Clown's Mask

I was walking in the crowds today and thinking

I watched people’s hollow glances downwards cast

Nobody talked to me as I stumbled across the street blinking

Tears away from yesterday’s reckoning with the past

Lately I have felt strangely disconnected from my reality

It is even absurd after the pains I take to just fit in

Be one of the crowd… because, after all, it’s time to do away with the frivolity

In all honesty, I have long abandoned the clown’s mask and they can begin

They can begin the play without me because I will not be a participant

I am not Hamlet’s ghost or Hamlet for that matter because… well I just don’t fit

Let them recommend the role to someone with the talent for it and give me the part of mendicant

Or still better Lear’s fool because I know for a fact that Hamlet doesn’t suit me a bit

I don’t need a mask because I have been wearing one so long that it even hurts my face

You see, today the actor in me just feels like blending with the crowd

The traffic light changes to green as I cross the street, desperately trying to outpace

The time that mercilessly registers the patterns of my nerves out loud

As I cross the street, somebody touches my shoulder but I look straight ahead

I am well aware that I am running late again and that every second counts

But the light touch electrifies every fiber within me and a milky fog fills my head

I am no longer listening to the clock’s ticking or the morning’s quiet sounds

I stop in my tracks because my feet cannot move forward anymore

With every fiber I know that it’s you and what does it matter if I feel like a maverick

I know you are not Hamlet’s ghost or a personage in a dream I have seen before

You do not belong in the countless dreams I have woven into my fantasy sail’s scarlet fabric

You turn your glowing face to me and I squint my eyes from the brightness

You have come back to visit at least for a few hours that you decided to spend by my side

Forgetful I keep walking no longer knowing where but with eyes now glowing with happiness

I must tell you I have forgotten what it feels like to hold the sun’s spherical perfection inside

Lately I have felt my lips whisper a silent prayer for something I can’t quite put into words

Prayers seem difficult to verbalize at times especially when acute pain numbs the nerve endings

You can tell them to bring on the cacophony and intensify the broken chords

I can handle both Hamlet’s and Lear’s soliloquies notwithstanding

Let them bring on the cacophony because I think I can handle the pressure

Let the icy pain exhaust each nerve until I feel like I can’t take it anymore

I will keep on my mask just to give people the illusion that there is no measure

I haven’t taken simply to show you that my spirit doesn’t break in front of a closed door

They can close all the doors in front of me but I might still find more to open

The clown in me will juggle truth and lies until no one will be able to tell the difference

For months, I have been groping in the dark, trying to connect the broken

Fragments of my dreams, bandaging them carefully to shield from the crowd’s indifference

I have opened and closed so many doors by now that I simply lost count

I realize that perhaps I was just not meant to follow the path to which they pointed

My bandaged heart has desperately struggled to catch up or at least to hear your harp’s sound

But my fantasies and dreams disappeared, closing my soul’s altar that I left unanointed

I know that I cannot erase the past or magically correct the mistakes I have made

Your angel’s wing cannot shield me from reckoning with my conscience

Yet I promise that I will believe in life again until the pain will begin to fade

Until my broken dreams will rise from the ashes of my struggles half-conscious

You know better than I how many times I have made promises

You probably think they are useless because I just don’t keep mine

But I will do what I can to study your signature anonymous

Until I glimpse your angel’s wings returning home to my soul’s shrine