"masquerades" poems
Under the sheets of emotional armor,
A shy little girl masquerades as a martyr.
She’s the Queen of Deceit with her lies getting smarter,
While every tale told draws her self even farther
From finding out why she’s emotionally bothered
By all of the men in her life: like her father
Who only was trying the best for his daughter
And striving to be something more than a pauper
But coming up short. Who knows how much harder
He’d try if she wasn’t an argument starter?
The guilt and the shame from the family slaughter
Has made her insane and continues to bar her
From finding out just what the world has to offer.
Luckily she won’t have to be here much longer;
In fairy-tale land, there's nothing can harm her.
She suddenly finds herself all alone
With nobody’s thoughts to address but her own.
This is the time when she’d pick up the phone,
Demanding a savior to hear her bemoan
About all the problems that she’s ever known,
But what she doesn’t know is a friend can’t atone
For the lack of a man with his patience to loan
To a lost little girl whose bad temper is known.
All she needs is a strong one that doesn’t condone
All the treacherous lies and the hatred she’s shown.
It’s hard to deny all the reaping she’s sewn.
She’ll have to tread soft lest her cover is blown
And everyone finds out she still hasn’t grown
Through the hundreds of tempers and tantrums she’s thrown.
Hopefully soon she can bury the bone
And calm herself into a nostalgic zone
Where smiles and candles were filling her home
And love and affection were all that was loaned.
Enlightenment comes when you realize you’re prone
To the wrath of the heartache that comes with the throne.
Oct 11, 2015
Oct 11, 2015 at 8:07 AM UTC
You… you’ve got a lot going for you
You’re famous, you’re smart, and you’re powerful
but you are ugly.
You think we can’t see the evil under that gaudy, outdated sweater
but we can.
You think that fancy perfume you wear hides the scent of terror
but it doesn’t.
You think the makeup you put on daily covers the pure pain written on your face
but you are dead wrong
bipolar, you are hideous.
Sometimes, though, that’s easy to forget
when it feels like I can do anything
the world is my oyster. When I feel that ungodly fake happiness
that masquerades as wellness, when I’m with you
and I don’t want to leave.
That’s when you have me. Then you take the opportunity
to torment me.
The façade is gone, and it all comes rolling through the gates.
You scream a thousand voices into my head
you bind my body and I can feel your merciless crushing grasp
you convince me that everything is good, it’s not bad,
it’s bad, it’s not good,
this is good, that is bad, I need to say it over and over and over again
you take over, and I don’t stand a chance.
My peace of mind is gone, and my humanity is soon to follow
How did I let this happen to me? I’ll never know
but I’ve learned this:
You do take no for an answer
and I have a lot more control than I thought.
If I ask you to stay away, you’ll ask me why, and I’ll tell you
because I want to be better
and as long as I let you anywhere near me, I will always
be stuck here
on this nightmare of a rollercoaster.
So you accept that, thank God
thank you, bipolar, for setting me free,
at least once in a while.
I feel less alone without you because
I can love more fully, for longer, forever.
I can accept my imperfections rather
than suffer in the desire to be rid of them. to be rid of you.
I can be still and know
that it is ok.
I’m ok, you’re ok. and I intermittently have my **** together.
I’m sorry things are not working out between you and me,
bipolar disorder.
but I’m not sorry that without you,
my life is ******* beautiful.
Nov 14, 2015
Nov 14, 2015 at 5:11 PM UTC
All dimples and curls and pigeon toes when sitting,
purple; and gold dangles
light-skinned girl, dark-skinned girl
depending on the translation
hips swivel to the left, ******* that follow
in commanding black bras
and matching lacy *******
Rolling backwards into handstands for most *************
else on the loveseat
whipping love back and forth between the swell
beneath the shorts
and beneath the outer layers,
the lip gloss smiles and masquerades
beneath the veins and bone and guts:
there's a naked, quivering heater
switched on all year long
its dainty wiring peeking out,
the head of the cord puckered.
Sep 28, 2011
Sep 28, 2011 at 1:28 AM UTC
madness masquerades
as mornings that come
and go
and dancing madly backwards
Pan plays his lute
down desolate streets
disappearing into the raging sun
of all possibilities.
the sad mornings that come and go, and
all possibilities considered
far from the haunted clocks
and cracking glass
margins shout
where walls never meet
in forgotten stillness.
so dance on silent ledges,
walk the high wire,
jump into the fire,
welcome madness passionately.
do something completely unexpected.
enjoy the imperfections,
kiss a stranger,
laugh when you should be crying,
madness is magic,
so strip down
naked as the wolf in the forest,
logic be ******
howl along with the howling wind.
