5-6-13

Who am I, sir? Who am I, and which way is home, and what is this loneliness that springs perpetual? No more crowds, just for a little while, pray sir, just for a little while. So many faces. "There will be time to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet." Shall there be time to remove the paint and plaster though? Where am I, sir? Beneath the pasteboard, where am I? Where do I begin to look?

Have I a soul, sir? Can it be lifted? Can I be made good? Can you show me how to break? Can you teach me how to break? Oh, break me. Make me a better thing.

I grow lost amid the crowds and the crowds are lost on me. I can't see them. I am insulated. How can I love if I cannot see? I must learn to walk unbuffered. Oh, but how, how, how? Ever since childhood, this fixation on masks. World! How can I see you? World! Take me! On the side of the angels, but not one of them. World! Show me virtue. Teach me goodness. Teach me sympathy. Begone stoicism. World..........

I am so lost.

05-02-13

And have you walked, my friend, and have you walked?

And have you stooped, stopped short by brackish air?

And have you crouched, my friend, and couching stalked

The mud besludged and stagnant lakish lair? 

And what, my friend, yes what did you find there?

A water baby, was it? Some fallen fay,

Slime-skinned, or furred, as one hirsute with bile,

A rigor-mortised toad-child mid-decay

With claws for feet beneath the phlegmy pile.

And did you squirm, my friend, and did you smile?

Oh worry not, I shan't look on you ill

For letting wonder outpace your disgust;

The curious will get their ghastly fill,

And naught's so rank as awe can't overcrust.

And awe is love, my friend, and love we must.