NOEMAYA

I wear a mask made of nothing, you don’t see it on my face but I feel it all the time.

The story has it that I am hideous, but god knows who has that story!

I wove the mask I wear with the labor of time; it is a conglomeration of conflicting stories teamed up against all moments of serene wakefulness.

I am not flesh, neither a mind nor a soul; I am made of narratives, of twisty corridors to the hell of my understanding.

My mind is like cheese, made of holes and stink; they are my sweet defects!

My mind-holes are unemployed; all day they hang around the 7-Eleven of my mind (yes, there is a 7-Eleven in my mind; it sells only bullshit.)

Sometimes I am a coffin, a dwelling place for the unconscious, that everpresent but unfound swamp of undifferentiated pain and bliss.

I am that center of the world that no place or thing in the world can make it centered.

I am the ever off-centered and discontented center

My condition speaks in a voice that is heard by me but can’t be spoken to others, in a personal language even I can’t translate!

and so I have been told: “speak,” to speak so the voice is proven wrong.

I must speak, speak to the heights what I hear in the depths.

I used to live in the mountains lest you see my true face;

but what of it? It is in my hideousness that beauty stands out.

I am exhausted, fallen, and worn out; not by this world but by the play masks made of nothing.

There is so much evil in the saint and so much sanctity in the evil.

I am an organic paradox, made of mice and masks.

But I know! all will be well as long as I don’t step into the damned 7-Eleven of my mind.