I've decided to stop acting that I'm not Completely in love with you. So I must replace this quaint, comfortable Half-grinning mask. Put it securely beside my confident, cocky Lawyer's look, A few masks down from my diligent, dutiful Scholar's gaze. Maybe hang up the smoke-stained, smirking Musician's mouth. All of the hall of faces is empty expressions. My ways and means. A lifetime of being neither True or false, Chearful deception or required adherance. I looked to you as I thought I must, Thinking always that you must also be Acting. And I wonder how it is that Two thesbians could ever fall in love. How one could ever convince the other That his speach was not rehearsed, His feelings not feigned, These lines not lies, Or our faces not just fateful masks So worn with practice that even the player Cannot portray himself. But I still see you beyond this act. I hold a picture like a still of your Legs crossed in the front seat of my Stolen car as you played a plastic guitar Singing 'All I Want Is You' When all I wanted was for it to be true. 8/99
I came to realize that shyness was just an act. It's always bothered me when I'd be interested in a woman, but be too afraid to do much of anything about it, and often as I looked back I would discover that she clearly was interested in me, but I would put on an act of only friendship to protect my nervous ego and ruin whatever chances I had at a relationship. This poem is also about some of the many ways we put on a false face to deal with the world around us, or the people with whom we really don't care to be "ourself." The poem leaves open the idea of what being one's self is really about, almost doubting that the act and the self could ever be truely seperated.
The poem is clearly written with a particular subject in mind, but I felt it best to leave her anonymous for now, prefering the romantic notion that she will later, perhaps much later, discover this piece written to her and marvel in the idea that she was the subject of one of my poems. But more importantly, this poem is a chance to strip off some level of the feigned disinterest and realize that the games and the act were all for nothing, that love is not something to hide, and holding forth the optimist's notion that she is also playing a game. That by taking off my mask, she will remove hers, and something true will result.