Summary
Beautiful Faces works as a poem, read aloud, and as a song.
The beautiful faces alluded to by the poem refer to people who I chanced upon and who seemed to have a very pretty face, or who I remember as beautiful.
Those who I remember as being beautiful tend to be more plain when I look at their photographs from the time when I thought them to be beautiful.
One beautiful face in a sole halo of light
Shines on a shadowy line of paupers
At a plank table, feasting on blight
Fried in her dusty-sweet perfume
Propelled by a fan circling
Round and around her head
Like a light-cutting halo
To my shadow-soaked eyes
Some beautiful face from a distant memory
Lied in the crinkly lines of a photograph
I folded sometime in the past
Now her content countenance gives way
To innocence plucked by the pliers
Of my teenage angst realized
Though I still recall having seen
A beautiful face in a plain view
A beautiful face I've known a long time
It has been a while since I've seen her
In various dress and certain distress
When her frail embrace was tender
And her beautiful mask of arrogance
Softened in the waning twilight
Lulling fools into her comfort and trust
Her black widow barb prepared to thrust
Many beautiful faces I can't seem to forget
Try as I might to envision them different
In truth her eyes overcast gnarled fangs
Or her sweet strawberry strands
Swept across billowy cheeks
Though, the faces not etched in memory
Are the beautiful faces I cherish
Only distant blurs I no longer recognize