Confession.


I have no confession.
So why begin?
Why end?
Without confession,
  without a darkness of soul
  purchased in action, or desire,
without so much as an infirmity
  of spirit,
  of enthusiasm,
where is that distortion of human living
that marks the days,
and tells us of our becoming?

But must I sin?
Must I break the seal of human dignity,
and strike out at this face
or that soul,
in order that I obtain an order
to the passing time,
  in order that this passing time,
  obtains an order I.
Dare I bring such calamity
upon this world,
and turn against my deepest being,
to raise the hours by terrible example
into the light of uncommon
despair?

Alas I am too weak,
for such foolish indiscretion.
I am trapped by habit
  and fear
in such "virtue"
  as deprives this flesh of consummation
  and consumption, in wanton possession.

"Sex",
thy villainy is the barbarism
  of our worst popular silence.
What bastard convention this is
  which turns kindness and giving
    into foolishness,
      into naïveté,
        into suspect immaturity,
          into a tiring regularity of conviction,
but glories in the war of acquisition.

If there be a sex to my life
may it be a sex of uncultured innocence
where the soul may still give of itself
the sweet presencing of unbridled play,
and give unto the Other all that give it life,
engendering the silences with wisdom,
touching softly the boundaries of self-less-ness.

But what confession shall this be?
Not the confession of shattering a sacred trust,
nor of coveting what belongs to another,
but of giving for the Other,
  of authoring a wider self,
    wider still than two alone,
      or the mere company of many.
But this shall not be confession,
  as sin, or indignity, but
quiet celebration, tribute, and thanksgiving.