
The Assembly
My masks’ enigmatic — an assembly, a collage of mysterious personas that hang precariously from the mortar of the exposed layered bricks of the walled enclosure that compiles my editorial debut.
The bricks a testimonial, an overview of the years (like the rings of a tree), held together in the arteries — the vessels in my maligned lesions.
Decorated in clockwise formation, a mask hangs where each number should be, calculating time, suspended on the dials I wind counterclockwise, against the whims, the capriciously round-shoulders of judiciously chambered literary devices.
Phantoms, lurk in the shellacked veneer that gloss together sepulchred apparitions that haunt the masks with the asture brushstrokes of the iconographers visions.
Today, they hang precariously, that is how I view them through the cavernous slits of the mask I donned upon a hurried expedition.
They exhibit telltale signs of life, a pulse, a tick-tock, defibrillated from cardiac arrest, I graft them onto the exposed carapace that chapels a restrained eidolon.
Some were hung fastidiously, others are tilted sadly askew, others hide behind their own masks, even if not more so from myself, The masks wearing the baggage they’ve claimed, supported by the ribbons I tie to the veined marble of my soul.
I can choose hourly which mask I’ll wear, the mask never wears me. I grace it with the vision of a borrowed heart. The beats I took a loan out for from some Machivellian Bank that masquerades its steps in time to a Venetian Waltz.
The silent one, the entertainer, the one with the twinkle in the empty sockets, where my eyes should be, igniting the spark to captivate you in its cultured charm.
The Harlequin that comically shadows its tragic tears and fears, on a footloose smile, dancingly losings its steps on the deaf giggles painted upon the lips of its mask.
There’s always an empty hook where a mask should be displayed, this moment as I refashion them — by priority, I dust them carefully, as I am wearing a disguise— my genuine mask.
So many masks for the one face behind the curtain, the mask behind the mask,
The one I time, in time, to wear for you.
Tick-tock the clock struck none, but grinds its dials, the days just begun.
Copyright ©. R Tsambounieri Talarantas. Oct 7, 2019. All Rights Reserved.
