The Bird with a Mask

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How easy it is

To hide behind a mask.

One that makes everyone smile,

So that no one may ask

What exactly does that face look like underneath that single golden mask?

 

In a world with so many that you try to impress

How is it not possible but to mix up a few faces,

A few words, a few identities?

 

Momma, brother,

Poppa and uncle.

Everyone with their own expectation of what exactly should be beneath that mask.

 

Be a doctor! they say.

Follow your heart not!

For no one thinks to ask what you can see is so plainly under that mask,

So blinded are they by expectations.

 

I want to be free! 

To be tied down not at a place that cannot be home.

To not determine my happiness by my wealth!

Or to knit my stitches into the project of everyone else's hopes and dreams,

Hoping and dreaming that those will be my own desired stitches,

And not just the stitches of their own creation!

 

I wish to rip off this mask of everyone else's formulation and be

A bird in the breeze.

To sing with the sparrows and the larks and those cardinals in that tree!

 

I want to fly to Chicago and smoke that cigar

With that man

Just to say that I did it and that nobody can

Make me anything but what I most beautifully am!

 

I am me.

That bird with the mask in that tall, dark tree.

The one who tries to please everything from the smallest of bees

To that of the lowliest of the melancholies.

 

I sing in the morning to those who wish to hear,

But every once in a while, maybe just once per year,

I fly to Chicago just to breathe in that smoke

That reminds me that I'm still here,

Beneath that mask where no one can hear.

 

I am still me,

The me that no one would believe it if they were so lucky to see.

 

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