Maybe I'm Batman

I'm living a caped masquerade sometimes. With AS, I watched several of the batman movies, and Batman is an interesting character. Aside from his brawling, his main two heroic powers aren't super, or mystical, but fall under the categories of capitalism and fear. Batman's greatest strengths lie in his utility of darkness to instill horror in Gotham's criminal scene (by the way, who would live in Gotham? It's a nightmare), and his expansive monetary powers from his alternate identity allow him access to advanced weaponry and machinery.
But Batman, like almost every masked crusader (bar Ironman), guards his alternate identity very carefully. Sometimes I think I'm like a masked villain (joker, green goblin, vader) with an alternate, hidden identity, or like I've got two masked identities, and no Bruce Wayne at all. In half my identity, I pretend goodness, I masquerade blessings. The other identity exists only to express the first is a lie, and understand that the true nature of my soul isn't generous, patient, kind, or loving, but selfish, ugly, cruel, unjust, judgmental, ill, and broken. This mask is nearly my true face, I think, while the other is the face I crave. I'm no less Janus than a Batman villain.
Perhaps, in my optimistic moments, I believe that significant investment in my benevolent half might effect a transformative change, eliminating my unholy villainy. But I don't, can't, trust these inklings, as I'm more a realist than an optimist, always. And every time I share kind words, lend a listening ear, encourage the fragile-hearted, or when I bless others with giving of myself or gifts, I inwardly cringe at my illusion of being, this deceptive lie I'm living - do they know? Is this me?
But masks are strange things. Wear one long enough and you'll find you cannot remove it so easily, or, perhaps, where the mask ends and face begins isn't so simply seen. Can so many deceptions make a truth? No, but perhaps an elaborate deception can conceive a reality, or plant a seed. Sometimes, even in rocky soil, a seed may sprout.


falling back in time when wine
was once a green and grasping vine
clambering over lines and rolling fields
those sweet sugar grapes
whose tart and solemn question
is only this:
how long will the stomping go on
the crushing weight and
hurt and pain laboriously
birthing the bitter whine
of sacrificial angst
until this grounding down
bursts forth the first
pass over in crimson
the first taste of heaven