M) Masquerade

Did you scribble on the back of the test

even though it said n'existe pas?

 

Have you tried to be someone you aren't?

Who hasn't tried to be more than they are—

--but have you endeavored to be less?

 

Do you pull out your hair?

 

Do you smoke and write?

 

Alleviate the ennui by affecting radiant light?

 

Are you feeling brash?

 

Are you feeling in vain?

 

Ingenious, compressed in concealment 'n' pain?

 

Are you comprehensive in your allusions?

 

Find nuance filling vacant lots?

 

Do you strongly resemble polyhedrons?

 

Is that all you've got?

 

Have you told one person one thing about yourself

an another

another?

 

Have you bet the farm, or do you play it straight?

Simultaneously both, 'risit one or the other?

 

Between midterms and finals is it PRESSURE PRESSURE STRESS?

 

Living in sin, with spilled gin and fast meaningless sex?

 

Do you make long litanies of your phantasies

but phail to get a grocery list aligned?

 

Build castles in the sand

by the ocean

in your mind?

 

Gone separate ways now, in a pretty bad mood,

with Descartes' Subtance Dual, and wine on the roof?

 

Like to watch red ants crawl over gray tombstones and green grass?

 

Have you spent years looking through binoculars

into the bright future

only to find it spun end for end,

telescoping the blenched past?

 

Ask NSFAQs for breakfast?

 

Spend your nights building Great Walls of Sound?

 

Don’t you dabble in derision?

Aren’t you saddled in a hatred of horses?

Kennel’d by contempt for dogs?

 

Do you look away from TVs when the mangled body is found?

 

Talk to your reflection in the mirror, disfigured though it may be?

 

Search for titles for...

...I don't know...

...surprise me.

 

Can your closest close friends see through you better than you can see into yourself?

Do you want so bad to wallow in your familiar miseries that you periodically

put your old friends on a shelf?

 

Get a flat tire

on a cold day

on your merry way

to sadness?

 

That secret you won't tell, and the imminent sweet betrayal--

do you like the word inveigled?

the elation of the fall?

 

Were you a communist in grade school?

 

Are you a melancholy mess?

 

Wear your dyed brown hair down to your tie-dyed dress?

 

Want not to be what you once thought you were?

 

Is he still following you?

 

Is there a spider living in your shower?

Have you named her Cthulhu?

 

Keep the ship sailing past where others have wrecked?

 

Plug your ears when someone cites Robert Frost?

That poem, that poem, augured for naught.

 

Miss the innocent talents of youth,

the braided filaments of which have strung you here

a faraway star, unsuitabl'd speck?

 

Have you got you a roomate who's stabbed you with a knife?

 

Have you rubbed the old coin unrequited

so long between the hearty forefingers of your love life

that its worn down past the faces to nickel, copper

or brass?

 

Hate when people shit pure satisfaction from their ass?

 

Are you coherent or in-, simply tragic, in love?

 

Complex, perhaps overly so, wearing gloves

or makeup or bright tennis shoes or a hat?

Or covering up with subtler tasks...

 

Have you had enough?

 

Put on a mask.

 

En fait, c'est la page dont je parlais

The fact is, this is the place I was telling you about.

 

 

“Come by any time you want, you were right

-Wilco