We wear the mask, now let it go.
A poet told me once in faith
-- straight from the page, to me, he spake
of human life and suffering,
but ne’er unto recovering.
“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.”
How true it be, we suffer so.
Our hearts are rent, of this I know;
We wear a mask to shield our soul,
behind that mask, we’ll never grow.
Our tears cascade in loneliness,
behind that mask of hopelessness.
When all it takes is openness
to ever find where wholeness is.
So rent the mask, rent not your heart,
tis never late to tear apart,
a life you hate and hit restart,
and find someone you may impart
with who you are and long to be,
and all the little subtleties
that make up you and set you free
the stifles of the mask we see.
I know it’s true: you’re not alone.
There’s one to whom you may be known,
just open up and be your own
your one true self you’ve never shown.
We’ve worn the mask, now let it go.
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139,693 Literary Works • 672,656 Reviews
This is Em101cats here to review!
Overall, this is a wonderful piece! I never have read the poem you referenced, yet I understood clearly the meaning of your poem that is in response to that one.
I understand you wanted rhyming here, but I don't believe "spake" is a word. (My computer's autocorrect nags that it requires a red squiggly line.) Perhaps there's a way you could change the word "spake" or the words around it to give a different rhyme or perhaps eliminate the rhyme in that part of the stanza overall?
I'm not sure but you might need to say "'tis" instead of "tis."
I'm not sure, again, but my understanding is that when you use a semicolon, like in the line above this one, you do not capitalize what you state afterwards. A semicolon, I was told, separates similar but separate statements, however they are not separate sentences and the second one does not need capitalization of the first letter. Correct me, please, if I am mistaken.
Overall, I loved this poem. The message speaks that we all hide our true selves when we should not, and I agree with that. We are who we are so let's be who we are.
Keep up the inspiring writing!
~Em101cats~
I loved this piece, it totally relates to be, who I am determined to put down my mask!Thanks so much for writing this!
It's always refreshing to read a poem that makes use of rhyme without falling into the trap of redundancy. Furthermore, the level of vocabulary used despite the constraints of rhyme made piece stand out from more Seussian attempts at poetry bound by the same rules.
The only part that interrupted the flow in this work was the last line in the fifth stanza:
"to ever find where wholeness is."
Every single stanza before had ended with "-ness," and seeing the word "is" completely threw me off. Perhaps the stanza could be amended to better follow the pattern, for instance:
"to rid ourselves of wholelessness"
Asides from that incident, the poem continued to run along smoothly from start to finish. Although I do not agree with the piece's central message, I did agree with the style. Well done.