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.

surazeus.blogspot.com/2025/09/…

Orpheus visits grave of Gabriel beside the Cathedral of Laughing Horses, and sings lamentation to remember his message of good news to mankind who never listens.

#Poetry #Poem #Pastoral #Necropastoral #MetaModernism #Transrealism #NewSublimity #NewRomanticism #AmericanDream #Cinemism #Existentialism #Surrealism #NegativeCapability #NewGnosticism #MetaRealism #NewTranscendentalism #Astarism