MY MASK
My mind speaks for freedom
My body forgets where I'm from
I just keep on dreaming
& Always,
Sometimes,
Singing.
Poems on the topic: mask
Poems on the topic “mask” on Poets.by.
You Brought It All Back
I thought I wouldn't get hurt
I thought I'd never shed a tear
I thought it was a perfect mask
To pretend to know no fear.
That smile, I've worn as a mask
That smile, that I can't erase
That smile, that seems so real
Is just a perfect facade.
In one moment it all came back
In one moment it swept me off my feet
In one moment you broke me apart
By you're insensitive words and speech.
With those, emotions flooded me
With those, I'm again writing a poem
With those, I just want to stay here
Here in the corner where I'm alone.
What it's Like To Be an Immaculate Misconception
Everything is fine
Or that’s how it seems to be
Nothing is wrong
That’s what others think of me
Everything is happy
When I play my cards right
Nothing is sad
If we talk while there is light
Everything is joyful
Because I talk about random things
Nothing is depressing
Covered in my mask, so clean
Everything is random
I make it so
Nothing makes sense
If I accidentally make a row
Illusion
People only show you what you want to see.
So I went ahead and showed all of me.
Realization
Your love
was a warm, yellow light
shining through white windows
of a green cabin
as I stood alone
at dusk
in the black forest
of my loneliness.
My body ached from weariness
my soul cried out for comfort
I entered
I thought that smiling mask . . .
that lovely smiling mask . . .
was you.
I asked for food
you gave me dried bones on a wooden platter.
Decoration
On the Gold Coast Theatre building, a concrete mask
pretended to moan. Or sing? We weren't sure which.
We deduced it despised a violin and bells
hanging below it, an architect’s tacky gifts.
There was concrete. There were bricks, glass, wood.
To these we donated our need of symbol,
our weakness for decoration. Our bodies
represented us in front of the old Gold Coast,
which had left behind its design in order
to become. We are there no more, have scattered
to a heresy of heres. Our memories are
synaptic masks that pretend to moan—
or sing? We’re not sure which. Our memories
design an architecture of absence.
The Mask
'Put off that mask of burning gold
With emerald eyes.'
'O no, my dear, you make so bold
To find if hearts be wild and wise,
And yet not cold.'
'I would but find what's there to find,
Love or deceit.'
'It was the mask engaged your mind,
And after set your heart to beat,
Not what's behind.'
'But lest you are my enemy,
I must enquire.'
'O no, my dear, let all that be,
What matter, so there is but fire
In you, in me?'
Masquerading
The lips so often frame a smile
While the eyes in salt tears swim
And heart, repellent cup of bile,
Is filled to kiss the brim.
Oft firm and stern we find a face,
Devoid of outward sign,
A mask before the dwelling place
Of happiness divine.
To a Friend
Your head is steel cut into drooping lines
That make a mask satirically meek:
Your face is like a tired devil weak
From drinking many vague and unsought wines.
The sullen skepticism of your eyes
For ever trying to transcend itself,
Is often entered by a wistful elf
Who sits naïvely unperturbed and wise.
And this same remnant, with its youthful wiles
Held curiously apart from blasphemies,
Twirls starlight shivers out upon your sneers
And changes them to little, startled smiles.
And all your insolence drops to its knees
Before the half-won grandeur of past years.
Masked
She rose to greet her guests with smiling eyes,
A wealth of rich experience in her face,
Her movements full of that unconscious grace
In which a woman's highest power lies;
One felt the heart beat true and tenderwise
Beneath the velvet folds and filmy lace,
Grim sorrow there had seemed to find no place,
But only peace and love in loveliest guise.
And as with ready wit and kindly mirth
She led the throng in repartee and jest,
To us she seemed as one from common earth,
With all its blighting pain, set far apart
And rounded in with peace — who could have guessed
A two-edged sword lay buried in her heart !
Transpositions
Smiles do not always echo cheer,
Nor tear-drops measure grief,
For sorrow seeks a gilded mask,
And joy in tears, relief.
But for the Grace of God
There is a question that I ask,
And ask again:
What hunger was half-hidden by the mask
That he wore then?
There was a word for me to say
That I said not;
And in the past there was another day
That I forgot:
A dreary, cold, unwholesome day,
Racked overhead,--
As if the world were turning the wrong way,
And the sun dead:
A day that comes back well enough
Now he is gone.
What then? Has memory no other stuff
To seize upon?
Describe a feeling — we’ll find a poem
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