Saint Justine

Sir, I withdraw my ideological investment in your master plan

of concubines, whipping, hot wax, and love-lies-weeping, slain.

Thank you for your studious attention to my moral

progress in the House of Corrections. I am a

newborn soul. Now, I am taking me and my

still-intact virgin forest, despite defenestration,

away. Callow? Naïve? Game? I accept

the natural order and entropic half-life

of things, which you confuse with disdain.

I want the collected works of Jeremy Bentham.

I want a wardrobe of intimate apparel spun from

silkworms, a hot rod and a bubble gum machine.

How do I define heaven? An open field

in which you neither exist, nor reign.