Masks, clothes and other suchlike covers...

[champagne1982]

now that's given me food for thought.

This is beautiful... Content, composition and presentation... Brilliant

Thank you both. The other day a friend remarked that I can see almost too much good in everything, so I wanted to justify that way of thinking to other people but primarily, I needed an explanation for myself. This poem pretty much covers it. You can apply it to situations as well, after all, every cloud has a silver lining .

 

[wildsweetone]

she'd be beautiful
with red hair and green eyes
flashing if it wasn't for what
lay hidden beneath. the deceit
coiled tight, a cobra
wrapped around her black heart
distorting the pleasures
she seeks, turning them into pain
and spitting her angst
to those who reach in care.
she offers her words
on condition and squeezes
the breath until parched
air and blue-jeaned speak
is all she has left.



(where on earth did 'blue-jeaned speak' come from?)

 

[wildsweetone]

(fiddling)


Behind his eyes lay secrets -
ancient rituals of virgins
gifted to the gods on stone
ground smooth by the nails
of girls tied and taunted
in the red pools of blood
that absorbed their pain.
But it was the white
satin robe held in his hand
that caught my attention.

 

[wildsweetone]

We Wear the Mask
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,--
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be overwise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!

 

[Willows_Tears]

Stanley Kunitz Interview by Mark Wunderlic

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15893


Kunitz: Poetry is the medium of choice for giving our most hidden self a voice--the voice behind the mask that all of us wear. Poetry says, "You are not alone in the world: all your fears, anxieties, hopes, despairs are the common property of the race." In a way, poetry is the most private of all the arts, and yet it is public, too, a form of social bonding. It gains its power from the chaos at its source, the untold secrets of the self. The power is in the mystery of the word.

Wunderlich: What is the relationship of the self to your poetry? You spoke earlier about the mask. Is writing your attempt to penetrate the mask, and are you more successful at that now than you may have perceived yourself earlier? Is it easier now?

Kunitz: Yeats said that if you wear a mask long enough, it will become your face. That's the danger, of course. The hope is to do away with the need for the mask, to create a persona that grows with you, that is not fixed in one period in time. The evolving biological self is also an evolving spiritual self. I can see that the persona of my early poems is far different from the persona of my later poems, because I am different. And yet there is a continuity, a strain of selfhood, that runs from the beginning of the life to the end. As I put it in the opening lines of "The Layers": I have walked through many lives, Some of them my own, and I am not who I was, though some principle of being abides, from which I struggle not to stray

 

[wildsweetone]

Stanley Kunitz Interview by Mark Wunderlic

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15893


Kunitz: Poetry is the medium of choice for giving our most hidden self a voice--the voice behind the mask that all of us wear. Poetry says, "You are not alone in the world: all your fears, anxieties, hopes, despairs are the common property of the race." In a way, poetry is the most private of all the arts, and yet it is public, too, a form of social bonding. It gains its power from the chaos at its source, the untold secrets of the self. The power is in the mystery of the word.

Wunderlich: What is the relationship of the self to your poetry? You spoke earlier about the mask. Is writing your attempt to penetrate the mask, and are you more successful at that now than you may have perceived yourself earlier? Is it easier now?

Kunitz: Yeats said that if you wear a mask long enough, it will become your face. That's the danger, of course. The hope is to do away with the need for the mask, to create a persona that grows with you, that is not fixed in one period in time. The evolving biological self is also an evolving spiritual self. I can see that the persona of my early poems is far different from the persona of my later poems, because I am different. And yet there is a continuity, a strain of selfhood, that runs from the beginning of the life to the end. As I put it in the opening lines of "The Layers": I have walked through many lives, Some of them my own, and I am not who I was, though some principle of being abides, from which I struggle not to stray

an interesting interview, thanks Willow.

 

[RhymeFairy]

Stanley Kunitz Interview by Mark Wunderlic

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15893


Kunitz: Poetry is the medium of choice for giving our most hidden self a voice--the voice behind the mask that all of us wear. Poetry says, "You are not alone in the world: all your fears, anxieties, hopes, despairs are the common property of the race." In a way, poetry is the most private of all the arts, and yet it is public, too, a form of social bonding. It gains its power from the chaos at its source, the untold secrets of the self. The power is in the mystery of the word.

Wunderlich: What is the relationship of the self to your poetry? You spoke earlier about the mask. Is writing your attempt to penetrate the mask, and are you more successful at that now than you may have perceived yourself earlier? Is it easier now?

Kunitz: Yeats said that if you wear a mask long enough, it will become your face. That's the danger, of course. The hope is to do away with the need for the mask, to create a persona that grows with you, that is not fixed in one period in time. The evolving biological self is also an evolving spiritual self. I can see that the persona of my early poems is far different from the persona of my later poems, because I am different. And yet there is a continuity, a strain of selfhood, that runs from the beginning of the life to the end. As I put it in the opening lines of "The Layers": I have walked through many lives, Some of them my own, and I am not who I was, though some principle of being abides, from which I struggle not to stray

Seconded ...

I also have found this to be true. One just cannot forget their innerself and who they really are. Dreams, memories and life make a person. Who you are in reality, is who you wanted to be. Make sense?

Bottom Line :

Be careful of what you wish for ... you might actually get it.

 

[RhymeFairy]

this mask ... covers and conceals
all the impurities I wish
to hide.

crawling into my hole
I bury them deep
hoping against hope
that it all will just go away.

an impish smile that lures
them in, poke it an extra time or
two. wishing for a frown, from the dark
ages to paste on, smear and smackle.

these hazel eyes glisten, glossy from
sleep. slap'm with black, round 'n
round. clown clicker smudged
smokey ... smacked.

although, self mutilation
is not my thing. impure
implorings get me off. so what's
a girl to do
when the mask takes over
showing the face
that was meant to be ...