How easy it is to deny myself pleasure
How easy it is to deny myself pleasure!
Filling my moments with neon activity,
stuffing movement into corners where stillness fits better.
And like a broken record, I catch myself in refrain:
"How easy it is to deny myself pleasure!”
To miss the subtle shift of daylight into twilight.
In Prague, I thought the light was special.
The buildings that caught the light were special,
but the light wasn’t.
The difference?
I spent time seeing buildings as sundials.
How easy it is to deny myself pleasure!
To - not forget - about poetry
but to shunt it far back in life’s cupboard.
Small, violent acts and omissions
add up to a line between my brows.
How easy it is to deny myself pleasure!
Collecting hours in the bathroom,
mindlessly tweezing and picking at,
Hours collected as dust.
And all the while, a hundred manifestations of pleasure
lapping at the edges of my steel-capped consciousness.
The Goddess, with her delight in a basket
taps at me through the mirror.
But I forget to listen for her, and into the night I wander
aimless and bone-lonely in spite of my riches.
How easy it is to deny myself pleasure!
Sorting through narratives day in and out
like I’m hunting for the perfect shirt
in the world’s largest bargain bin.
Meanwhile, the platonic ideal narrative
waits for me to stop trying so hard.
It is simple, with nuance and an open end.
How easy!
And sometimes another door swings open.
Inside, sunlight filters onto blank paper,
filigreed memoirs spill open.
and it is easy for me to own my pleasure.