Aug 6, 2025
Aug 6, 2025 at 9:57 PM UTC
Stop humoring me
If you don't really care,
Because I'm wasting my time --
Wasting my life,
And I can't afford any more breaks.
Anymore breaks and I'll shatter,
Don't you understand that?
I'm just trying to find a clear image
In this distorted blur;
I want a clear reflection
In this dark pool.
So, take off your mask,
Because I'm tired --
Exhausted -- from all these masquerades.
I just want to dance barefoot in the sand...
Do you want to dance barefoot in the sand?
Dec 14, 2014
Dec 14, 2014 at 9:50 PM UTC
I
The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o’clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.
II
The morning comes to consciousness
Of faint stale smells of beer
From the sawdust-trampled street
With all its muddy feet that press
To early coffee-stands.
With the other masquerades
That time resumes,
One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms.
III
You tossed a blanket from the bed,
You lay upon your back, and waited;
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted;
They flickered against the ceiling.
And when all the world came back
And the light crept up between the shutters,
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the bed’s edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.
IV
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
3.1k
I.
White flakes touch the street—
Their millions melt, dying
The way they were born.
II.
She blinked, shaking the
Snowflakes from her eyelashes,
And blushed like summer.
III.
A two-step blizzard
Waltzes in the windy air—
Winter masquerades.
IV.
In the darkness, steps
Crunch and echo in the snow,
Miles away from me.
V.
The buildings weather
The snow, but everything else
Crumbles under white.
VI.
After the snow, trees
Like middle-aged heads of hair
Became old and grey.
VII.
The hot chocolate
Stains my teeth, which once were
White like today’s snow.
Feb 18, 2010
Feb 18, 2010 at 2:25 PM UTC
Stained glass coffins
Crystalline mosquitoes
Death that masquerades
In silken flags and floras
Languorous beauties
Graffiti of red and violet light
Sirens kiss the bullets
As they scatter them
To burn holes in sepia dreams
Watercolor ghosts
Casting out wildflower candy
Attics that hide under
Strawberry dust and lemons
That melts into mildew
As they pass down the gullet
Layers of ashes in the belly
“But you told us to swallow!”
Masses of children howl
The pretty ghouls hiss back
“Cannot you tell a lie by now,
By the sweetness of its taste?”
Mar 2, 2010
Mar 2, 2010 at 5:37 PM UTC
Blush!
The blush of pinkish,
As flamingo fandangos,
In rhythmic tangos,
Long legs centrally bent as she stands,
Flamingo masquerades as delicate swan!
Sort of strutting,
Elegant,
Thought not!
Woman masked as flaming flamingo.
Lady tall in height,
Wistfully wishes on starlight night, bright,
Clear eyes sparkle,
A tint of mystery's mystique,
No teardrops,
He fed her fire with touch of love,
As if were both sent from above,
Two strange birds can only tell,
If love will grow or tears well!
Passion kissed her on her cheek,
Left her blushing scarlet,
Jesus wept and cried out loud,
'This woman,
She's no harlot,'
Both dangling suspended in ether clouds ,
Dozy as hell,
These two dreamy birds are two of a kind,
No similar creatures will you ever find,
He struts peacock feathers glory.
She blushes,
Escaped from love story!
Eccentricity,
Idiosyncrasies,
Rule the day,
Hurry up,
Bring him back my way!
By ladylivvi1
© 2013 ladylivvi1 (All rights reserved)
Aug 26, 2013
Aug 26, 2013 at 5:33 AM UTC
I am in cold. I watch that garish ward brimming with false light. Bleached air from his lips touching hers. He hides in her mane, sterile and alone. Why is it so hard, such an insurmountable task for you to see how I lather my face with paint each day just to smile at you?
My face, my heart, my mind not a blank canvas that I hide with these diluted pastels but a deep, rich chorus of colors and oils that were never meant to be hidden. But the ward will never know.
There are thoughts and opinions rolling like a torrent behind this mask I call a face. This world was against me from day one, don’t you dare say I’ve given way to cynicism. Nor optimism, pessimism, or God-forsaken realism. Can't I think the earth is beautiful, God is good, I am right, and people are wrong without someone putting an -ism behind me? Of course not. That's narcissism. Egoism. Egalitarianism.
It is what I unknowingly wrote across my mask. But I never chose to attend this outdated ball, masquerades are cliched. Pure romanticism...surrealism, the kin of commercialism whose visage is a polychromatic wheel of logotypes that you just have to know en masse.
