Clever child, he put on the coy smile of
 such-a-good-boy, then the scrunch-nose
 and broken glasses of the spelling whiz, 
 later the mirror-love of the adolescent 
 athlete. As the years gathered, he tried on 
 the glam glitter of the rock idol, the moping 
 scowl of the short-bus kid, then black 
 mascara goth with a snake-phallus tattoo 
 on his shoulder to lend him the cred of 
 innocence deflowered. When the time came
 the tattoo was hidden by a polyester suit, 
 paisley tie, a homogenized smile and 
 scripted explanations of his best and worst 
 character traits. Then, with dizzying 
 caprice, the mocking smirk at infidelity, 
 the fabricated concern for the unlucky 
 rival, the paralyzed mask of the too sane 
 professional, the beatific smile of the 
 insincere benefactor, the predatory eyes 
 of the tarot card prognosticator, and the 
 enigmatic shrug to who are you really?  
 He let the question dangle in a pile of stolen 
 visages, masks used and discarded, from 
 Ryan Gosling to Anderson Cooper to Victor
 Frankenstein, secreted into his remorseless 
 memory along with the carnival mask meant 
 for Lent, and the beaked mask from the 
 reign of Charles II, offering impotent 
 protection from the Plague. Too late the 
 discovery that the stolen flesh and borrowed 
 character of a hundred masks had stuck 
 barbs into his own face, looping parasitic 
 tendrils into his empty psyche, so that when 
 he finally faced God, he was judged only 
 for what he had chosen and not at all for 
 who he thought he was. The world being a
 stage, failing to master his own role, he was
 forced to start the whole damned thing over 
 again, beginning with the word “enter.”