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Tuesday 29 April 2014

Poem: Persona



can you put yourself into a time table?
define the moments your personality gained
or lost a quality?
embellished with different adjectives
you look yourself in the mirror
and the more you pick them to describe yourself
the more you're proud of yourself
yet others would disagree
they would find something different in you
based on your actions
in every line you can find a lie
you can tuck it in any way you like
when you write a self-portrait
when it gazes at you from the paper
it either seems unreal or something out of the past
a person you've grown out of
and if your past seems bitter
maybe it's because you focused on the wrong things
wrong opinions
some people we carry with us
all our lives
in our minds and hearts
do these relations influence how you express yourself?
and because they seem so close we think we know
them completely
yet these are things hard to define
and there are some things that are only ours
and nobody needs to know about them


16 comments:

  1. i would agree... i think we neither know ourselves completely nor can we know others in depth - even though we've known them for years... and every portrait is a capture of a moment... for me it makes life even more interesting - it's cool to not know everything and have some space left to discover...smiles...happy sunday

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  2. I completely agree...
    "there are some things that are only ours
    and nobody needs to know about them"

    A very though provoking one!

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  3. There are things other sees in us we do not know, there are things we know that we never share.. and there are probably things underneath that no-one knows.. I think this is a very Jungean poem..

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  4. We should be clear to ourselves and let the world think , what they want to.

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  5. nice reflective thoughts...

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  6. I've learned recently that the "mind" includes our relational connections past and present… and it is true there are aspects of self that no one will every truly know.

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  7. there's a lot of truth in this poem

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  8. i would agree...how well we truly know someone comes down to how forthcoming we are with each other...and how honest....there are people we have known the longest of times that surprise us when they do something...how well can we really know them...

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  9. Very much so: we behave differently to different people, because we are coloured by what we perceive to be their opinion of us.
    Still, I look in the mirror and I despair, while my husband still keeps on telling me I'm beautiful. I would like to believe him, but I know better of course :-)
    Ah, strange the way we colour ourselves..

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  10. nice write ...and that is no secret :-)

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  11. Self portraits are a bit tricky as we are always changing and people around us influence us more than we can say ~ A good one ~

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  12. There are things we never share. We can never really know anyone else.The most important thing is to be authentic.Very interesting and complex poem

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  13. Thisis expressed so well. I love "there are some people we carry with us....."

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  14. A lot of wisdom and truth in this piece for me--really lovely!

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  15. really truthful piece, there are people we carry with us for better or worse but never know until we take long hard look at ourselves.

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  16. I just recently created a self-portrait in words at the end of NaPoWriMo. It was the most difficult of the thirty poems for the month of April, for all the reasons you have listed here. And I like how you compare the individual's own words to the actions viewed by others. So very true.

    Elizabeth

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