What if I stop believing that compassion Himself can hate me? No, no that's atheism. Agnosticism. And if I'm better than someone because He said so then that is monotheism in all it's delicate flavors.
Can't I breathe alone in a quiet corner? Isolationism. Can't I want to simply be a follower, and think about life, literature, and art? Incomprehensible, that would be totalitarianism, absolutism, authoritarianism. What if I want to give God all the power He gave us, and watch the world change? Fascism. Revolutionism. Extremism, because releasing the wheel is extremism. Existentialism.
And what if I choose to remove the mask, break the levees, release the floodgates, my thoughts and opinions, never watch my tongue, and speak the world as it is: A capital M-madman's schism of logic and faith. As it has always been, and always will be. I will always be in love with the counterfeit ward. And yes, there's a label for that: Catastrophism.
So I watch Beauty and his Beast touching in fluorescence. Bleached breath, save for the smoke of his lungs in hers. Sterile and alone; I am in cold, and cold hurts me.
Mar 4, 2012
Mar 4, 2012 at 3:15 AM UTC
I want you to think positive today
Speak up when you have something to say
Stand up and let your voice be heard
Whenever injustice knocks at your door
Don’t be afraid to cry out for mercy
Don’t be afraid to cry so the world may be at your knees
Don’t be afraid to be vocal
Whether foreign or local
Don’t be afraid to challenge the stagnant system
Whether by voice or by the written work
Let our hearts beat as one with the Congo rhythm
Sing out The great reggae legend philosophy
Bob Marley
One Love, One hearts lets get together and feel all right
I and I is a woman of righteousness
Everywhere me step Jah bless
Me radical
Every vagabond has to scatter as the power under which is dwell is internalized
Out of me the almighty specialized and their wicked cult can’t suffice
So open up your eyes
Please do realize
Take away the cobwebs, remove the mask of disguise
And see I prophecy
Paint away the graffiti of one’s mind
Remove the zinc fences and card board boxes
That tries to manipulate
See God
See the devil when he masquerades
Realize his plan
His advocates and be aware
It’s a physical
A spiritual warfare
Soldiers
Put on your armour
Prepare for war
Keep your mind open
Keep it secure
The gateways to your soul
Protect it with spiritual intervention
If you don’t
Illusion
Delusion
Difficult situation
Under the system’s manipulation
Hold an herbal, spiritual meditation
And revolutionized
Modernized this ya mind
Christena AV Williams
Jamaican Radical poet, rap lyricist and Author
Pearls among stones
All rights Reserved.
Oct 19, 2013
Oct 19, 2013 at 12:50 PM UTC
I want to live in a protoplasmic land:
Where only earth's natural resources are availed...
but not any exploitable extraction from nature.
where the cacophonies of friction are unheard..
Where the toxic air doesn't seem to arouse from the rooms of renaissance,
Where the sky synergizes with the nature,
Where the oeuvre of the planet remains pristine,
Where the trees vacillate with the harmony of winds.
Where there exists no manufactured light....
But only the piercing rays of self-igniting sun to synthesize the earth with seemingly eonian brightness...
And on nocturnals,star and moon drives me,if moon masquerades,i.e.,
When the commixture of cirrocumulus clouds form an impenetrable layers of watery clouds,
let the thundering light texture me while its clustering clouds embracing me with its rapturous rain,
Let the nature do its own karma,
I am not here to meddle in nature's subtle poise,
but to infuse into it......
O'shiva pave me the unobscure and quintessential way for me to dissolve in to you,
Let me drop my essential earth and dissolve my sumptuous and non-matter soul in to everlasting you....
Let me hush in to those singular days and solitary sounds....
Oct 17, 2014
Oct 17, 2014 at 1:41 PM UTC
sometimes an acrid heat
rises in my vocal cords
it tells me to do things
i don't want to do
but i do want it
i just wish i didn't.
it steals my voice
it masquerades as honor
it whispers justifications
it reveals itself to me
in a way i can't refuse
it tells me
it reminds me
how sweetly it stings
when i drag my fingers
against my skin
how could i say no?
i am weak
it wants me to hurt
i want to hurt
it wants me to hurt
i want to hurt
i(t) want(s me) to hurt
because it never was anything
but my own desires
i just didn't want them
to be mine
May 27, 2018
May 27, 2018 at 6:56 PM UTC
Your
searing kiss;
pure bliss
masquerading
as oral tranquilizer.
