And always, there is the mirror <br />And always there, the windows- <br />There, where the fidgeting, milling multitudes wait below <br />Their combined silence become a sort of coherence, <br />As though together they formed an impenetrable solid surface, <br />In this the present, which is always and increasingly imperfect. <br /> <br />My mustache is all wrong, my hat tilted <br />My smile is crooked, unseemly; perhaps also my teeth <br />Will fall out of my head, next, <br />And I feel so naked, as if caught up in a dream- <br />Nude in some film, and finding myself walking anywhere, <br />Suddenly horrified to find no clothing is left anywhere upon me. <br /> <br />Though they don't audibly jeer, but perhaps down underneath- <br />Somewhere in the soul's softer oblivions, of wordless concourse, <br />They do- in the concrete sewers of self, beneath immediate observation- <br /> <br />There where man is unfailingly inhumane to man, <br />Inside the solitary environs of subtle mind- <br />Even while judging himself <br />More harshly than any other.<br /><br />Patti Masterman<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/stage-fright-9/
