A Calvinist Narrowly Avoids Pleasure
By Bill Duncan
Trying so hard to nearly
Not enjoy the feeling
but the pleasure and the calm
are almost beyond my control
then you touch me
and my back straightens
like a cat stroked
the wrong way.
Give me my whisky bottle.
Give me the moist, sliding pop
as the cork squeaks out the neck releasing
Not the soft-focus rustic gold of advertisers
but the male blood brotherhood of generations.
Let me be at home with violent, maudlin oblivion.
Let me vomit until the dry raw retches
still my heaving soul as I kneel over the vitreous white
of the altar in the whirling room.
And unleash the hangover. Bring
Not the light, but the darkness of the morning,
The Holy mechanism of pleasure
and my sin and guilt and self-loathing
brimful in triple measure.