The Masquerade of Ink

Ink flows as a trickle from this pen
onto these sheets of white.
I fall,
and flee my prisons of painted self-portraits.
My mind has become an unreachable end.

A maze of eyes stares,
blinded from paintings unprepared
for my audience.
Their claps orchestrate a silence
as unreal as my smile,
pasted to bleed my identity.

Emotions stretch thin,
and resemble my chaffing lips,
that writhe monologues
my audience cannot decipher.

Light floods my eyes.
My lungs breathe in burning truths
buried before me in faces,
in smirks,
in realities.

Revealing curtains are drawn
on my stage
as my blood flows poems
I shall never recite
to You,
my Audience.

In silence,
as my blood trickles ink,
I'll write.
I'll wither.
I'll fade.