THE SERPENT'S MASQUERADE

 

THE SERPENT’S MASQUERADE 

An older man, joints creaking like rusted gates,

Yet he dances, too spry, in a boy’s reckless gait,

His face a cracked canvas, smeared with youth’s glow,

A child’s wild giggle trapped in sagging skin’s shadow.  

Beneath a man’s husk, he twirls through the dust,

But his tongue unfurls, a viper’s glistening thrust,

Words drip like venom, thick and tar-black,

Warping reality’s threads, stitching truth to a rack.  

He paints the world with oily hues of deceit,

A kaleidoscope shattering under his feet,

Each syllable coils, a snake’s iridescent scale,

Tainting the air with a sulfurous, bitter gale.  

Ego swells, a bloated king on a throne of thorns,

Crowned with delusions, its edges sharp and worn,

Sins fester deep, oozing sores beneath his hide,

Unconfessed, they writhe, a plague he can’t abide.  

Now the wall presses, cold as a tombstone’s kiss,

Masks peel away, dissolving in a hiss of mist,

Exposed, he quivers, flesh splayed like raw meat,

A coward unmasked, secrets pulsing in his heartbeat.  

In his marrow, they claw—truths jagged as bone shards,

A crypt of whispers rattling in skeletal yards,

The world peers through, eyes like torches ablaze,

And sees the snake, coiled tight in a man’s frail maze.