The Triumph of Eve - an ode to sex, desire, rebellion and fallen womensteemCreated with Sketch.

in #poetry8 years ago (edited)

The Triumph of Eve by Scott Siedman (FB page Neverwuz Productions)

Here is Eve, the serpent raised above her, in her right hand, not  gripped in fear but caressed in joy. This Eve is at ease with her  powers, her connection to all living beings and playfully rebellious in the face of Jehovah and his cruel dictates. She holds the apple lightly against her naked hip, "Take it... or leave it," she smiles. Besides her  is our forebear, cousin and eternal male jerkoff, one hand on his tool  while the other grips the serpent. This is Adam, willing playmate and  little more than carrier of the seed. Here is a just world, free of good  and evil, and free of shame, a garden worthy of the name Paradise, lost  only if we chose to obey an unworthy god. She is our champion...  triumphant!  ~ Scott Siedman

I found myself spellbound by the archetypes and instincts raised to bare by this life size oil painting that caught my attention at Centre Camp in Black Rock City (Burning Man) way back in 2000-and-something. After asking around on various burner art forums several years later, I found Scott and asked him for permission to use his art for a another project I was working on at that time (an erotic art magazine.) 

Another piece that grabbed my attention following the same theme of shedding the skin of shame around sexuality inherited from antiquated culture, was this potent poem by Ansel Elkins

Autobiography of Eve

image source

Wearing nothing but snakeskin
boots, I blazed a footpath, the first
radical road out of that old kingdom
toward a new unknown.
When I came to those great flaming gates
of burning gold,
I stood alone in terror at the threshold
between Paradise and Earth...
There I heard a mysterious echo:
my own voice
singing to me from across the forbidden
side. I shook awake—
at once alive in a blaze of green fire.

Let it be known: I did not fall from grace.

I leapt
to freedom.

- Ansel Elkins' commentary on the inspiration for this poem:

While following the trial of the band Pussy Riot, [summer 2012]  reading the plays of Mae West, and watching pre-Code movies filled with  unrepressed seductresses like Marlene Dietrich and Clara Bow, I began  writing ‘Autobiography of Eve,’ an ode to sex, desire, rebellion, and  so-called fallen women. But the poem, draft after draft, eluded me until  last July when, as I worked on it feverishly in a New York hotel, it  occurred to me that the moment I was writing toward was not Mae West’s,  it was Eve’s. I dismantled the poem and recast the lines dozens of  different ways, playing with varieties of syntax and sound in an effort  to locate the pulse of this pivotal moment between good girl and bad  girl—a moment like Eve’s soliloquy in Book 9 of Paradise Lost as she  stands before the tree of knowledge and speaks the word freedom for the  first time—the moment where desire becomes transgression. I realized  that Eve’s radical act of rebellion lay in her imagination, a fantasy of  herself. 
from academy of american poets

There is more to be explored on the subject of course, but for now, I hope these little gems offered a little lightness of being in your day - may it be so!

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