Written in the twilight zone of consciousness...


Mask

Like actors in the road show if life
We wear a mask o' the other all the time:

A mask to hide our real selves
A mask to pose as someone else

A mask to hide our actual grief
A mask to project happiness in brief

A mask to project false cheerfulness
To pretend what we would like to be

A mask to conceal our sufferings
A mask to hide 'myself' from 'me'...

We wear the masks and bury ourselves
Somewhere far away from ourselves-
In the labyrinths of self-
and in the process truly forget
Our own true selves....

All our lives we pretend to be
That, what we can never be...

We think we are smart,
And we know our selves?
We think we are deceiving
The whole world it self!

While, actually in the process of
Projecting ourselves as 'someone else',
We in fact become that 'someone else',
And lose touch with our own selves...

We start believing in,
what we are pretending to be
In the bargain we even lose our own identity...

I would rather we spent that time
In trying to introspect:

Are we really living a lie?
Or, we a trying to lie to ourselves,
Are we trying to fool the world?
Or, we are really fooling ourselves...

And may be in the process
Discover our own true selves...



Author: Zoya Zaidi
05.05.2006
Aligarh (UP), India
Copyright ©: Zoya Zaidi

Image: Chinese Classic Opera Mask (Beijing)




Poetry by Zoya Zaidi
Read 822 times
Written on 2007-04-29 at 08:30

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amandeep
it is very beautiful poem and i like the last stanza of this poem very much. are we fooling ourselves? may be.......... or not.....

the politician wear the mask. they have two faces. and what i want to write...........i think you know and know better than me.
2007-04-29


Elle The PoetBay support member heart!
I think masks can be a natural defensive action for some. I know when I was younger, I was cripplingly shy and found just going out anywhere a nightmare, eventually found ways of coping with my shyness - but it took a few wrong places to realise how - An excellent introspective write Zoya - Sometimes we are forced to wear these masks but knowing ourselves is a far better tactic

Elle x
2007-04-29