Time to relinquish dreaming and don my fundamental mask,
advance into a zone of incessant trash and undying hate,
and penetrate the darkened dais to commence the incarnate dance.
The hexed melodrama of my being is a fatal parody,
while other shadow cloaked actors and actresses await me,
each in arcane masquerade,
obscuring the smiles and sighs
from the soundless audience of empty seats and their gloomy shadows.
The unheralded display has begun in emptiness,
in dream quixotic, but seen prematurely,
Agonizing awareness of omission,
the lemon-taste of a vision destined horribly bitter,
The principal actress is still yet to show.
Perhaps she is here, cloaked and hiding,
maybe she has still to intrude,
conceivably she will never appear.
She is here in my itinerant mind,
remove I her enigmatic mask,
revealing her smiling facade.
Another mask.
Hiding yet another.
One by one the black aspect is forgivingly revealed,
peer I behind the last mask.
Nothing.
Except another dream.
Mark Snellgrove
22 December 96