To the Ascetics

You see it as ignoble, this animal act
betrayed by culture's prohibitions on the skin
and on the raw and sometimes wordless machinations
of noble bodies worshiping themselves in counterbalance;
afraid of honest thrust and honest anger in your lives
you turn to conversation and you count it civilized.

But which is more courageous in its revelations:
the matching monologues of stories and opinions
or this straight naked face, approached in simple
kindness, unclothed and revelatory?

Which is braver, which more civilized
your lengthy exchanges of opinion, history,
of idea and pleasantry, however honest,
or the opening of a raw and blessed sacrament
the intimacy of flesh and bare desire?
Which the escape and which the deeper action
which acknowledges more imperfection
or reaches deeper into territory
foreign, threatening, revealing of the heart
Do not apologise or excuse this base desire
as yours is baser, clothed, disguised in language.
You'll never hear it, caught as you are in excuses
Thinking that courage comes from your denial,
your resistance of this darker territory
where flesh is honest and cannot dissemble.

Only the mouth can lie, the body's instincts
won't betray the truth or waste a sentence
only the mouth can lie, not cock or climax
muscles can't be made to clench in falsehood
the breasts do not dissemble, nor will vagina
resist the rise of pleasure in the belly
unless the mind resists with base distraction
from the honesty of sweat and slickness.
Only the mind can lie; the body's honest
and can't go back on movement or arousal
Clothe it as you might, its various juices
and flow of blood will out despite
your frayed resistance and the famines
you impose upon your own diminished flesh.