Mask

This is from a series that was based on carnival masks. Masks are associated with fancy dress and fun, but masks are worn for concealment too. These include the criminal's mask,the facial expressions of a con-man,the poker face, teacher's discipling demeanour, the actor, politician, policeman, etc.These are the faces we present in our daily transactions, the myriad approaches we adopt with everyone we meet.

My head is an eggshell
intact, hollow.

Left on the ground
weather leaves its stains;

on the outside I smile that smile
which passers-by notice less and less.

All I can do
is keep widening the smile;

wider and wilder,
eventually grotesque.

They start running;
I am left alone.

(from Felos ainda serra; pub. Amastra-N-Galar, 2005)

Wearing Masks

Masks are so often associated with fun; a carnival performer wears a mask, but so does the burglar, the salesman, teacher, etc....... Recognizing and understanding masks is essential for survival. This from Felos ainda serra

Everyone imagines him friendly
because his mask has that huge smile;
that wide, bright, unflinching smile.

He moves close into my face;
alone with this cardboard fiction
I feel him watching through his spy-holes.

I do not like masks, the smiling ones least;
he smells my unease;
I see that it is not a smile.

Masks

Fancy dress and mask wearing are associated with fun but my poems in “Felos ainda serra” are not. I think it goes back to childhood memories of Halloween, but I’ve never really been comfortable at masked functions. Once donned, a wearer has license to carry on in a way completely out of character,or in character but a less pleasant part of it; a non-wearer is at a disadvantage. To take my point to the far extreme, (only to make the point) a balaclava is mask for a criminal.

Apart from the above there’s the mask we all make of our faces when circumstances require it, and for some the mask becomes essential - to cover what? I started writing this with a view to introducing one of those poems but as I went on Janice Ian’s “At Seventeen” came to mind. So here’s the poem and I feel like hearing the song too.


My head is an eggshell
intact, hollow.

Left on the ground
weather leaves its stains;

on the outside I smile that smile
which passers-by notice less and less.

All I can do
is keep widening the smile;

wider and wilder,
eventually grotesque;

they start running,
I am left alone.