Posted by Krissy^Lynn on February 12, 2001 at 19:15:18:
This is a poem I would like to share with you all, it was in a book I read last week called "Balcony People"
People hear what I am not saying
Don’t be fooled by me.
Don’t be fooled by the face that I wear.
For I wear a mask. I wear a thousand masks-
Masks that I’m afraid to take off
And none of them are me.
Pretending is an art that’s second nature with me
But don’t be fooled, for God’s sake don’t be fooled.
I give you the impression that I'm secure
That all is sunny and unruffled with me
Within as well as without,
That confidence is my name
And coolness is my game,
That the water’s calm
And I’m in command,
And that I need no one.
But don’t believe me. Please!
My Surface may be smooth but my surface is my mask,
My ever-varying and ever concealing mask.
Beneath lies no smugness, no complacence.
Beneath dwells the real me in confusion, in fear, in aloneness.
But I hide this.
I don’t want anyone to know it.
I panic at the thought of my weaknesses
And fear exposing them.
That is why I frantically create my masks to hide behind.
The nonchalant, sophisticated facades to help me pretend,
But such a glance is precisely my salvation,
My only salvation,
And I know it.
That is, if it’s followed by acceptance,
And if it’s followed by love.
It’s the only thing that can liberate me from myself
From my own self-built prison walls
From the barriers that I so painstakingly erect.
That glance from you is the only thing that assures me
of what I can’t assure myself,
That I’m really worth something.
But I don’t tell you this.
I don’t dare.
I’m afraid to.
I’m afraid you’ll think less of me, that you’ll laugh at me
And your laugh would kill me
I’m, afraid that deep down I’m nothing, that I’m just no good
And you will see this
And reject me…
So, I play my game, my desperate, pretending game
With a façade of assurance without
And a trembling child within.
So, begins the parade of masks,
And my life becomes a front.
I idly chatter to you in suave tones of surface talk.
I tell you everything that’s nothing
And nothing of what’s everything, of what’s crying within me.
So, when I’m going through my routine
Do not be fooled by what I’m saying
Please listen carefully and try to hear
What I’m not saying.
Hear what I’d like to say
But what I cannot say
I dislike hiding.
Honestly.
I dislike the superficial game I’m playing,
The superficial phony game.
I’d like to really be genuine
And me.
But I need your help, your hand to hold
Even though my masks would tell you otherwise.
It will not be easy for you.
Long felt inadequacies make my defenses strong.
The nearer you approach me
The blinder I strike back.
Despite what books say of men, I am irrational;
I fight against the very thing I cry out for.
You wonder who I am?
You shouldn’t
For I am every man
For I am every woman
Who wears a mask
Don’t be fooled by me….At least not by the face I wear.