Peccatimania

Apprehended again in flagrante dilecto,
Intricate trespass my shame,
I stand condemned and perjured
By every breath I take.
Single-minded evil runs like a black dog
In the street.
Frendent purgatory of impulse and action-
I fall into crevasses
In the tablets of stone.
What certainty is there
But this thick collateral ash
That smothers every errant thing?
Trapped, ever weakening, in decadent fictions,
I thrill to my poison glands’ gathering pressure,
A scorpion in the hourglass sands.
Shudders of infringement,
Will you cancel me at last?

Shall I always be an outlaw,
A border bandit,
Slitting the throats of itinerant whims?
A teratism in the womb,
I grew like a black pearl.
Never was I intact,
Sufficient to the task.
Irredeemable mistake of seed,
I sprawled into the world’s cloaca,
Painted in my natal slop,
That no christening can ablute.

Nodding coward, prodigal of excuses,
I hobble with all the nowhere-pilgrims,
In the scapegoat’s waterless waste.