fear

fear
must be why you disappear inside
your labyrinth of ambiguous lexicon
   & clever word-play
& try to lose me with sudden twists
   & turns

because you are an open book
whose pages are crammed - top to
   bottom, left to right,
   verso & recto -
with ancient hieroglyphs & pictograms
the basso-rilievo of Morse code
alphabets of varied tongues
   (with marginalia of your own
    scrawl)

i am constantly trying
   to read you

and it isn’t easy
beneath the stiff blank mask of
   forced ignorance & strained
   nonchalance
i wear because i too
fear