An Existentialist’s Masquerade

An Existentialist’s Masquerade

By Ayaan Fahad

Play Macbeth in a comedy

Place a void in light,

Be a pathetic masquerade

To an audience out of sight.

A beloved’s serenade

Obsequious to her divine might.

Be a philanthropist,

A convicted felon,

An expansionist,

Be Caesar, be Helen.

Be Kafka’s insect,

Be Dostoyevsky’s nights,

Be not Nastenka-

But a singer’s reprise.

An artist’s muse,

His tragic demise,

His descent to madness,

His inevitable insanity.

Every scribe’s fate,

Sacrificial to the art,

Sabotage, self-hate.

Say a lonesome monologue,

A soliloquy of solitude.

Act: an eternal ember,

Sisyphus on the verge of surrender.

Be nauseatingly miserable beyond repair,

Be a nihilist trapped in despair.

With rotten, wisdom-filled minds

Commit a heinous deed

Murder thyself within, read.