Adam and god
This poem is something of a work in progress. I'm pretty sure there's something here which is the basis of something good but I'm not certain I've quite found it yet. It started as a light-hearted transport device for amusing animal rhymes but then turned in an unexpected direction. As usual, I have surprisingly little autonomy over where my poems end up. Also as usual, you are welcome to season verse 10 with more powerful adjectives to suit your own taste.
Adam and God
Once God had finished making Adam,
He called him in and then He had’m,
Make a list of all the creatures,
Their names, their size and some of their features.
“There’s roughly eight million, but most are just beetles,
If you jot down the basics, I’ll fill in the details,
There’s paper just here, and my pen you can borrow,
I’m off for a rest – I’ll see you tomorrow!”
So Adam looked around and spotted a camel,
He wrote down the name, then: ‘Cantankerous mammal.’
He sucked on the pen, then wrote down ‘Cat’,
Wrote ‘Evil’ beneath it and left it at that.
He remembered the asp and wrote ‘Wobbly stick’,
He thought of the panda: ‘A little bit thick’,
Giraffe: ‘Very tall’. The gnat: ‘Very small’,
The python: ‘Quite long’. The ox: ‘Fairly strong’.
He stared for a while at the pale axolotl,
Then wrote on the list that: ‘This lacks the bottle,
To truly unlock its inner potential,
Which for most salamanders is quite quintessential.
He spotted a cheetah: ‘Toothy and fast’,
Then thought of the wombat: ‘Completely outclassed’,
He considered the stoat: ‘A worm in a coat’,
Capybaras: ‘If anything, too cute,’ he wrote.
Sloths: ‘Kind of sleepy’. Bats: ‘Kind of creepy’,
Mosquitoes: ‘Annoying’. Wasps: ‘Soul-destroying’,
He thought long and hard of the ring-tailed lemur,
Then wrote: ‘Kind of sweet but a bit of a dreamer’.
Wave after wave, the animals came,
Line after line, he wrote name after name.
When he’d finished at last, he fell into bed,
His blistered hands clutched his hammering head.
Next morning, when at last God finally awoke,
He appeared before Adam and thusly he spoke:
“My son, you’ve done well. The list is okay,
So please make a start on the plant life today.”
Adam shook his head and slammed down the pen,
“There’s no flipping way I’ll do that again,
You can sod right off, this was never agreed on,
You can keep your bleeding ‘Garden of Eden’”.
He shouted to Eve, “Wife, pack up our stuff,
Bring apples and fig leaves – that’s probably enough,”
God said, “I’m sorry. Can’t I tempt you to stay,
I might let you eat Fruit of Knowledge today,”
But Adam shook his head and remained resolute,
“You know just where to stick your ‘knowledgeable fruit’!
You’re a fat lazy deity! I’m off! Just forget it!”
And God muttered darkly, “Just wait. You’ll regret it.”
So that’s the true story of Adam and Eve,
Not that nonsense version God would have you believe,
To be honest with you, I find it quite odd,
That anyone would trust something written by God.
By Pete Thomas