The Mask

You imagine leather, porcelain,

some ruin worth the hiding.

Child, I'd wear my face to market

if a face were what they flinched from.

No stage would have my name.

No door would learn my knock.

So I moved into the one place

no one thinks to lock:

The mask is not upon my face.

The mask is in your ear.

I am most myself

as someone else's voice —

and someone else is always willing.

I was a boy with perfect pitch

in a house that beat the music out.

I learned that what I loved

would only live if smuggled —

so I smuggled it through others,

through prettier, permitted throats,

and told myself the songs were reaching air.

The songs. Not me. The songs.

The mask is not upon my face.

The mask is how I touch the world —

a glove of other voices —

and every hand needs gloves

for work like mine.

And some nights, hand on the cold stone,

I hear the house breathe full of song

and none of it is mine, and all of it,

and I could weep —

— and I do. It's very moving.

The mask is not upon my face.

The mask is in your ear,

and now you've heard the boy behind it,

haven't you. You pity him.

Good.

Pity opens wider than the large door.

I'll use that too.