“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

  A Poem for Concourse: a painting by Mark Sheinkman

Instead God said Be
by Mursalata Muhammad

Creation stories abound
overflowing mind
from every religious angle
making children scream because their choices are
hell, heaven, or nostalgic indifference lost in pining
for a supposed time when neither choice existed
where one man and one woman romped around naked
but didn’t know it
Apparently before heaven, hell, and unashamed naked people
there was nothing
In the beginning
Or
there was everything
which makes more Godly sense
where there is God there has to be everything

So
In the beginning, there was everything
when God woke up or
regained consciousness or
created it
decisions had to be made about the
business of Being
After
too much thought,
planning, and eons of
angel kiss-up suggestions, as they vied for positions with the now conscious God
time, had it existed
slipped away until it invented boredom, which the now conscious God of everything
found annoying such a state developed on Godly watch

In the beginning of a
smoldering thickness of everything
God stood at its midnight middle
looked at the boredom of plans
scrapped them and
Instead said, “Be”
sending everything, not nothing
to the ends of space as “Be’s” sound  
floated in whispering smoky grey-white
tendrils across creation’s blackened richly layered
canvas of everything
endlessly becoming and unbecoming