Gotham Wanes

The mask? Because we were never ugly enough. Because our ugliness was epic. Because we were given to it, because we were so misgiven. You wear one. I wear one. Yes. Kings, Pharaohs had them fabricated, poured out in gold and beaten. Most wore them to the grave. In Mexico the living wear them, not to scare the dead away, but as invitation. They leave candy on the mounds of those they mourn. New Orleans? Women wear them in order to bare everything else. Men wear them in order to watch. I can remember, back before it all grows grim, making one out of the news, trying to paste it together. I remember my mother helping me. I don’t really remember my father. Something like a face, like the man in the moon. I understand we’re hardwired this way, to make faces before anything else. It’s why we see the Madonna in mold, alien architecture in Martian crater creep. We keep looking for those first faces, first familia. Every culture, every eon. Witness the oldest we know, his cave, his wall, one hundred seventy centuries gone. They call him Sorcerer. They call me Knight. We have always lived in the dark.