☀ Today's Poem: "Original Love" Jose Padua

Original love was a sentimental love song which when
played backwards said "Satan is my friend forever,

motherfucker." The big bang was when Adam got Eve
pregnant with Cain or Abel or whichever of those good

or bad young men was their first son. As for me, the first
song I ever sang didn't get me a girlfriend, didn't make

my best friend in high school's girlfriend leave my best
friend, who was kind of a dick. My first woman had nothing

to do with the art of song, and even less involvement with
anything one might call love. There was work and money,

long evenings spent in bars, and train rides like morning
headaches, vacations at the beach, cross country trips on the

bus or on the plane and people who were either impressed
or appalled that I had a job, a car, and a foreign sounding name.

After that came no work, and no money, occasional run ins
with the great but more often with the not-so-great, and

phone calls from bill collectors who threatened to sue me,
and death threats from people who were once my friends.

True love came later when I had nothing and knew nothing.
It took me by surprise at a time when all I expected was

a steady downpour of noise and scorn and rain. And though
the great flood may be yet to come, and the big bang a myth

that never happened, I remember that in the beginning I had
a dream where bees hovered around me as if I were a clear jar

of raw brown honey, flew about my arms and legs and face
as I stood on a high wire in the open air above the street with

all its cars and buses and people with their skyward gazes
and breathless whispers. And I remember one nearly perfect

evening when my spirit turned around and around like a planet
spinning and circling around all the days and years which

I thought would never come, the original love that kept
the bees from stinging and the jar shut tight. And I remember

it was original love that brought me to this moment, moved me
from school and work and money to here, to this tightrope

on which I walk, knowing that whether or not I make it to
the other side I will fall—deeply and completely, with

a gesture of tremendous force and grace, and like a man
who, despite his many failings, remains great for all time.