If there had been a child of many masks
What does it benefit the one who asks–
Who knows can only go below,
Throw light on wretched memories and facts.

Campaign in retrospective's foggy glow,
The phantom of frontiers from long ago;
More real than feeling, weal congealed,
Mishealed within the skeleton of woe.

The foolishness such questions would reveal,
The state of children's bigotry and zeal:
Half-crafted drafts and laughing gaffes,
Embarrassments that we should like to seal.

Developmental moments or just chaff?
The early life's pubescent cryptograph;
A touching crutch from such-and-such.
One plays themself up, others get the shaft.

What's left to be remembered? nothing much.
More silent moments than some words to clutch.
The notes composed by those who most
Enthrall, the details are their finest touch.

Experience is chance, the fickle ghost;
Experience's chance, discovered coast
Besought in motley water thoughts,
Is not attainable through life-by-post.

A poignant nugget of advice to jot,
Or poetry gestative moments wrought;
The dread that said its head had bled
And bled and bled and what it meant knew not.

Perhaps an early word of sulfur fed
The terrors of damnation. Slyly spread
Repugnance under sums undone;
It sets in that one needs their daily bread.

The secret parts of him that he would shun;
Persona plastic, hatred of the son.
To wait, depatriated. Hate.
Each part of being inwardly debunked.

In fear and ignorance to simulate
A human shell, an empty mirror plate,
The swell of hell, compelled by spell.
His own hand makes his life degenerate.

No self-discovery, no sense rebels
From the negation deep inside unquelled.
Big swindle pins a sin within,
By each deceit without is paralleled.

The deadened soul that hoists the hollow grin,
Unmeaning symbol on his chubby chin–
Beset by wretched nets, regret,
Confused and choking in the world of skin.

Whose crime against himself does he abet?
Each contact thrust-omits the silent threat.
He breathes beneath the lead he sees,
He stands alone now on the parapet.

He grows aware of only entropy;
He bears his spiritual atrophy:
An aging cage. No stage assuaged
The fear of existential enemies. 

Afraid his nature is a broken gauge,
He hid his need for love and disengaged.
A door of scorn and horror formed,
Left him repressed upon an unknown page.

He'll never have the love he's looking for
And waits for death upon tradition's shore.
Life clothes the rose then folds it closed;
He waits for this expecting nothing more.

These emptied intimations he disclosed
To none–himself included–he proposed
No clear sincere appearance. Queer
And in denial, ain't that how it goes.

He failed to know himself for many years
While Love that daren't name itself drew near
He shied aside to hide, denied
The precious resources of youth so dear.

Though long in unawareness he had cried,
Perhaps some sudden day he could abide
His only soul and wholly grow
Into himself where once he hadn't tried.