by Deborah Guzzi
Different masks I faced upon each day of trying.
Within this shell, I’ve built with paper-paste
a wall between the fragile form indemnifying,
my soul from all the judgments I’ve made in haste.
Over a rack of bones and weighty flesh thrown
are fabrics light or coarse, shapes and colors too
I use to separate myself from you, unknowns
in the millions ever-rising, life too rich to subdue.
If we’d but admit from our birth we’re dying;
perhaps, we’d live each day outside our single shells
for the world is full of cocoons, speechless, trying
to create an earthly garden from a dreamt of hell.
What is real and right, what is born, or borne; you see is all within a skull of bone, what will be will be.