The Gospel According to Pleasure

a poem by Roger B. Rueda

All my work belongs to pleasure.
Not joy. Not bliss. Not that weak helium.
Pleasure,
with its warped theology—
the kind that scalds before it soothes.
I’ve never trusted happiness.
It arrives too quickly and leaves like a lover
who’s taken the salt with him.

But pleasure—
that is a scholar.
It has dogmas. It takes notes.
It comes dressed in shadows,
and teaches you how to flinch beautifully.

Sometimes, it’s the ache after truth.
Sometimes, it’s the lie you let stay
because the body asked you to.
And you listened.

They never warned me that pleasure
could smell like a fight,
or feel like forgiveness with a razor tucked inside.

I mean this:
My sentences crawl out of want.
Not always sexual—
but sometimes, yes.
The kind that lives in the back of the neck,
behind the knees,
in the soft fascism of restraint.

I write for it.
I write around it.
It is the only church I still attend.

And every line I craft,
I hope it moans.
Not loudly—
but like something real
dragged into the light
and made to name its source.