My Epitaph

My desperation spoke to me
Of self-corrective surgery
And so I made a mask of all I still had left to keep
And lifted it from my visage, that through it I might speak
A porcelain reflection that impassive tales might tell
A black-eyed, blind deception burning two dark pits of Hell
And in the wake of my madness
Only a second did I spare for the sadness
Of the wretched form that I'd become
In twisted vision of a nightmare spun
Crowned with self-deceptive guise
And apathy for my disguise
And tangled in a web of fears
Stone deafness honed over the years
The autopsy, it built me well
As by its light my temple fell
And death awakened in the real
Was all that I had sense to feel
Beside my own uncertain kin
My image crumbled from within
My withered heart was left exposed
To all the world, in cold disclosed
Now beauty but despairs in me
A bitter end in destiny
And all I've gleaned from worlds afar-
Inscriptions for my epitaph.