The Sundry Lives of the Mickey Mouse Gas Mask.

                         The Mask


I was born inside
           a rodent mask
                before Disney

went to Paris and Tokyo
            and Hong Kong
               licensing the world

a heavy rubber cheek
            charcoal cannister
              companion in the coal cellar

under the stariwell
            deep in London's underground
                   the smell of galoshes

turning an empty stomach
           Mickey Mouse
              not enough to keep

my eyes from turning in the sockets
           when buzz bombs and
                 incendaries hit

nearby fearing the heavens
             would also send
                Jerry gas

as my parents said
             through our masks
                which I have kept

and carried everywhere
             to Nagasaki and Hiroshima
                   where radiated faces

tried to smile at Yankee
              largesse, to Vietnam
                  too high for me

to see the fire
          from 2,000 pound bombs
              that unmasked everything

to the Berlin wall that fell
          to the vulgar Bucharest
              Pentagon, to Moscow's
        
bullet-stained White House--
           all unmasked
              as I am now

desperately using the
           underwatwer scuba sign
             that all is not A-OK

that the mask I wear
         to keep the ocean out
            clouds my view

and the history carried
           in this innocent game
             is lost in a following

sea and we surfacing
           fast along the power curve
              are in nitrogen bends

and out of air
          not thinking straight
                hearing voices that

say we are the gods
          of land, sea and air
               first in time to see

evil at the heart
       forgetting what we
           learned in the tear gas

chamber that when 
        the mask comes off
           red eyes burn

but then you see--
        stung by the antidote--
            more clealry than before.