The Mask

Happiness is all I ask
But what I'm given is a mask
It hides the fake tears well
But only making the hurt swell

I want so badly to scream and yell
But I'm so scared to rebel
The thought keeps crushing me
Saying, "It's meant to be..."

A mask so perfect
that even when I'm a wreck

All you see is the smile
The sparkle in my eyes
The rose in my cheeks
But nothing underneath

A mask with such an affect
It's not something you could collect

It's a Face that I can show
Especially when I'm feeling low
And the tears won't stop their fall
Because I've just hit a wall

I may feel like a doll
But it's better than having to crawl
On hands and knees so that people won't worry
Just because every things gone blurry

So in a way
My happiness is with me
It arrived long ago, on a spring day
In a box that said "It was meant to be..."

Containing a wooden Mask
My prayers had been answered at last


Go ahead, tear it apart please! ^-^
That's the only way I can make it better! :D

You seem to lose the rhythm as you go through the poem. The style of rhyming doesn't help that, though the style does fit the subject. You start the poem out dramatic and serious, then seem to become careless and joking at the end, it seems to ruin the message. Again, the subject is good, and the way you describe it at times is good.

:Jeanette:

Right from the first stanza, the rhyme felt forced. If you spaced out the rhyme a little more, maybe added more syllables to each rhyming couplet and evened out the syllable counts, it would sound better. Another alternative would be to not make this poem rhyme at all. Right now, the rhyme really detracts from this.

Overall, this poem struck me as super angsty. There was no imagery, lots of common-to-the-point-of-being-cliche ideas, and the rhyme crippled it. It also didn't help that this is a really common subject for teen angst poetry. I suggest scrapping this poem and reworking the main idea entirely, starting by coming up with some creative imagery first. The simplest way to come up with creative imagery is to describe things in a way you've never heard them described before but makes perfect sense to you and then write so that the reader can make perfect sense of it to.

I must agree, the rhyme really does cripple this poem. And you do lose the rhythm by the end of the poem, which is shame. Rhyming is so overrated, I think. You can be so much more creative and detailed when you're not being restrained by the guidelines of a rhyme scheme. Angst is a fine subject but I think if you go back and think about some really unusual images and concepts that we haven't seen so much in teen angst, you can craft something much better. Keep writing!

Thank you everyone for your advice and critics. I appreciate it a lot. ^-^