Actor

he could play any role, really

anything you could devise

a director's dream

and within that realm a hundred thousand other faces find and seem:

but where is his?

mercurial, genial, remote or rising to a hidden note

dreamy and languid, or what you will filching the peacock emeralds

magisterial in aspect; at rest, thinking over the last inquest

prescient: always living somewhere in between his pirated illusions

and the Greenwich mean

precisely on the mark anticipating all cues

perhaps you have some money he could use?

some trinkets you could afford to "lose" he asks under his breath

under all radar so that you ask yourself in moments of horrible uncertainty intensity

but who is it really in there, keeping all the chintz saucers

spinning per the air and bored with you already you despair

in conversation hearing nothing and yet seeming to so well

his ear like a shell of pearl rehearsing his next self in hell

or heaven what difference does it make

he's anywhere on the take

since he is no one really inside, shuffling the deck a bit circumspect

why he can play that too and rue and remembrance feign and

easily,disdain

never forgetting a name;always in the game

the ultimate strawman of himself

immaculate as a glove of dove grey

well on his way to pulling it off

without a single wave

life as theater so shooting star so not even fare thee well

oh what a phenomenon you are he says to all mirrors coming and going, all butterflies in the grass the same compliments tendered

while I am the ship in the bottle tossed on land;

and then he disappears all business past,

the exits well in hand

of who you thought you knew: and gone is gone again

of all you thought was true

because he always wins folding it all in; fissuring

into which face at what velocity

you haven't a single clue.

Sweet Christ deliver us from the grievous wounds defend us.

mary angela douglas 24 march 2021

1Mary Angela Douglas

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