ELEPHANT MAN

I, too, am this man,
this monster, this mask within
a mask. Look away.

I, too, have hidden my face,
knowing its ugliness,
knowing the pain of truth

is akin to the pain of lies.
Why choose when each seems
as real as the other?

Know me by these, my rough
masks. The elephant man
can never bare his face.

Stephen Brooke ©2010

The mask metaphor is, I know, a bit of a cliche but I hoped to put at least some original spin on it. Written in rough trimeter.