Until the Pleasure's Gone

And it's all desire until the pleasure
is gone, the flame burning bright until morning's
light begins to peak into the soul,
an empty hall of shattered mirrors
glimmering like a thousand flakes of snow
I'll never know until I do,
when the bill is due and they're moral
payments to be made, not so easily paid
as the words that rambled out
in the night, when there wasn't yet
a fight or a bet or a room for conscience let
down into the back alleys where pirates
sold their wears some time ago

I've ridden on the tra-la-la ferry
of good times since and stumbled back
into a soft collide, where the ride was tried
by melodies of what could have been somehow
since if sense had prevailed and ruled a day
that was crisp and blue and begging
for the end of winter, the end
of the splintered self wading waste deep
through the murky unknown I've called home

I always look to the eternal springtime
of life, where the yellow-green overcomes
the chill and frost that finds me ill
and lost and losing way in concrete
valleys filled with sleet, a sheet or two
as a shroud as I walk with he who is
my own personal Jesus, a savior
letting me sacrifice myself on the chopping blocks
of Jericho, an altar that gleams golden
but is never quite what it seems-
like desire, like a desire that is so strong
what we make of it becomes wrong
and the pleasure fades into sheer proliferation-
the mind a stalwart watchman in its own demise

25 Jan 06