Death Mask

Death wears a mask

Carved of white marble

Alabaster and granite

Sometimes cement

Frozen lifeless

Like a forgotten monument

Death's mask

Is wrinkled with the caress

Of the shifting winds of time

Its edges cracked

With the cares and woes

Of faceless

Anonymous spirits

Riding occasional storms

Death wears its mask

With black marble eyes

Shinny glass orbs

That see into the depths

Of oblivion

Beyond the spaces

And edges

Of this world

Death's mask

Is an empty face

Forgotten

Without feeling

Lines frozen

By the coldness

Of an everlasting night

Death's mask

Disguises its depth

Beneath a peaceful

Serene facade

A face long

And rectilinear

Square about the eyes

A forehead high

Above gray brows

Death sleeps

And slumbers 

Beneath its veneer

Dreaming strange dreams

I know death

By the lines of its false face

And the look in its empty, sleepy eyes

It is nothing but

And nothing more