Cleanliness is Next to Godliness

I am now content with washing my own soul.
Dirty souls are handwash only, you know?
Especially one such as mine.
One that's been handled and worn
With greasy fingerprints smeared all over it,
Blood-stained and smelling of stale liquor.
For lack of virtue and love of vice,
This soul of mine has been dragged through the gutters so many times,
 you can see the impression of my stumbling footprints in the dirt-filled cracks.
  I used to take it to holy men.
Men of god with their faces scrubbed bright,
And admonition of sin dripping from their smiles.
They would flinch slightly,
 to brush against me and wipe their hands on their robes once they removed them from my shoulder.
I would reach into my bag to pull out my spiritual garment so they could advise me on its condition.
Once in view it would take a moment for the smiling mask to cover their revulsion once more.
All I recieved was a tight faced sermon of purity and submission,
 before being rushed out the door.
As if the history of the faith of men wasn't as blood-stained and dirty as I?
  It seems so simple now,
This matter of taking it into my own hands,
I  gathered satifying concoction of the purest things I know:
The pot full of river water sprinkled with pine and salt,
 set to boil over a bonfire,
fed with cedar and sage.
Left long enough to dance around the flames,
til exhaustion takes me and I have sung the moon awake.
Wrung out from the tops of the highest trees,
where the ground is far enough below to take your breath away.
Lain over the tall grasses to dry in cool night breezes,
 that smell of distant storms.
So simple yet holding more beauty than anything created from the hands of mortality,
Something belonging to none,
 and still to all.
  Between times of sun set and moon rise I offer up my filth to the tender ministration of my Earth,
 and come away cleansed each time.
Renewal brimming from my cup,
And joy sewn into the fraying threads of my inner self.