Intellectual Masking
I wore my mind like funeral silk,
A mask of polished thought,
Where reason rang like hollow bells
And feeling came to naught.
Behind the brow, behind the grin,
Behind the measured phrase,
There coiled a quieter agony
In unremembered days.
They praised the clockwork of my speech,
The angles of my thought,
But never heard the midnight scream
My careful logic fought.
For every theorem I proclaimed,
For every truth I’d dress,
There bled a deeper question still
In wordless wretchedness.
O Mask! O Mask of intellect!
So clean, so cold, so fair—
You hid the storm, you hid the rot,
You hid the wild despair.
I bartered pulse for polished sense,
My tremor for a plan,
And called it wisdom—called it strength—
This shrinking of a man.
Yet in the mirror, late at night,
When silence took the stage,
I saw the eyes of something caged
Behind his thinking mask.
It tapped in rhythms none could hear,
It wept without a name,
And scrawled its doubts on memory’s walls
In chalk that looked like flame.
So now I tear the velvet veil,
Let fracture follow form—
For better truth in broken words
Than perfect, painted norm.
The mind may wear its clever crown,
But let the heart be seen—
Lest I become a mausoleum
Where living thoughts have been.
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