by Jason Downs

Created on: August 14, 2009

Masks

Innuendo bouncing off of clinking glasses

With laughter, guile, and wanton disregard

As eyes cast furtive glances

While trying to maintain an opaque mask

The dance carries on

As the night increases its tempo of abandon

A momentum gaining tangible form

Causing fractures in the facade

Then, as the inertia degrades

From the raucous atmosphere and hesitant encouragement

The tension bursts through the surface

Like an apocalyptic concussion

Tearing outward to devour convention

In a vampiric tempest of need

Control shatters as passion devours perspective

Rationality is blinded and driven under heel

Flesh ignites as raw emotion incinerates restraint

Saturating the air with myriad scents of lust

Figures moving towards each other

Drawn by ravenous hunger

An inexorable polarity

Groping blindly with nails, teeth, and tongue

Reveling in animalistic abandon

Rolling across the broken shards of conformity

Pierced by the fragments of identity

Searching for the piece that will fill the hole

And finding more emptiness

Pouring consciousness into the abyss

Even in the heady scent of aftermath

Confessions whispered in longing tones

Sharp angles dulled into silver curves

Darkness softening the world

Release tainted with the promise of lingering desire

Of potential untapped

Then the first blades of dawn pierce the veil

Bathing two forms in amber light

Signaling the chance for one last grasp

At the night's ephemeral gift

Cherishing the respite each gave the other

Gazing on direction in the chaos

Abjuration through loyalty

Virtue through recklessness

Only to don the mask again

Hiding a face more complete than the night before

An extra facet to each jewel of the eye

Peering into depths never perceived

With intimate truth locked behind

The passive faade

Learn more about this author, Jason Downs.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.