masks & faces

I wear masks...
I have for as long as I can remember
but recently I found myself wanting for more...

I've been cut up in the guttural word images
that plague my conscience
parading down endless white streets
suspended between cardboard & beliefs,
the congregation of my imagination
is crooning like Frank Sinatra in the Synagogue
begging for the Lord to come down
& shave my head
because I don't want my heart broken
by a woman whose spoken
in prose at midnight
when the lamplight flickers
& dances as chances of wedding bells
diminish like distant knells of cemetery certainty...

I have held my hand out for help
wearing my heart on my sleeve
tattoos beneath the surface
bear the names my heart has been privy to
through  pseudonymnsical confessions of a detainee...

I did things on my own
forgetting that I was not...alone

I am branded on the inside
I am fashioned from more than
blood/bone/sinew
I am more than what I've claimed
on tax-forms and employment applications...

I am broken, repaired, shattered, despaired,
compared to that which I've stitched in my mind
so many times I'm actually beginning to become
that which for some is a quilted nightmare
& for others, that which smothers jilted dreams...
that which suffers me to wilted interpretation
from contemptuous contemporaries...

I'm me...in all my brokenness
soft-spoken-ness,
no use cloakin' this anymore,
i'm sure you'll figure out
the hypocrisy of my lies...

I'm just like you...

I live for someone else
& it is all that I can do to stop myself from screaming
into the serene night of silent satori...
I live for more than I could ever be,
become, be undone to make room for moderation...
believe that I am being sincere,
from here on
I am healing,
revealing the scars
that the stars in my eyes
etched into my flesh
like needle on paint on metal
& petals still bloom in the winter
& they stem from your smile
& they perfume the room in your absence
as your memory keeps me company...

only you can remove this bandage
the mask concealed the scars
& now that it has shattered
pieces of me scattered here and there
to share with passers by
& hand out for holidays
& I've saved the bulk of these shards for you...

No need for glue,
a kiss will do...
Fix me.