a wall of faces, a drapery of eyes and ears, lips unmoving, no one talking just looking, just looking
staring, purchasing nothing, swinging from side to side, a totem on a string of visages all familiar and unfamiliar
faces you know are suddenly scary, oneness leaving them like tears, puddles forming until drowning
submerged, noiseless confusion, pounding fear swallowing your sight, unable to breathe unable to run
faces meeting and unmeeting inside your trust, pulling things from within, making useless emotions materialize
these faces are masks, once the precious eyeholes of individual souls, the birth canal of thought into action are turned to clay sculptures, smash them, stack them, hide them. Total control, yours to destroy and love, fates undecided and inconsequential.
I take them all, they dance around my head, some I smile at, others I cry to, still to others I scream and scream, “Why don’t you save yourself! You are not my prisoner and I am not your judge†Others I cradle, afraid to let go lest they break and turn to dust. They are so so fragile, so fragile, so very fragile, it scares me how easily I can break such beauty, a soul for me to snack upon and all I can do is laugh and cry. Am I not callous, hasn’t life taught me that I can harm, that it’s okay to cut throats and steal souls.
Thank you for the compliments, friends. I’ll admit that this is somewhat old and not especially recent piece, but its rediscovery impressed me enough that I figured I’d see if anyone else would enjoy it.
You know, I first read this a few days ago and was a little thrown off by the form because I’ve only recently begun reading free form writing but was at the same time pulled in by the theme and a number of specific sentences. I have since reread it several times and find that I like it more each time.
Some of the parts I particularly love:
/a wall of faces, a drapery of eyes and ears, lips unmoving, no one talking just looking, just looking/
/…swinging from side to side, a totem on a string of visages all familiar and unfamiliar/
/faces meeting and unmeeting inside your trust,…/
/…Total control, yours to destroy and love, fates undecided and inconsequential./
/I take them all, they dance around my head, some I smile at, others I cry to, …/
/…Am I not callous, hasn’t life taught me that I can harm, that it’s okay to cut throats and steal souls./ I can’t./
I would like to express how much this piece made me feel but I lack the ability to do so. There were primarily good feelings because I sensed something deeper than me.
Prose poetry is a hard form in the open/free-verse family of poetry to pull off successfully, but this Wall Of Faces piece of yours CFJ really struck a chord in me the deeper i got into it. In spite of the fact that its start seemed a tad trite/cliche to me, that sense waas fleeting as i got further into the poem. It had a way of drawing me in more and more the more I read of it. It has a strong ending with a nice twist… And Thirst said so much by not being able to say anything about how it affected him. For such a tough-lookin’ dude, he’s quite the softy that Thirst. Kinda like a Tootsie-pop, but I don’t plan to lick him anytime soon. Anyways, enough of that digression, this is a superbo poem that was a pleasure to read even though my interest did waver ever-so slightly early on.
Oh, i forgot to add in my previous reply that Chimney Sweep’s misreading of the title as “Wall Of Feces” caused me to visualize an imaginary gallery instalation where one of those conceptual/performance artists of the '70’s and '80’s that NC Senator Jesse Helms was so fond of would’ve coated the walls of the entire gallery with a layer of feces. Mmmmm - appetizing, isn’t it?
