Not a Sin.
It's not a virtue, either, really--
this rubbing and rubbing against someone,
yourself a someone, too, until someone must burst or yell.
It falls where pleasure and necessity and risk
all intersect.
We have ourselves and to ourselves, to love,
and half to death--
removing, move by move, the overlays of mind
until we're down to sheer medulla,
not what you could call intelligent.
And yet I bet it has some wisdom in it,
something that can bear us later,
past the lapse in gushes, past the businesses apart,
past weeks and decades made to keep our waking occupied,
till when one moment yawns no memory foretold, one
end of time no wording comprehends,
reducing all our big ideas to jolts of oblongata.
O, my underestimated God, shall I show forth thy praise?
You made my powers crash.
As bushes burst, as flames float off
in heart-boats in the flood, I open up my mouth
and find you've filled it full of flesh.
I mean, you made me feel the way I feel,
so words would not be proud.
I know.
You made men so I'd kneel.