Lake Of Screaming Masks

Lake Of Screaming Masks
© Surazeus
2025 09 23

Less intense that frozen waves of regret, 
Death grins at me with joyful nonchalance 
when I sit by the lake of screaming masks 
to savor silence of soft sunlit hills, 
because I dare not translate songs of toads 
to riddles jesters tell in court of faith. 

The old man who frees butterflies from stones 
explains strange magic of the radio 
to young boy sitting on the lonely horse 
who waves the broken stick of innocence 
and proclaims himself king of the scarecrows 
who march in revolution of the mind. 

Pages torn from history books flap in wind, 
snagged on humming telephone wires of fear, 
so the sad-eyed shepherd gathers them up 
and hands tattered stack of paper to God 
who burns them in the castle hearth of faith 
to erase record of his psychic crimes. 

Somewhere in endless maze of morbid myths 
Ophelia finds statue of Jupiter 
fallen over in the snow-bleak courtyard, 
so she crouches and stares at his stern face, 
and wonders what caused the fierce God of Thunder  
to freeze into stone of mute arrogance. 

When she returns home from working all night, 
mopping floors in the elementary school, 
Ophelia asks her mother in the kitchen 
why organic bodies decay and rot 
though we eat vegetables and exercise, 
but unwashed curtains flutter in the wind. 

Each time Janus opens the temple door 
another thousand years of changeless hope 
streaks stars across the sky of ardency, 
so he gives Ophelia Book of God Masks 
which she carries as catalog of souls 
to sell illusions of power to vain mortals. 

No one knows who we are before we die 
yet they gather in church to weep and pray 
after Death erases our souls from time, 
then everyone goes back to work and play 
while no one in Heaven eats apple pie 
as ghosts enchanted by the front-porch chime. 

After Gabriel falls down to the Earth 
Ophelia bears his body with care 
for Janus of the Dream Well to repair, 
but he explains with star-conceited words 
that we cannot return through second birth, 
so they make love in the meadow of skulls.