Nov 16, 2011
Nov 16, 2011 at 9:43 AM UTC
I heard a whisper.
a thought like dust
caught the air of my breath
and landed on every heartbeat still beating for something more than themselves.
a rationale.
a stable refuge.
these are the things I imbue.
nocturnal nonsense swirled about
until your gaze caught my thoughts.
I saw your eyes behind mine.
emancipated, delegated, underrated and unillustrated,
how can I better express myself.
I lost myself trying to lose you.
I carried the weight of the world on my shoulders
to your front door step and left it with a key.
Walk a mile in my shoes and still ask me who's the enemy.
I am.
I am my own downfall.
masquerades never suited me
yet I still wore it with agony.
Antagonized from every side,
the lies lie far between you and I.
I succeeded in forgetting something that never happened
and got trapped inside those angel eyes.
remain a nuisance, my misguided matrimony.
gravity awaits,
for we are all destined to fall.
Nov 30, 2013
Nov 30, 2013 at 5:57 AM UTC
Tick tock
rapping of the clock.
A cold dead sham
of another mans cog.
So lay it down
on the hangman's block.
To sick to see
how it shepherds its flock.
It holds no rime
masquerades as reason.
A facade of truth
Yet I call it treason.
It puts up the walls
to the common man's prison.
A tool to be used
for a stronger man's mission.
Time
a device of unity.
Implementing science
bordering necessity.
Auctioned off
by the leaders of economy.
You always work hard
but are left no time to dream.
Dreaming costs
who ever owns your time.
They look down at you
and threaten your life.
So you numb yourself
just to make a dime.
Soon you grow cold
lost in the grind.
In youth
there is imagination.
Unhindered
not subject to discrimination.
As they grow
so to do their nations.
Furthering thoughts
yet short lived contemplation.
For as you grow old
you give your time to corporations.
The more things change
the more they stay the same.
from the dawn of man
to the information age.
More time spent
till your in your grave.
Yet time well spent
promises better days.
So dont sacrifice
your life for time.
It all stands short
in perspective eyes.
A relative thought
not a device that binds.
Spend it happily
for every day of your life.
Jan 12, 2013
Jan 12, 2013 at 9:23 AM UTC
The spirit of Mulan lives inside these girls
she who transforms to go to war
she who chops her hair and binds her chest loose clothing, low voice
she marches to the battlefield
made of asphalt and alleyways
she hides in hoodies, armed with keys
to combat hidden enemies
these battles are fought in the night
far from pools of streetlight
she masquerades to avoid an invasion
she fights to protect her only home
Dec 2, 2015
Dec 2, 2015 at 10:41 PM UTC
*Skim milk masquerades as cream
Wolves self-ordain themselves as custodians
Of the “good” of sheep and that they’re a team
In the quest for universal good, poor proletarians.
A fattened up emaciation
That derails the pursuit for accountability
Paving way for many a loophole
A stranglehold on emancipation
The sheep simply merely sign a treaty
With fate to elongate their back breaking life before taking a stroll
In either heaven or hell, that’s if an afterlife exists.
The wolf menace is thus a malignant cyst
To “body politic”
Posing mind boggling potential harm, worth incisive critique.*
Feb 1, 2014
Feb 1, 2014 at 5:02 AM UTC
Your arteries are like correlations
Possessing fragments of my brightest moments
Protruding right against your skin
And an abundance of my darkest thoughts
Crawling viciously through your lungs
Infecting your every breath
Just to fill the empty spaces
Between the blood that pulses through your veins
And the twisted bones that keep you straight
The craters in your wrists
Hold masquerades of celebratory pain
Where crisp and lifeless voices
Hum out screams of your trauma
Like meaningless smalltalk
As if you were a resemblance of the weather
Just another galactic disaster
While their idle hands of Devils play
Scrape knives along your spine
And feast formally from your flesh
Jan 26, 2015
Jan 26, 2015 at 2:21 AM UTC
trade insanity to the tailor for top hat coat and cane
to wear to the mausoleum ball, daylights bane
where Lilith masquerades as innocent love
and black bat wings spring forth from every dove
skeletons twist about the living wearing skulls as masks
the grave keeper rejoices in his gruesome tasks
Nov 30, 2011
Nov 30, 2011 at 8:06 PM UTC
In a cup or a glass, a bottle or a flask
Liquid courage masquerades as personality
Everyone wants to be someone else sometime
So choose a poison and swallow inhibitions
Be that someone, or someone else
Control is an illusion
Courage cannot be purchased or consumed
Bluffing affability through a counterfeit life
Found in a cup or a glass, a bottle or a flask
Mar 23, 2014
Mar 23, 2014 at 11:01 PM UTC
I originally wrote "its funny" as the first line
however I dont think
its funny
I started liking you far too long ago
and I got stuck on the Argo sailing
in sorrow under the statue of Rhodes.
