The Mask of Labradorite

Thrice the night—the day!—both fell to sleepless slumber, But now in Spring, though yet again: The third was three in number. I sense a wince remind itself, Of what it means to be, Instead to beg for booked shelf, To see without a key. A wince doth lurk wearing which wretched gaze, Of conniving cast shadows by my windowpanes. They always float aloft in froth: Frigid or humid floor. Enqueued by drapes which deign to fold upon an oaken drawer. Trapped within a spelling rhyme, Memory entails before…or after, As Deja Vu embraces time, Encrypted within laughter. My mind is yet but now and then, Toward has not yet reign, Lacking aether, feather zen, And master love and pain. And so I thought with poetic gaze, To see beyond this terror’s haze. Hence, a mask haunts yet again, Mode known, yet new in man. I know now, decry no porcelain, Designed to hide what must be plan. Sickly eyes, each crevice soaked, In empty socket lacking throat, Blackened, turgid, magic evoked, This quanta manic mote. Scanning me as I scan it, It sits upon my gaze. Thrashing, loveless byte-by-bit, Upon its godless haze. “I’ve seen you,” said I; to it, to me, Waiting vein for silence. Echoed timbre asked of thee, “With whom you share alliance.” It looked, I shook, Though goosed bump, Had not disturbed my being, Lest the Spring invoke in me, naked trance in seeing. For now I hear the morning bird, Perennial chirps in hymn. Sneaking pecked pokes of word, By songs of rhyme and whim. Then, a wind reminded mind. What’s awoken at this time? Another hovered mask ahead; behind. Careened in algal, beryl grime. I know now then, I must embrace: That creatures haunt my view. As others felt, in other place, I’ve let: I never knew. Tonight I’m warned by melding light with fright, Entertaining canticles, of chronicled abuse. By gorgon organ, or camera sight, Is ghost(?) to unknown muse. “You see me,” says me to it, as it to I doth squeak, “I see you,” says it to me, as I to it doth speak. Who brings to me this apparition, arisen from perhaps an adumbration, Of a visit from he whose grimmed reap, lends living certain cessation? I’m lost in fear I’ve fought before, Knowing now it’s strength, Having thought my own, won war, Along a mental wave of length. What is this, this face whose eyes, Above its mouth doth lurk, Reminds my mind of signs that work, To ready for surprise. I know now not; not alabaster. Not tourmaline, nor master. Neither prophet, poet, pastor, Can calm my heartbeat; faster! And then in reminiscence, to my mind arrived the anamnesis, Of the shelf that shelters a book one might otherwise dismiss. Within its parchment pages, whence in refuge resides a clue, To what this mask is made of; when, where, and why; by who? Pins prick from prior paralysis, upon my dermis disguise of bone, I shiver and grab the book and beg, bound reason to me be shone. Within this covered lexicon read acrylic words in arcane diction, Which most readers would anthologize, as ancient artifact and fiction. The first supposition tis true, that this book was bound in the archaic ages, Amiss the latter assumption that fable unfolds by the turning of its pages. In my desperation I stir commotion, reading over every turned folio, Longing for light in yonder window break, as did Shakespeare’s Romeo. Yet each passage read of occult sorcery, or a variety of mages, No aquamarine masks appeared to me on any of these pages. All hope seemed to escape with passing page, turned by my flustered fingers, Then a sudden zephyr blown ingress to the page on which now I linger. On the bottom right reads in numeral: Seven-hundred and Seventy-Seven. On which reads the magical recounted chronicle of myth of hell and heaven. The labradorescent mask that posts upon the windowpanes, Shares the ashen-sheen a mask I’d seen in daylight plain. An oblong oil-painted portrait, cerulean blushing green and withered pink, The caption reads: The Mask of Labradorite inscribed in faded ink. To the left of the ghostly image reads a paragraph like a spell, A warning of dark wizardry, which concocts these masks in hell: Animated by a wizard whose avarice bears blithe the thaumaturgy, To forge a warlock’s soul inside a shimmered stone, This augury and the legerdemain required of such magical metallurgy, Siphons an emerald from the fire inside his pelvic bone. Returning my gaze to the gaze who haunts, My own, but its own from the same, Soured by tickled tenses, taunts, To pause in senseless, placid shame. I remember horror in recalling how to play, Games of stretched tension ‘tween a sense of night and day.