Sonnet from the Porch de Guise

[fr_defenestrato]

My birthday found me forty-four, and I
made rote and rigid use of twenty-two,
the other half, a baker's score, just shy
the 23 (without, even, skidoo),
smoked many cigarettes, occasioned glee
when it were prestidigiable and shared;
yet all the fancy China was for me,
a modern Havisham, no bride-cake spared—
yet somehow less vampiric, less in need
of ancient myths like soulmates, karma, gods,
apotheosis of the species' seed,
a purpose more portentous than the odds.
Is this, I ask myself, the total sum
of half my learning life? Shit. Make me cum.