CROSS ROAD

theres a juncture
a crossroad
ask
papa legba
voodoo god
doorway to the loa
and Baudelaire
poet extraordinaire
when youthful passions and eroticism are sullied
and pretty pretty flies away
from years used up
and gravities command
a slow draying
suffocates leaps of consciousness
and leaves in its wake
belly bloat
callouses
facial lines
slowing metabolism
and a host of other accumulated degradations

cruel revelations unpeel the chilled soul
as the light of the body is eroded
by time
and the horror of solitude sets in

a conjunction of creeps moon and Venus
show us new enticements
satans sex nail
an independent morality
flowers of evil
the eroticism of aesthetic suffering.
like idle hands in something filthy to diddle
the disinfected sex of youth gone by
and in its place
the forbidden undulations of dark dreams
the beauty of erotic horror

or what then may i ask
the imagine-less drab canvass
of the castrated high minded middle class?