I started writing a poem a day
just to impress you and I realized that
i only ever impressed myself
You like our car side conversations
maybe because I keep good company
or maybe because you were actually interested
in the hopelessness that
I am.
I start to make you a black hole
and I am past the event horizon.
Sunlight only escapes through my words.
My open lips meet your parted sentences
cut short by the warmth of human breath.
I made you into poetry
but I should have followed my sisters advice
and not smashed you into my poetry books
I should not have swirled the words of your
glassy blue eyes into golden threads
binding ancient books.
Thats where I went wrong.
I cared to much.
Our path wasnt a lambda where two paths meet to make one
we were an x
bold on the page but
only crossing for a mere moment.
I dont regret any of it. I just wish
you knew that I meant all of it.
Pretty poems
and movies on weeknights.
Masquerades hiding our feelings.
I never even asked where you stood.
What your mask meant.
What it was hiding.
I showed up to the ball dressed like art
and you were cinderella
waiting for her prince charming.
I shatter glass slippers.
and arrange the fresh fragments into
an ugly spectacle
of futility.
We are schrodingers cat
locked in a box.
Im just afraid that I am pandora
and that the hope of us died
when I observed the radioactivity within.
Cancer cells on skin
you called them cute moles.
I guess I kinda just wanted you to be mine,
and I always knew
that
Good guys
stay stuck at home
watching star wars box trilogies.
Dreaming of their Leia.
Id rather be George Lucas. I think.
This stopped making sense to me the moment
That I decided to make it about you
so Im going to end it
here.
Nov 9, 2015
Nov 9, 2015 at 8:00 PM UTC
She is beautiful, with her hair in disarray. She sets man against man, woman against woman, and both against each other
She whispers into the ear of sleeping children, who awake as adults in her service.
All fear her, for she cannot be known.
She masquerades as order, enticing humanity; the fire that huddled neanderthals gaped at in thanks become the flames that consume.
To fight against her is futile, but it is in our nature.
She has never left us; she will continue without us when we are dead and gone.
All the monuments in the world bow to her in worship or are crushed in submission to time and war.
She played gods and men alike.
She is both the catalyst and the conclusion.
Some marvel as the fires of her destruction dance reflected in their eyes; others weep.
To say that she is coming would imply that she has ever left.
How could we impermanent things ever hope to banish something so primordial.
She breeds hate, mistrust, and strife in those that capitulate; those that resist her only magnify her power.
She bore Hardship and Ruin, Quarrels and Disputes, Lies and Oaths, Anarchy and Starvation, Forgetfulness and Pain. Manslaughter and ****** were her giggling toddlers. War and Battle took after her brother, their uncle's favorites.
She brings inedible food that is coveted by all who encounter it.
She has bathed in the blood of civil wars, her most decadent vice.
She renders man's efforts futile, to fight or submit is destruction.
She will reduce the universe to an ever expanding hellscape of fire.
She is the secret joy of many.
Nothing will escape her.
She is everywhere.
Oct 13, 2018
Oct 13, 2018 at 1:24 PM UTC
It was intensity in the eyes of the beast
With his romanticisms and optimism ceased
Gashes, cut bottomless within his soul
Who, would possibly aid him as a whole?
The king who had executed blasphemous quantities of sins
And pride fully worn, his foe's skins.
Could not be comprehended and eased after all
He lived to stalk, persecute and brawl
For behind all the masquerades and shells he wore
It was against himself, that he always swore
At the break of dawn, he held a face
In the midst of darkness, he could not sense, embrace
A battle came forging against him, he felt grim
Though it was not his form which was to be dithering, limb by limb
It was his trepidation, his need to stop his despair
Oh, how he craved to vanish into thin air
For he realized that the only thing meaningful to him now
Was for his annihilating words, to be a vow
A vow to soon meet, the eternal light alas
For his heart had become, into brittle glass
The light was his way out
To permit him, of his emotive drought
And so, as the stars blazed up in the sky’s high
So did the tears, imploring, to be let out in both his eye
How far more, would he suffer?
How much longer, did he have to be a bluffer?
The possibility of freedom, is all that made him wait
Little did he distinguish he was just another prisoner in the chambers, of fate.
Mar 12, 2019
Mar 12, 2019 at 8:07 AM UTC