I had a world in my mind all of a sudden. I had been thinking of a conversation I had with my mother about the differences in our home behavior and the ways we act in society. There is always some sense of how much of oneself one can reveal to the public without unmasking the evil and rottenness within one. Or maybe that’s just me. At any rate, one must admit a level of chameleon tendencies in every human being, a protective camouflage.
Thinking along these lines led me to a sci-fi world, a metaphorical world, where everybody is dressed in Ancient Egyptian mummy bindings to hide their death-like bodies, horrible skeletons stretched with black skin. They have houses and cities and sip wine from stemmed glasses just like us, but all the time one knows it is all a farce. The inhabitants have betrayed themselves. Their self esteem is so low they cannot believe in love. It is strange that they think themselves ugly when they are all ugly. After all, what beauty standard do they have to compare themselves to? It’s like all of us humans wishing we had tentacles on our heads instead of hair.
But it comes about that occasionally aliens visit their world- aliens with white skin and long, shining hair, and red lips. The mummies think they’re gorgeous and when they saw them for the first time, became ashamed of their cracked, blackened bones. So they wrapped themselves in white linen strips and wore iron masks clamped over their faces. This custom hastened in a new age known as Artificiality in which everybody tries to be what they are not.
Our protagonist meets one of the beautiful aliens and recognizes him from legend. He came long ago in a spaceship and was kind to the mummies and told them he loved them, but he ended up sacrificing himself to save the planet from invaders. She is surprised to see him but thinks he must be a spirit. She takes off her wrappings slowly to see if he will accept her as she is with all her natural horrific appearance, and stay true to the way he was spoken of in the legend as a hero of love. She is elated when he shows no change upon seeing her mummified limbs, but then he motions her to take off the iron mask.
She has been brought up to think the face the most hideous part of the body, a thing to turn objects to stone. Every mummy has been raised this way. But she decides to rebel against Artificiality’s regime, and allows the stranger to remove it. She is crying and cannot see his reaction. But suddenly, she finds herself transported out of her body and sees her bones and wrappings lying below on the sidewalk and other mummies taking it away for burial. She had no face and no head for the alien to see. The iron mask was her head. Having betrayed face for mask, the mask replaced her face. But the stranger had saved her from herself and her self-hatred by removing it.
Her body is dead, but she realizes her body always was dead. She was a mummy with no head but now she has become a spirit and truly lives. She decides to return to the planet in her spirit form and tell all the mummies about her salvation from the bondage of natural ugliness and the dark measures taken to hide it.
So here’s the poem that resulted from that. . . weirdness. . . :
Artificiality today is stark reality.
All in linen wrappings,
white and nicely bound,
we trudge the streets like prostitutes
waiting to be found.
Some run naked
through the storm of judgment and remarks,
are torn apart by flowers
and ripped to bits by larks.
But I am not a brave one,
a euphemistic dummy.
I live within a safe cocoon,
society’s best mummy.
We love no one and no one loves us
because we think love is dead.
And that might be why nobody
has ever seen my head.
We cannot love ourselves,
so none else has a chance.
At every tittering party,
at every plastic dance –
Our faces grow a little blurry,
our bodies fade a bit.
Our fingertips refuse to hold
the objects in our grip.
But you – I think I know you.
You pledged my people love.
Hold my hand and give me courage
to take off one, white glove.
It’s off – my fingers are horrid,
but do you love me still?
I’ll take off a bandage from my foot
to test how strong your will.
It’s black and shriveled
from the years of staid incarceration,
but you motion me to open more;
unwrap my own damnation.
Here’s a leg and there’s a leg an arm and collarbone.
A thigh and a belly, a breast and shoulder –
you see myself alone.
For sure, oh joy, you love me.
Hideous as I am.
I’ve opened up, just tell me now
I’m good enough, oh lamb.
No – the mask must stay.
I will not- not today,
For night will seep like poison from dark tunnels
if you say the word
I know is coming as your red lips part and pause
It’s The Top Abomination to Artificiality’s cause.
Nothing will ever be the same,
you’ll run like stormy winds
across the sea, away, away
when you remove the pins.
The iron mask will open
and I’ll weep to an empty room
the iron mask is opening –
You bring on us great doom!
For sure – you start.
It’s hideous. Leave me to my shame.
Travel to unknown, lovely lands
and find a lovely dame.
I weep, but don’t be moved,
for I weep day and night.
At least I opened up my face
to feel the warming light.
But no. No. No.
I feel nothing. Where am I?
There I am on the pavement,
a mix of bones and lye.
White streamers lie around me,
the question’s where am I?
Have I escaped that corpse through faith?
Through trust? Through hope?
I let you open up my mask
and now my husk’s remote.
What did you see when you saw my face?
And what’s become of me now?
Mummies pick up my body and carry it through town.
A nothing. You saw nothing
when the iron left my head.
That explains a bit of why my
body lies there dead.
And now I am free,
I am free by your endless love.
I am free, I am free,
I am free to fly above.
Today my song will echo
to the zombies down below
and maybe they’ll leave their corpses
and see there is love, and eyes will glow,
there is faith, and there is truth,
and perhaps then they will know,
that their only hope of salvation is a Lamb killed long ago.