Masking is lesser than hiding —
It holds position
Character carved and shaped
Into immobile mien —
Persona manufactured
Identity found in isolation
Stamped in self-similar replication
But beneath
Behind face and feature
Hollows most black hold help —
That mask has no back
Mr. Punch’s Swizzle
Stops Sticking —
Old Harry and Harlequin both
Flexing fingers
Judy takes her Holofernes-head
Hand unfurling
Palm opening out
Empty and opaque —
Exceedingly illegible
In her trade with tricksters
Her carnival of crossroads care
With crippled conspirators
And so the fasces is fumbled:
Foiled by faggot-falling-apart
Immanent intimacies
Amongst harmful victims
Viciously vulnerable
With dreadful Gorgonic gaze
Serpentine sanctuaries have fangs
Bringing forth thick obscuring smoke
Care-fully curing despite strife
Taking passage within and beneath
The dark woe-winter
Into the house of smoke we slip
Soothing souls by weavings of relation
Wyrd works and crips all things.
Even this.
