Johnny’s Wild Years

Not shame, but more a pulsing regret That I was so wild and thoughtless, Careless of others’ feelings, feeding my greed. Musk, champagne, drugs and deceptions, The casual cruelties, the kindnesses ignored, I was an animal, saurian with smiles. Yet some used me, for the charm or play, And they defeated me and that pain may Have glimmered self-awareness to my trials. No blissful distractions, nor nakedness, restored The lust befuddled ambient light’s confections, Folding softly into something else, a kind of need Of conquest, to reaffirm an insensate otherness That was half-met but lost in a kind of debt.