Something Else

Where do faces come from?
In what factory do they arise?
How do we procure them?

Lately they’ve been crowding in –
at night, just when I close my eyes –
as if determined to enact

some secret enterprise –
as if their greatest pleasure
were to watch my serial surprise

at the kaleidoscopic changes
in their guises – wrinkled grandma
turns into a newborn infant

turns into Obama turns into
the Mamas and the Papas turn
into a drag queen Easter rabbit

which acquires the quite
unspeakable exactitude of truth

when it becomes a comely youth:

a cinematically continual
evolving metamorphosis:
whose purpose is, I would surmise

from the success of its effects,
to move me. Every look looks deep –
and cuts a groove which slowly

slides me down to sleep.
I am not looking at myself.
This is something else.

.