Painted faces

The people around you

held their faces behind masks

Painted beautifully

White porcelain and gold leaf

Ruby red lips and blushing cheeks

They hoped for you

To look and see

What you want to see

Fall in love and see beyond the façade

To the truth that you will surely love

In the end.

 

But I was bare faced

Eyes brown and darkened make up

Naturally me

Without the prepared shock

Of fake glamour and intent

 

You see

I was running late

 hurried

Trying my heart out to get my place in the room

Before the door closed locked tight

Missing my chance to see you tonight

 

I hold no dillusion

Of living up to expected roleplaying

I want a piece of the night

You are the reason for many tales and daydreams

But my eyes wanted to see for themselves

The man behind the curtain

Who held the puppet strings

Making the people disguise themselves to catch your eyes

 

That is not my style.

I am bright neon lights and loud color

If I am honest, looking around this room

I may be wrong in my curiosities.

 

For how can someone so radiantly true

Have any sort of interest in someone who

Expects such pageantry out of the public

I can't tell if I am crazy

but are you taking away all my misgivings

Picking me out of the crowd ,

As I leave the room.

 

Let’s play Cinderella and the Prince

Come find me and prove me wrong about you

Love me for my faulted beauty

Take me seriously

 Insist at your loudest voice

Never to paint my face for you.

Reviews

[Zainab UF]

This poem reads like a stanza out of Gabriel Okara's Once Upon A Time and a Cinderella story put together - a wonderful melange. I liked the way the honesty and spontaneity of the poetic persona was portrayed, particularly so in the line "I am bright neon lights and loud colour." And the last stanza was the most beautiful of them all!

This proclamation of the need to be genuine and natural, of letting our faces remain unpainted, is indeed superb. Thanks for sharing this work! :)

[zainul]

Wonderful write.
The piece explains itself.
It is better to quote my favorite stanza:
"But I was bare faced

Eyes brown and darkened make up

Naturally me

Without the prepared shock

Of fake glamour and intent"
The invitation in the last stanza is very sweet:
"Let’s play Cinderella and the Prince

Come find me and prove me wrong about you"

[bob, small b. aka invs]

i very much like the idea of showing yourself without artifice or false facades and hoping to be accepted and loved in spite, or because, of that. you expressed it so well, i can't imagine rejecting that honesty over all the glamor and disguises, no matter how tempting they may be.

[Forest Green]

Very much the glass slipper, passed from one to another, tried a-foot and yet unfit, until some chain of events occurs and the carriage marries a pumpkin and the surreal world reveals the meaning to every disguised thought.

This was a delight to read; an old-time romance of sorts, yet modernized by the fleeting moments of wishful thinking.

Very nice...