past bastard

There's something extremely compelling
to me, about imagining myself
as a bastard, in tiny sharp ways
that I'm not, and
ugh. Never would be
no. Even though

I feel like there are tiny sharp ways
I've been a bastard

hell

of course there are, but so
difficult to drag them out
from memory, where they love

to go.

I sure damn don't find those compelling.
Can't even remember them, some times. Most
times. They weren't THAT bad.
So why the fascination, then? With
future/alternate bad self, done
shockingly in radical and different
sharp and tiny ways again?

I hate to sheepishly admit
I think I think it's protocol
to blaze away each unsafe path
I could have *cough* gone down,

is all. Install

some pre-determined turn aside,
from wrong-way road now burnt and cauterized -

No chance now left to do the thing
Not having known, not having seen

Not having gone that way,
I won't!

I drifted daydream
that way once. I did not like that me
I am, I love to root against that man

and relish all his villainous turns
- he has quite dashing ways, and earns
his comeuppance, with chill and charm

I promise you
He shall not do
a harm.