Gotham Wanes

The mask? Because we were never ugly

enough. Because our ugliness was epic.

Because we were given to it, because

we were so misgiven. You wear one. I

wear one. Yes. Kings, Pharaohs had them

fabricated, poured out in gold and beaten.

Most wore them to the grave. In Mexico

the living wear them, not to scare the dead

away, but as invitation. They leave candy

on the mounds of those they mourn. New

Orleans? Women wear them in order

to bare everything else. Men wear them

in order to watch. I can remember, back

before it all grows grim, making one

out of the news, trying to paste it together.

I remember my mother helping me. I don’t

really remember my father. Something

like a face, like the man in the moon.

I understand we’re hardwired this way,

to make faces before anything else.

It’s why we see the Madonna in mold,

alien architecture in Martian crater creep.

We keep looking for those first faces, first

familia. Every culture, every eon. Witness

the oldest we know, his cave, his wall, one

hundred seventy centuries gone. They call

him Sorcerer. They call me Knight.

We have always lived in the dark.