This is one I had somehow missed before... it leaves so many thoughts and feelings swirling through my brain that it took me several readings to really decide how I felt about it. The overwhelming feeling I was left with was one of sadness and resignation almost... maybe more acceptance and being comfortable with oneself, even without the mask. I like the poem, and as always when reading your poems, I am left feeling as though there is a deeper meaning and I am just scratching the veneer on the true meaning of your poetry.
We are multifaceted beings and there is so much within each of us, including that which we don't wish to see.
But sometimes it's good to look at oneself from a different perspective, to confront the different faces of our inner reality. To understand and talk to oneself... without ending up with a split personality, though!
I like your poem and for the first time I will not agree with Charlie on one point: I don't think it's scary.
Scarey! I love the line "I close our eyes"--wouldn't it be nice if we could manipulate our moods so easily?--Charlie
Reviewed by William Cryer (Reader)
Reviewed on August 27, 2007
Startling verse. One thinks of "M. du Miroir," penned by none other than Hawthorne, who, perhaps more than any poet, has tantalized my imagination and sent me reeling in poetic reveries with his astonishing prose. Somewhere I've stashed a tribute to him that I wrote several years ago; I'll see if I can find it to post.
Contraband Marriage, traveling along the hemline of loving after incarceration, is a love story written in lyric and free form, set in reality with a different ever after.
The songs and art in this book are about our collective emergence after the pandemic and trauma of the last few years - comprised of 5 collections: World as Refuge, Where We Live, In Our Hands, Rhythms of Change and What We See & Sow.
Crys...
But sometimes it's good to look at oneself from a different perspective, to confront the different faces of our inner reality. To understand and talk to oneself... without ending up with a split personality, though!
I like your poem and for the first time I will not agree with Charlie on one point: I don't think it's scary.
Axilea
Regis
Ron