Hallowe’en masks

Fancy dress masks

Frankenstein masks

Ghostface Killer masks

Freddy Krueger masks

Tony Blair masks.

 

Domino masks for the secret ball

To hatch schemes and match-make

To flirt and fornicate.

 

Smooth white actors’ masks

In an impassive chorus to watch us.

 

An iron mask to silence a man

And kill him inside himself.

 

A Perspex mask in the radiation ward

An intimate thing, moulded to your face

To hold you still, your soul to keep

When they beat your brain with x-rays

When tumours replace your dreams

 

They clamped it so tight to your face

It left marks like alien make-up

In some cheap TV sci-fi,

But this isn’t sci-fi. We’re sitting

Here wishing it was, in the hospital

Car park where the heat

In your head won’t go away.

 

But that’s OK

Everybody needs a mask.