In The Sistine Chapel Poem by Shane Markie

The moment after Michelangelo
finished
the Sistine ceiling,

he cleaned his brushes,
snuffed
his lanterns, turned and walked away

for wine and a lover, needful,
stunned
by completion's void,

leaving the room, leaving God
swaddled
in a cloak red as sunrise,

by pink, cloud-rounded cherubim
lifted,
with his finger almost touching Adam's.

In the reeking dark,
filled
with snuffed candle-smoke and drying plaster's smell,

life's bright unruly spark
leaped
from God's finger to Adam's,

and like sunstruck oil
flowed
and filled his palm, while God

rose into the night and
faded
indifferent, leaving

His orphan reclining on bare rock. Adam
raised
his burning hand to his mouth,

swallowed the bolus of flame, then
stood,
staggering under the weight of conscious flesh,

found his fiery tongue and
spoke
himself and all his progenitors into time.