A LIFE

A life is often a masquerade
with make up on the face
under a mirror in the corridor
displaying an actor's charade
offering a brief dance,
bow and fiddle
in a wonder's Scheherazade
wishing to know the soft answer
of its unspoken riddle
from Ovid's Metamorphosis
with a joker card in tact
expecting a riff from a jazz band
at the first kiss at the dance
by killing the lights
in the last act
of a forbidden engaged tiff
at an unwilling hand
or hidden bliss at midnight.