening comes to gather its clothes

and I say goodbye to her

and give her a gift certificate good for a rose.

.

and when she comes rushing in on high horse

seeking a kind of academic divorce

angry, she let me touch her clitoris

only to receive a failure for the course

because she failed to cite a source

but, I said, grades can be changed

and she looked at me all Dorothea Langed

suddenly I was a scholar befanged

a licentious whore-man tenured deranged

derivative unoriginal love, dog manged

.

and that night over dinner, Eve proposed

in a pre-nup kind of way, certain principles

that would honor the spirit of our delights

while securing the pursary, so to speak,

and we were happily ever after engaged

during the semester's office hours

two blankets on the floor, scented candles

and she would do me, do me

until all the knuckles in my body cracked

.

we married, of course, she was a keeper

and we climbed the tree of knowledge together

she first in her flowery pinafore

that smelled of jasmine and ginger

and it turned out many years later

that her thesis on carnality was prize stuff

that she knew more than me -- what a laugh!

the day she slammed the feckin door.

Authors Website: https://tantricdispositionmatrix.substack.com/

Authors Bio:

John Kendall Hawkins is an American ex-pat freelance journalist and poet currently residing in Oceania.