Stage Fright Poem by Patti Masterman

And always, there is the mirror
And always there, the windows-
There, where the fidgeting, milling multitudes wait below
Their combined silence become a sort of coherence,
As though together they formed an impenetrable solid surface,
In this the present, which is always and increasingly imperfect.

My mustache is all wrong, my hat tilted
My smile is crooked, unseemly; perhaps also my teeth
Will fall out of my head, next,
And I feel so naked, as if caught up in a dream-
Nude in some film, and finding myself walking anywhere,
Suddenly horrified to find no clothing is left anywhere upon me.

Though they don't audibly jeer, but perhaps down underneath-
Somewhere in the soul's softer oblivions, of wordless concourse,
They do- in the concrete sewers of self, beneath immediate observation-

There where man is unfailingly inhumane to man,
Inside the solitary environs of subtle mind-
Even while judging himself
More harshly than any other.