The Maskless Masks | Poetry of Mankh |Axisoflogic.com

    “Well, who are you? (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)
     I really wanna know (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)”

- The Who, from their song “Who Are You”

Maskless men arrived in 1492,
what was left of their souls
hidden beneath land-grabs, Bibles and eventually
blankets, bullets, and bi-partisan b.s.

Fast-Forward to a full spectrum dominance
of military bases and de-forested quarter-pounders.

Faster-Forward to 2017 when
Trump took the mask off the Empire.

Fasterer-Forward to Biden putting it back on
no spewing of verbiage or hair gone with the wind
but reading scripts like Reagan 2.0,
stopping KXL pipeline permit (yay!) yet
“The Biden administration has issued at least 31 new drilling permits
authorizing operations on federal land and coastal waters...”*

Coronavirus ushered in the global age of the mask
but many were already wearing them,
covering the crimes, the outrage, the tears,
masking innate connectivity with cheap thrills,
reduced to expressing ourselves with emojis,
hiding true passions for each other
and for this beautiful world
of free running rivers . . .
oceanic fog nurturing the redwoods . . .
the audible silence of a snowstorm,
birds landing on window sills instead of crashing into skyscrapers,
sex in the streets would probably get you arrested
but stop-and-frisk state sanctioned.

Masks on or off, can we see through the façades,
see the lights of our souls
shining through the long dark night,
shining in bright daylight?
“I really wanna know”

On the TV screen, in the supermarket,
before the fall and the apple,
after the sex and the cigarette,
in the church and steeple,
the temple and mosque,
sweat lodge and anywhere there are people
“I really wanna know”

NOTE
* “Biden Issues Dozens of Oil Drilling Permits in First Few Days”

Mankh (Walter E. Harris III) is an essayist and resident poet at Axis of Logic, as well as a correspondent-poet for the WUSB 90.1FM radio segment “Radical Words”. In addition to his work as a writer and small press publisher, he travels a holistic mystic pathway staying in touch with Turtle Island. His website is here.

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