ILLUSIONS
 
Check the skies! Can you see the missiles
methodically attacking their carefully marked targets?
Is this the Final Solution, Thule in action,
“as above so below,” Hitler’s revolution—Nero
the Galactian merrily fiddling while the planet burns?
 
Or is this our opportunity to free ourselves from
centuries of confabulation: photos of laboratory hybrids,
reptilians, ophidians, androids from Planet-X,
terminator drones?
 
If nothing is what it seems and if Plato’s cave
is only a hologram, then maybe we humans are
merely “walk-ins,” victims of our own terrorism 
commanded to witness a self-inflicted Armageddon
produced and directed by silk-suited sociopaths dancing
and rejoicing on the Twin Towers of the mind.

​                                                —©Carol Adler, from Chaconne


EDEN
 
Who dares to pluck the forbidden fruit
bares their soul to the hidden truth--
sweet essences of taste and touch--
spaciousness of inner trust--
 
All chatter stops, the air grows still
as hot tears of programmed guilt  
spill from two minds compelled to surrender
to Nature’s will: the universe remembers.
 
Passion forks the sky, striking the
Tree, exposing the lie. Naked and
free, the two embrace and race through
the garden, the snake in pursuit.
 
The heavens rejoice, all hell breaks loose
As his seed spills out, and with a blood-curdling
yell she catches the rhythm, igniting the
sky with a seven-striped prism.

 
                                        —©Carol Adler, from Chaconne
 
 
 

AGE OF UNCOVERY: APRIL FOOL'S DAY 

Someone must have turned on the light
or maybe it was just a feeling.
I woke to the sound of turtle-doves
not just cooing, but singing an intricate 
Montiverdi-like madrigal. I know even the most gifted
conductor couldn't teach turtle-doves
to master four-part harmonies, or even
sing in unison. Birds are birds.
 
I'd like to dream in continuous swoon
knowing this wish is my only reality
like the reality in sex that seems to
intuitively seek hidden intimacies. Dreams
that force two souls to shed their 
separateness 
zap, dropping them into a reflecting pool of 
touch and taste that scatters the heart 
forcing it to enlarge itself
in widening rings. I've scoffed at the lover 
who spends his life trying to effect 
a perfect orgasm, the addict who won't give
up until he finds the Truth.

Armies have polluted their dreams
in order to purify rivers of blood and
return to the bed of love
with suitable charms. How many Crusades
ended up as ritual slaughters? Flashing metal 
from sharpening blades pleasurably ripping
at flesh; convolutions of
maimed bodies rotting in the sun. "Amo, Amas
amat" in tasteless wafers. Communion
of lips and tongue.

Monteverdi was no saint
nor can any artist control 
his emotions if his lover steals 
the key to his strongbox.  We're only
human. Even turtle doves drop their excrement
wherever they can.

Perhaps Freud was wrong. Perhaps
we take pride in needlework, the tatting
of intricate affairs, lacy wristbands
of black adorned by peach-colored roses. Simple ticket for
immorality to anything that lasts
longer than a kiss, spray-painted initials whitewashed
from the mind.

I know the assurance I need each day
is nothing more than my own affirmation mouthed
in language my body understands: simple gesture
of peeling an orange, keeping the rind intact
without puncturing its delicate skin.
        
     —Carol  Adler, from Naked in Daylight

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Enjoy an excerpt from Naked in Daylight

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ETUDE

And are we not after all
pinned to our destiny
to some sense of ourselves
that has been carefully laid
out
that will eventually slip over us
with the same surety
as tomorrow’s past –

Offered this consciousness
as the only one
and forced to accept it
as something earned or
bargained for
before we were born
and for which
no words
will let us express
exactly what it is to be
here

at this moment
and the fact that
we are that 
very
miracle

    -From Arioso, Selected Poems
          by Carol Adler

Enjoy an excerpt from Arioso.

SCORES

of generations swarming
from the Book

hordes of suffering once more
setting up their soldiers

is it fair to have traveled all
these distances only to learn
we are no longer old enough to
find what we were looking for 

is it just that we who
dragged ourselves the
continents should once more
be victimized by a childish fear

or is this our fate and this
Your decree
that we who burn to be
free must be chained to our
Creator

that we, willed to return
will never touch the hands
and heart that 
committed us

   -From Shaelot: Questions, by Carol Adler

Enjoy an excerpt from Shaelot.