His lips are pinned to silence,
but behind the mask
the poet
speaks,
stuttering with knotted tongue,
spitting nails sometimes,
mouth burning, cracked voice off-key,
whisperings unheard
amongst traffic and crows,
and the static of stars.
Behind the mask,
with worn and ancient tools,
the poet mines his shadowed heart
opening bright shafts of light
through the deepest black,
transmogrifying caves
into cathedrals.
Part fool, part mole, part god,
he excavates the stratum of his soul,
wrestling cold rocks with bleeding hands,
always searching under stones
for elusive adjectives,
the missing metaphor,
the long-lost letter
from his dark-eyed muse.
Invisible in solitude
he digs from lexiconic soils
long-buried sentences,
faded phrases, corroded rhymes,
and plants them lovingly
in disheveled compost heaps
of synonyms, dank mosses,
nouns and rotted bones,
similes and verbs, fish-heads
and fractured fonts.
By candlelight and moon
goat footed spirits dance
on a deserted beach
with ghosts of Lorca, Eliot and Yeats
and behind his mask
the poet sorts and sifts his gleanings,
conjuring and reassembling
torn fragments of language,
for love, for truth, for madness,
his hand juggling
through clouds of unknowing
all he has to offer.
Poem and Mixed Media Painting by clinock
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