[I] He peeled a thin white sheet From between her eyes Her thoughts, brains and blood Were pulled right through the lie She laid herself out On the table-top bare As she let his pale eyes Grope her pages and share The secretive life had Now been exposed Through her once hidden reams Of carefully hewn prose Composed from within Her mind’s wicked well, Against the darkness of summer She once again fell As a bitter white hand Raised its razor-sharp fist She grappled with this image Until her guts began to twist Imprisoned within these walls She screams and then she cries As she switches her face To the mask from inside [II] This mask, once worn, swore to be her enemy Grievously chained to her wall of blissful pain An impenetrable wall of dark and murky vapor This wall that seemed beyond the reach of thoughts, ink, or paper The voice of her heart, the madness of her mind The uncommitted crime of her imagination The depth of her unwillingness to be or not be praised Against the shame-filled soullessness of her shallow grave Who comes in the night down my stairs with rusty key? Whose sound sparks familiar dread and much uncertainty? This place to rest the head of the hideous abused Where keys have no match and minds are confused Where once it found its place inside the broken keyhole lock Behind her shuttered eyes to start a funerary clock Each night she'll rise above the shallow grave she knows awaits Beyond the vaporous creatures held within the mossy gates Where morose futility informed the death in her lies About the thin white sheet as he pulled it from her eyes paul liebert & p. prosvirnin
