On Angels and Long Lines

For a poet who usually hates working with the long line, I sure have spent some good time steeped in it these past few days. Maybe it's like exercise - it sucks the first few times you do it, but eventually you become okay and even comfortable with it, and maybe - eventually - good enough to do it in full view of a gym full of beautiful people and mirrors without looking like an absolute moron. Sort of a convoluted metaphor, I guess, but there you go.

The long line is a really nice tool to let me wander in my own mind and get very think-y about things instead of worrying overmuch about rhythm the way I do in more short, clipped lines (which I still consider cleaner). But it has been interesting, since working with the longer line makes me think more in terms of telling a story, and gives em the mindspace I need for thoughtplay, where I really just want to wander and see where certain ideas go.

This time around, I was thinking that the angels pre-date the Making of the world, since they were already around and singing God's praises. (You can also make the argument that if the Snake in the garden is Lucifer, then Lucifer - who was an angel - had to fall before the whole Garden mess, *still* predating Creation.) Which means, if you buy the Christian myth, that the angels were around to watch the whole shebang - God making the world, God creating Adam and Lilith, Lilith leaving. God also sent angels to fetch Lilith back after she left Adam - Sanvi, Sansanvi and Semangelaf were the angels' names that cajoled and threatened her to return. I'll likely get to those fellas later, but just think: if you were an angel, who had just spent literally countless years (because there *was* no time) singing God's praises...how would you feel if He felt the need to create himself some new pets?

Anyway, that was the impetus for this one, though I feel the lines are so long they lose some rhythm, and I'm going to have to work with some of the images to polish and tighten them up. The other problem with the long line is that I let myself get sort of fast and loose with language, and it takes discipline for me to tighten it if I'm not working the short line. (Mind you, this is actually in tercets, but some of the lines break due to the restricted space of the blog. My apologies for not knowing how to fix this!)

Edit: Poem removed due to pending publication