The things I had wished for my hands

Were not weathered skin
nor aging joints.
Not knuckles broken and
nails bitten too far down.
Not as the instruments of debauchery
nightly sacrificing my once good name,
opening doors better left unopened
to inner rooms
better left
unknown.

But, to lack obscenity
and vulgar display.
To often lift and rarely destroy.
To bring forth rather than deny and oppose.
To guide and to lead,
to carry the torch and
the
weight.

Callouses by honest,
hard work wrought.

Commanding to cum,
yet,
offering a calm reassurance of comfort.

To now and again have,
to now and again hold.

To fold humbly in prayer
for absolution
and a promise of peace
everlasting.

I don't know what the point is,
I just don't feel it anymore,
it all seems like compulsive duty
and I think that maybe I'm
not as important as I thought
at all.

I want to take a night drive
look for possums in the trees
neon lit up on the dashboard
find a safe place to pull over
have sex with all the windows down
and smell the grass after the rain.

Fireflies and cigarette cherry glow
why didn't we fly before these burdens pushed down
our bodies
into this black water
deep.

"Love was a disappointment my dear
it was a fever dream in a foregone season,
children playing at grownup things of
which they knew little if at
all.

Eventually your eyes adjust and
all the polish and the shine,
it just dulls,
and a loaf of bread is
more meaningful
and
the rent is due.

Good intentions don't balance the books
so you just get on with it.
You grow up
because that is what you
just
do.

That is why I say it bores me
and the youthful dalliances of little girls
become tiresome.

I get tired of playing daddy
and I'd give up one hundred orgasms
for one evening of intelligent and worthwhile
conversation."

I was reminded of imperfection
as I once more dipped the blade
into a careful pile of sugar and shame
cutting myself down,
cutting myself open,
filling in with sex and
abandon and
dark.

Curse the eternal lure of chaos.
Curse my bacchanalian disposition
and my Caligula-like
appetites.

It isn't the sin
and it isn't the flesh,
its the void.
Its the comfort in depth and freedom from form
to answer to nothing and,
going forth in wild spirit,
to burst the moral dam.

But we were sent from the Garden for
reasons such as this
and though the snake coils round our fingers,
we must maintain our conviction.

A child's unprovable hope
that there is a brighter
and comforting life
beyond.